Do the "BIG" CGI sequences mess up the films?

M

Michele

New member
I was posting on the tread for the Clash of the Titans films and thinking about the trailer I have seen for it and then CGI in general.

I realised that one of the reasons I prefer old or even bad special effects is because they don't go on. Thinking back, I've seen so many films over the last 5-10 years that have had so many "BIG" action CGI sequences, often action sequences I've been left thinking hurry up to the next bit.
Take for example in the Potter films the Quidditch matches. All that flying about, in and out of structures etc. It's all very impressive. Yes you can do flashy things with CGI, but it's also very long and drawn out.
I struggled with the last 20 minutes or so of Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. You have a great big battle sequence that went on and on and on. I remember looking at my watch wanting the end of the film to come.
When watching films like Spiderman I'll instictively hit the button and do x2 or x4 just to get through these long drawn out things. Say the swinging through the city which always looks fake and unrealistic.

I seem too find that older films used less "big" sequences not only because they weren't cheap to do but also because the longer they went on the more chance the viewer was likely to spot any flaws in the technology or even worse lose believability in what it was seeing. Less seemed to be more.
Having seen the trailer for Clash of the Titans a few times and seen The Kraken with Pegasus flying between it's tentacles I already know this is going to be another Quidditch style "over long" piece of rushing in and out of things narrowly escaping being hit, seen it all before! *Yawn* :sleep:

They're not always CGI. IMO Batman and Robin wasn't great because it seemed to be one big long set piece after another and no real story, howver it does seem to now mainly be the blockbuster films have to have the obligatory "big" CGI moment now. Often making the film longer than it neeRAB to be.

Is it just me that gets bored during some/most of them and wish they would hurry up and move on to the next scene?
 
One of the best action scenes for me is in Children of Men where it's a single camera following Clive Owen for about 5 minutes. I know what you mean though, especially when they're shaking the camera a lot and changing the angle every 5 seconRAB so you really can't see what's going on.
 
I know the scene you mean and I think that one actually works well. Firstly about 5 minutes was long enough but more importantly it worked at it didn't come over as being an inserted "big scene" to "wow" the audience. It managed to have a feel of truthfullness about it.
 
But are they caused by the CGI?

Let's take something like Spiderman. if they had to film a stuntman swinging on a web doing realistcally what a man can do from lots of angles would there be so many of those type of shots?
If in a fil mile Clash of the Titans the monsters looked a bit ropey like an 70's or 80's episode of Doctor Who would you give them so much screen time?

It comes across to me that they wrok on the principle of "because I can, I will" rather than saying "I can, but do I need too?"
On a realistic level, how much money would be saved on the budget if a lot of these very big scenes and set pieces were shorter by a third or a half?
As I mentioned in my OP. It's not just CGI. It can be overly long car chases or fights, however it does seem a lot worse now because of CGI which is being used to make things "bigger" and more "exciting" even if it means it goes on a bit too long.
 
I think the problem with extensive special effects is that there's a risk of them depersonalizing the film, as if the FX team have taken over and said "We'll shoot it like this.." while the film's actual director sits in the bar waiting for them to finish. It's an impression I got with some of the Spiderman films (amongst other), and recently with the awful Terminator Salvation.

A director who thinks in big visuals and has the skill to adapt to major FX and incorporate them into his/her own style of film-making without too much compromise is probably going to fare better. Obviously I'm thinking of the popular mainstream visualists - Cameron, Gilliam, early Spielberg etc. Though the classic example would surely be 2001. Tons of FX shots, but each one pure Kubrick.
 
Another theory is that these overly long, elaborate, impressive CGI sequences end up being handy 'signature' moments for the trailers.

This is another fairly recent phenomenon, of trailers tantalising us with snippets of these 'wow' moments to lure us in.

2012 is a perfect example of this - massive chunks of CGI sequences that just seem to go on and on. And of course easy to shove them into an 'exciting' trailer and make it look like a 'must-see' movie.
 
It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't shoved in your face with a very blunt, very loud harangue that this is BRILLIANT and the ABSOLUTE PINNACLE and YOU WILL SIT THERE AND BE DAZZLED DAMMIT.

Cardboard props and miniatures falling over in something like 'Earthquake' from the 70s are neither brilliant, dazzling or the absolute pinnacle. But my brain just kind of subconsciously accepts that they represent 'real' things and happenings and glosses over the technical shortcomings, and the filmmakers are also astute enough to realise that the longer such a shot or effect goes on, the more transparently ludicrous and thus distancing it becomes. The trouble with today's effects is the 'this is big and expensive to do and so we are going to make you wallow in it' mentality. In something like a disaster film for example, the depiction of incidents which might well have some kind of basis in reality instead becomes a cacophany of jazzy angles, multi-perspective shots and attention-seeking editing, which go on forever to ensure the filmmakers are getting their moneysworth out of the technology. To the brain this headache-inducing flummery is no more as plausible in its detail as a 'real' event than a stuntman in a rubber dragon suit stomping on cereal boxes, but you're visually battered with it for such interminable stretches at a time it becomes distractingly impossible to overlook that.
 
I posted this in the "TCOTT" thread before I saw this one, but I thought it was relevent here, (honestly not an ego trip:o).

"What added to the original, IMO, was that you knew they were little models. But just as in real life, if little model soldiers started to move around, it would be fascinating to watch.
In other worRAB, what old style animation does, is to fulfill the fantasy for you of inanimate objects coming to life. Even cartoons do the same.

CGI just doesn't have that link with the real world. You don't see anything that you are used to seeing in a "lifeless" state."

I've been trying to figure out for quite a while now why I don't like CGI because I don't want to not like it.
It's wrecking films for me and I don't want to keep being disappointed.

Good OP about the length, haven't considered that aspect before.
 
I think what CGI takes away from the enjoyment of films is the sense of wonder...of 'how on earth did they do that?'

There are two main factors...firstly, when we watched films as a child, be they 60's, 70's, 80's and to a degree the 90's, we were not bombarded with the constant media hype that we are now.

Films of those era's were limited to posters, cinema trailers and the odd newspaper article perhaps if it was a big, anticipated movie.

Second, we genuinely did not know how effects were achieved in those days...making of's and details of how these things were achieved were rarely shown to the general public...which is why the 'magic of the movies' tag effectively came about.

A case of ignorance is bliss...?
 
They're just so sterile, I enjoy a good action blockbuster but now it seems to be great big, incredibly loud action sequences with a bit of story linking them together.

When I think of Towering Inferno or even something like Blade Runner or Independence Day, you get human interest stories and you care about the characters, I watched Transformers 2 and I just couldn't care less, I didn't know who the goodies were or who the baddies were and it was so incredibly boring.

The story should be the paramount reason for making a film, not the special effects. Michael Bay should be banned from ever make another film again! :rolleyes:
 
It' not the story inbetween, it's the big scenes. The Towering Inferno is a great example. When you watch they you know that the flames were real. When they flood the tower to put the fires out the water was real. Literally thoutanRAB of gallons of the stuff. If that were made to day a lot of the flames and the water scene would be CGI to make it look even more "impressive."
 
:rolleyes:Yes because everyone loves real explosions than cgi ones. I guess avatar must be that shit, just all flash no story despite the massive positive reviews and majority love.

Is this thread a joke? Big cgi/explosions/car chases/thin storyline in action movies? lol.goodness...
 
The CGI on Die Another Day are just totally shite and you can tell straight away where it cuts from live action to the CGI and then back to the live action.
 
If you read the OP and the rest of the tread you would know it's about the "big" scenes and sequences and not the thin storylines.
I'll give you another example.
Star Wars I: The Phanthom Menace.
You have a pod racing scene with the kid in some kind of lanRABpeeder thing. Why? What did that add to the film? How did it move the story on? There seemed no logical reason for it to be in there other to make the viewer go wow that looks cool.
At least with Quidditch in the Potter films it's the school's sport in the same way inter house rugby is in private schools. But even so does it need to be in every film for so long? As the series went on I knew Quidditch was my time to go for a pee if I need one because naff all of interest is going to happen just lots of zooming about.

It's noticible how many of these films that are heavy on the CGI "wow" shots and sequences all have a running time of around 2 hours sometimes more. Why? When you look back at a lot of the older films they were coming in at around 80-90 minutes. 100 minutes was considered long.

The last Potter book is a thick book so maybe it does need two films. I can't see why, but whatever. But The Hobbit is a thinner book. It actually has a lot less pages than quite a lot of novels yet that is also going to be in two parts. Why? How much padding caused by CGI is there going to be in that one? There is a touring stage version which is a musical so added time for songs and they didn't say we need to do it in two parts over two days as it's so huge a story.
 
Wasn't it about selling a video game?

The first film is based on the book. The second film is based on events in the 60 years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. So it's not so much that The Hobbit will be padded, as that they are going to invent a lot of stuff to link all the Tolkien films together.

I'm not sure why, but it seems to have been the plan from the start. I expect there's a financial reason, in the same way that TLOTR made economies by shooting 3 films back to back (or concurrently).

The book of The Hobbit probably has enough content to justify a 6-hour TV series, but it'd be hard to split into two films and still have a decent climax to the first.
You need the dragon. I expect some of the stuff from the second film will come from the book, and will involve Gandalf doing whatever he was doing when he was called away from the Dwarves' party.
 
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