Had a good conversation about movies that are just too fake nowadays. By that I mean, there are too many CGI effects that replace what could have been something real and practical. For a moment let's look at Star Wars, both trilogies. The Original Trilogy used what technology there was, which was not great, but Lucas and his team did some amazing things to make that look as good as it did then. Even now I think it holds up in its own rights. Sure he wanted to do bigger things with it then, but then that's why he re-released it in 97 to expand (visually) a few things he'd wanted then. Fine. Then the new trilogy came out.
Before I continue, I am going to say I am not a fan of the new trilogy, though I think I'll be the only one to say that out of the new three, I liked Episode 1 the best, but I'll get to that in a moment.
The new trilogy offered many new things to see visually. We had lightsaber battles like we'd never seen them before, we saw space battles like we'd never seen them before and we saw CGI, like we'd never seen them before. If I could compare space battles from New Hope and, let's say phantom menace, we really saw a lot more of the ships themselves in the original, and not as much in the new. We saw the after effects and a lot of crazy explosions, but not much of these well designed ships. Part of the exposure of them in New Hope might be because of they made models and they wanted to get as much use out of them as possible.
Either way though, the point I'm trying to make is once we hit Episode III, everything, and I mean everything was CG. You may say "But it looked so good!" True enough, it did. It looked TOO good. so good, it didn't look real.
now let's take another film franchise for a second that used CGI in it. I think you may have heard of it; it's called The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was CG, the hordes of Orcs were CG. Sauron's itchy red eye (cue Ben Stein Clear Eye commercial) was even CG. Did they use CG to do everything? of course not! they built a lot of things practically, in an age where they didn't have to. They utilized the technology without it overpowering the movie goer. The used Bigatures, instead of Miniatures for some of the bigger locations they couldn't build full scale and it looked believable and realistic.
Now, I do realize that Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are two different genres with two different goals. Or are they? Star Wars is sci-fi and takes place mostly in space. so how can we expect them to build "Space"? they did it back in the original trilogy and it looked pretty good. Add a few post production twinkling and add some brightness and you have a pretty good looking space set. I realize it's not so simple but think about what I'm saying. They had many planets that, to a point, Lucas could have done practically. He did it for the most part in Phantom Menace, which is partially why I liked it so much. It didn't go completely away from actually building things, like the Pod Racers. I realize he probably got sick of going everywhere and doing things that logistically, but he's George freaking Lucas. If he wanted, I'm betting NASA would set up a film studio on Mars!
So the point of all of this is, why we do need to cheat and do something everyone knows is completely fake, due to it being all digitally created, and not use it only where it's needed. Michael Bay has made a career spending his time and setting up elaborate action sequences. I recall a simple 5 second shot from The Island where a giant metal framed Letter (i think it was R) was supposed to fall from the side of a skyscraper and crash into the streets below. sure he CGed the first part of it falling off the building, but the crashing in the streets? All practical. I watched a behind the scenes on it. They spent 10 days setting it up and even the behind the scenes camera showed it actually falling.
Again I realize there comes a point where you have to use it, but use it sparingly and only if you have no other way, and I mean absolutely NO other way to achieve your desired result. Lucas has the money to spend whatever he wants, so it's not about money for him. I could go on all night about different movies that do that, but I think I'll leave it for tonight and you can all "bicker and argue, about who killed who"...I mean whatever you want to.
-Spoiled Mangoes
No comments:
Post a Comment