Jack Briggs
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jun 3, 1999
- Messages
- 16,805
I must admit that the "loyal opposition" are making some truly good points here. Noted. Now, let me think for a while about how best to respond to them!
I still think those effects are pretty good (and certainly look better than the scenes of Spider-Man jumping from building to building), but today, they'd be fantastic.
Are you suggesting that they shoul've not used CGI for Spidey's action sequences? If so, could you tell me how they could do that and have it remain true to the comic book character. Superman doesn't have to do anything nearly as complex as Spidey does.
Some of the jumping CGI shots of Spider-Man were pretty bad.
Agreed! But Sidey's scenes were far more complex than CTHD's wire-fu scenes. It might have worked in a few instances.
I think Luc makes a good point. We know so much more about the CGI progress than we used to. You rarely heard this argument when we were blind to how they were created. It was a sense of wonder and awe. Now that has gone away with people learning how they were made. And Hollywood is partially responsible. They've taught us how these effects were created. I'm beginning to believe they would have been better off to keep it a secret.
isn't quite as disposable - its leads at least had some small amount of charisma - but we're not exactly talking great art here, either."
See I grew up with that film - to me Jason and the Argonauts was and still is a classic. I knew what and what wasn't effects - but the charm, the adventure, the story came through and negated the limitations of the technology of the time.
And, if you look at my ratings and comments in the "Brattle Envy" section of my 2002 film list entry, you'll see that I actually rather liked Sinbad. It's an example of a good popcorn movie. Jason And The Argonauts was just bad; it suffers from all the things we criticize something like The Mummy Returns for: Cardboard characters played by charisma-free actors, stilted dialogue, a plot that exists for the sole purpose of connect FX scenes; its effects are just physical rather than digital.
But, see, you "grew up" with that movie. And, as I've said before, I don't really buy into the whole "special effects should ONLY support the story, not vice-versa" theory; if a movie is impressive for its FX, it's still impressive. I'm just saying that "it's more than just its effects" isn't really an argument you can use for that particular movie.