A Terrible Movie Summer: Are the SFX people running the asylum? (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Hewell]

It is for me. There are plenty of movies with great fx (Van Helsing, The Mummy...) that I don't like because the story sucks.

 

[Andre Bijelic]

"Van Helsing" had good effects? I thought it had some of the worst, most painfully obvious CGI I've ever seen in a major motion picture. Hell, "Shrek 2" looked more realistic.

 

[Andre Bijelic]

This isn't entirely true, either. While writers are utterly powerless, directors are increasingly at the mercy of studio execs, the marketing department and test audiences. The only reason that directors aren't replaced as casually as writers is that it's too expensive to do extensive reshoots.

The unfortunate reality is that a group of braindead teenagers at a mall test-screening may have more influence over a film's storyline (especially the ending) than either the writer or director.

Check out the special features on the "Final Destination" DVD. There's an interesting - and terrifying - segment on test screenings and the influence that test audiences have.

 

[Jason Seaver]

That's too bad. Do you have trouble enjoying a song whose narrative is weak? Certainly, film is a storytelling medium, but it's also a visual one, and I don't necessarily think it's healthy for one of those aspects to be valued too much over the other.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Remember long, long ago when the marketing approach to Hollywood's "product" was so different? I mean the era before what has come to be known as the "typical summer movie" even existed? Films were made by directors who wanted to make films -- and sometimes by directors with a more commercial aim.

At any rate, one could at that time count on intelligent Hollywood-made fare to be the general norm. Can you imagine a major Hollywood studio releasing, say, Rachel Rachel today? Or The Verdict?

Now, movies are made to spec. If it's summer, then it's gotta be all SFX all the time.

Oh well. Whatever.

 

[JohnRice]

Move further along your trip down amnesia lane, and you reach the halcion days where virtually every actor's and director's ass was completely owned by a studio. The studio said
jump" and they jumped until they jumped high enough. Yeah, that was a time of free creativity.

Now is my time to defend the creativity in film. Not all movies are Hollywood, and the typical summer crap is certainly not the norm. I've been noticing that many of my favorite films each year are multinational and seem to be quite unrestricted. These films are sometimes Spanish and Canadian financed with a mostly Spanish creative crew, shot in Canada with mostly American actors. Or a movie with mostly German creative crew, Polish writers, Italian, American and Australian actors, shot in Italy with German, British and American funding. These are both real examples of 2 of my favorite films of the last 2 years. The good stuff gets done, and probably far more frequently than at any time in the past.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Isn't that really just one brief ten-year period in the 100-year history of cinema? Not to say that it wasn't a good aberration, but the formulaic movie is hardly a new invention.

 

[Mark Kalzer]

Indeed. People who harken for a return to the 'good ol' days' seem to be ignorant of the fact that there were as many trashy flicks today as there were in the 'good ol' days'. It's just that no one remembers the trash and preserves them to be showcased in film school.

One promising fact is that it is now cheaper today to make a movie then ever before in history. Now that MiniDV cameras are cheaper then ever before there is much more opportunity for amateurs wannabes (like me) to get started. Yes, the hollywood machine is chunking out huge waves of SFX with dull storylines, and that will not change. However if one looks beyond that system there is quite a lot of good stuff! Just need to look harder.

Sad fact is that the media will always obsess over the hollywood machine. (Why oh why does Julia Roberts getting pregnant have to be headline news, in CANADA? Why do they insist that we should care?) Commercially run and owned movie theatres will continue to be filled with only the hollywood fare, (even in Canada, sadly enough considering some of the great stuff we can do domestically but is rarely seen) and the independent gems will always get less attention.

Hands up who here has seen The Station Agent!

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

The tried and true Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films Thread will always be here to engage the mind.

~Edwin

 

[JohnRice]

Exactly.

 

[Jeannette Walsh]

2004 summer movies I might go to see at the cinema

Aliens VS Predator
Chronicles Of Riddick
I, Robot
The Village
Sky Captain

2004 summer movies I will get on DVD release

The Terminal
Spiderman 2
King Arthur
The Bourne Supremecy
Catwoman
The Manchurian Candidate
Thunderbirds
Collateral
Exorcist: The Beginning
Open Water
The Clearing

summer 2004 looks pretty good to me.

 

[Keith Paynter]

Just watched "Speed" for the first time in a long while, and was thinking about the glut of bad CGI movies. Even 'blockbusters' like Spiderman are not even worth my time. The 'Ooh, Ahh' factor of fims like Speed, Die Hard, and even Robocop, etc. put overblown CGI films to shame.

Movie magic like that is best in the hands of superb stunt units, not greenscreened actors landing on airbags. Even some of the most mundane footage like greenscreened automotive dialogue is faked, not unlike rear projection backdrops fifty years ago (probably for insurance purposes).

How much of any Hollywood movie these days is shot for real? :rolleyes

 

[Robert Anthony]

CGI is starting to become a tired, played out scapegoat.

The same complaints were leveled against mattes and puppets and stop motion back when they were growing, too.

The problem with CGI is that sometimes you get pedestrian, unimaginative directors holding the pen. And you have a short window of time, and a locked in release date.

It depends on who's using the tool and whether they know how to use it correctly. Some don't. Some do. But CGI is no different from mattes, rear projection, puppets and stop-motion. Their effectiveness depends on the writer, director, composer and cinematographer's efforts in immersing you so deeply in the story they're trying to tell that the suspension of disbelief stays. Because "shot for real" doesn't apply in film--it's ALL faked. Some of the most convincing special effects I've ever seen involves an actor crying on cue. that's not real--that's faked emotion. And a bus making a jump off a freeway is a preposterous notion. But just as the actor can make you believe they're really hurting, the FX units and the director can make you believe a bus cleared a 40 foot section of onramp, or a dinosaur ran through San Diego.

And even if they DO do that--consciously playing "Spot the CGI and sigh" isn't going to help you out any.

The problem isn't with overuse of CGI. The problem is with the lack of imagination and lazy producers/directors pushing FX houses to pick up the slack for their derivative tastes.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

New Zealand summer?

 

[WayneG]

The difference today is that there is a major effects-laden release every weekend - during the summer and Christmas seasons and even in the off-season somewhat. Back in "the day" we'd get The Empire Strikes Back and maybe one other film that would qualify as a big budget extravaganza. Now they're a dime a dozen. Each studio has to try for the home run each period and the expensive theatres and their bubbling popcorn machines need patrons. Studios know they have one big weekend to make the movie a success. It's hard to show plot and story in TV commercials - but tornados, aliens, and explosions look really enticing.

Try looking around the net for sites by writers who describe the changes their scripts go through from the time they are submitted to the studio to the time they make it to screen. It's amazing. (sorry but I can't remember any of the URLs).

 

[Holadem]

It pains me that many of the more knowledgeable posters on this forum just can't seem to get this into their heads, to the point where they loath the thing even when is IS used in service of the story (ROTK review in Software Forum).

--
H

 

[Michael Reuben]

Yeah, and two of those directors were Lucas and Spielberg, who virtually invented the modern blockbuster. Any impartial viewer of the documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls has to conclude that the brief, overly romanticized period when the director was king carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. And it produced its fair share of turkeys as well as masterpieces. It's hardly something to look back on with nostalgia.

Besides -- and I say this every year, because there's always a thread like this one -- there are plenty of good movies being released, if one bothers to look for them. If viewers are so lazy as to limit themselves to what's most heavily promoted by Hollywood, they deserve what they get.

M.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Word. I don't expect everyone to have the movie release schedule in their Favorites list or to spend a lot of time researching what's coming out when, but how hard is it to spend a little time looking beyond the obvious? You can't expect something great to just fall into your lap.

 

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

Pining away for the days of classics like SPEED. Yes, folks, western civilization officially just ended.



-Dennis

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Jack, I love the Verdict, one of my favorites, and no I don't see that type of film being made again sadly.