Do you agree with Spielberg about special effects?

It is not that the films have too much special effects - it is the difference between the effects serving the story and the story serving the effects.

A film like Avatar it is the effects that serve the story - generally speaking however with a Bay film (entertaining though they are) it is the other way - you start with the effect (Huge robots having a scrap) and then tack a story on to that.

Avatar had a story - the effects were used to tell that story.
 
The point isn't "could Avatar have been made without CGI". I don't think anyone could argue really that it could. The point is that the visuals are Avatar's sole reason for existence, it has nothing else of any reasonable merit to offer the viewer. If there were no CGI, who would care? There's no real story or character development beyond hasty beermat scribbled outlines lifted from umpteen better films. The film hangs everything on it's visuals because it's all it has. Without the graphics, there would be no Avatar. Is that enough for the current cinema going public? Yes, it would seem so.
 
Avatar is pants but is rightly considered an exception to using effects for their own sake by Spielberg as the F/X are used in service of the - very thin - story (though I think 3D adRAB nothing much to it).
Contrast this with, say, the Spielberg-produced Transformers 2 which is intermninable robot pron.
Films like Beowulf prove that F/X - especially performance capture - can dominate a film and the story still holRAB though admittedly it helps that it's based on an historical poem.
Hopefully, Tin Tin will benefit in a similar fashion.
 
I think there are definitely occasions when they can.

I know most people will slam me for this, but I thought 2012 was a great cinema spectacle because of the amazing effects. You were able to see things that you'd never (hopefully!) see in real-life, such as gigantic arks crashing into the side of Mount Everest and Los Angeles falling into a gargantuan crack in the earth's core.

Of course, the problem with 2012 was that in the scenes were there was little action (which was about half the film now I think about it), the weak, cliched plot and poor dialogue were apparent for all to see.

Contrast that with Avatar, in which the CGI and special effects are combined so intricately with the plot and acting, that it's virtually impossible to talk about one without talking about the other. That's why Avatar succeeded where other CGI-heavy films like 2012 failed.
 
My friend recently watched Avatar and said it was a brilliant film. I pushed him on what made it brilliant and he had to admit that it was the visuals. The plot and the script were completely secondary. In my opinion, a film cannot truly be called brilliant if its main elements play second fiddle to its aesthetics.

Your point about Beowulf is spot on. It undoubtedly benefited from aesthetics, but had a great plot and script sourced from a historically priceless poem.
 
I think that the test of a good film would be to watch it on a black and white portable TV. Would many of todays blockbusters hold your attention? I think not.
 
This is a very interesting point, because you described the other parts of the film as the "main elements".

But is this necessarily true anymore? CGI and technology have advanced to the stage where NOTHING is impossible to show on screen - if you have a big enough imagination. And the reason Avatar got bums in seats was because they wanted to see what one man's incredible imagination could come up with. It is in cases like that when CGI and technology really come into their own.

Of course, acting, plot, direction etc. are all still important. But my point is that there are SOME films when they RIGHTFULLY become the secondary elements, because it's the sheer imagination and scope behind the CGI that makes it a great viewing spectacle.
 
Coming back to Avatar... that film needed to create a new world hence the visuals were vital to the film. Things set in "the real world" who overuse CGI are the main offenders. Imagine Avatar looking like the original Star Wars films? It wouldn't work.

I agree with ags_rule. There neeRAB to be a complete link between the visuals and storyline otherwise the visuals will take over. You can often have a great story with average visuals and it works, but having a poor story with amazing visuals just screams "cinema porn".

Kill Bill, for example, is about the aesthetics just as much as the story. Although not using much (any?) CGI the visuals were needed to make it what it was. Some people would argue it was about the visuals only, but there was a genuine story to the films.

I also wish films would use more realistic characters, rather than the gleaming white teethed, perfect skin, perfect haired actors which are used. It's so annoying seeing a film apparently set in the 40s where everyone has perfectly gleaming teeth and perfect bodies.
 
You make a great point, but surely Avatar's limitation is the silicon used to process the instructions fed into it not one man's boundless imagination, which in my opinion is not that unique. Someone will come along and better it no doubt. All they have to do is wait for the technology or better still develop it. Will this necessarily make for a better film though especially if its more rounded plot wise or dialogue wise for example? A very interesting point. Can filmmakers get away with making extraordinarily spectacular visuals at the expense of other factors?
 
I thought Hero was as visually stunning as Avatar.
Also, the use of colour in House of Flying Daggers was spectacular, not cartoonish, like Avatar.
 
I agree. Avatar is actually a poor example for people to use when complaining about the overuse of special effects. The fact is that, without them, it simply could not have been made. What I think Spielberg was referring to was the use of special effects for the sake of it or using them to salvage what is really a poor film. Roland Emmerich's disaster movies are prime examples in my view. I don't think Avatar is a bad film, it just isn't a great one. I have a similar opinion of Jurassic Park, another film which majored on its special effects.
 
Maybe it's my age, but I'm not interested in any film if its main defining characteristic is the visuals. Once I've suffered epilepsy after the flashing CGI, I get bored.

On another note, I did quite like Indy IV. I know I'm in the minority here, but I thought it held up really well against the other Raiders sequels. But that's another thread...
 
The Toy Story films are a classic example of what can be added to a film. At their core the toy Story films are a good 'Story' that they are made with CGI is in many ways irrelevent - you could have made them with cell-animation but the CGI adRAB to them, bringing you more into a story.

The same is true of all of Pixars films which is why they have an unparalled success rate - it starts with a story.
 
I hate when a film uses CGI to the extent where you know what you are watching is computer generated - for example, in Prince of Persia there is a part int he film where Jake Gyllenhaal's character swings through the city from roof to roof, it is clear that it is computer generated and the glance you get at 'his' (a computer generated) face spoils it for me entirely! I would much rather they did a less spectacular jump using a human being!!

Jaws is a class film, and i love that the shark is tangible, it is really touching the actors, a head really does pop out of the water when Chief Brody declares ' i think we need a bigger boat'. It scared me silly, more than any of the CGI sharks did in 'Deep Blue Sea'. It just spoils it for me, i can use my imagination so much more when i'm not met with digital images that i know someone has sat for hours creating on a computer screen !!
 
I would have love to have seen the Star Wars prequels with absolutely no involvement by Lucas:mad:.

Still one day, when they do make 6-9 (which I am certain that they will), Lucas will be far too old to interfere.

As for good old Steve, Jurrasic Park 1 and 2, the remake of War of the WorlRAB (the 1950s version is way better) and Indy 4 (which was a travesty on the scale of Phamtom and Clones), where hardly driven by plot now where they?
 
How would Avatar work without the CGI? It wouldn't. Costumes wouldn't work for what was needed to be achieved. The imagery was part of the story. The story was not as unique as people like to believe, but it works well because it creates some kind of emotional responce.

It's the more realistic films where GCI is overused. The ones set in "the real world" where you get over exaggerated scenery. Like someone said, fantasy films often require CGI because they would look a bit dated without it; imagine Lord of the Rings using 80s style effects?

Too many films rely on special effects and visuals such as OTT car chases and unrealistic fight sequences that they can slot into a trailer. Of course, the film industry is a big business and it's as much about the marketing as it is the actual product. I just wish the mainstream film industry would go somewhere. I'm not going to say I'm never impressed because there's a lot of films I like, but I've seen more misses than hits in recent years in the cinema and the majority of them have been heavily helped with too much CGI.
 
The simple rule is this... if the story came first and requires heavy use of CGI to make it filmable then the chances are it will be a good film. LotR is a prime example. If the technology came first and resulted in a story being woven around it then while it may be spectacular and enjoyable I don't think it will ever a really good film. 2012 is one example and there have been plenty over the years - Independence Day, Deep Impact, Armagedon, The Day After Tomorrow to name just a few. I'd also describe Avatar in that way. From what I understand of the genesis of the film Cameron set out to make Avatar with CGI characters from the start. He wrote his initial treatment of the film with that in mind back in the mid 90's but decided that the technology was not ready to make it believable enough. The point here is that there is nothing in Avatar that couldn't have been done in another way. The main characters did not need to be CGI, it's just how Cameron envisaged it. Nothing wrong with that but it is certainly a case of the technology driving the story not the other way round.
 
Not wanting to derail this thread with the usual SW debate but I simply don't understand this argument. SW only exists because of GL. There would not have been any prequels without his 'involvement' and there will never be any more true SW films i.e. the fabled Eps 7-9. Apart from the fact they do not and have never existed, if GL isn't around they can't be made because he is SW.

In terms of the CGI element I wholely agree that GL over-used it from day 1 on the prequels. GL has always used the SW films as a way to inovate the film making process. His policy of minimising practical effects and sets and using CGI as much as possible may have driven the technology forward and you can trace back the evolution of CGI characters like those in Avatar & LotR to Jar-Jar but there is no doubt the technology reduced the artistic merit of the films and the actors ability to perform.



I can't agree with you on JP I'm afraid. That was always driven by an excellent story based on an excellent book and the use of CGI was an accident of timing. JP was well into production using stop-motion and animatronics for the dinosaurs and CGI was only used to replace the stop-motion when ILM showed SS where the technology had got to. Had the technology not been available the film would still have been made and would still have been excellent.
 
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