Ever wonder what audiences of yesteryear would think of todays VFX's? (1 Viewer)

[Inspector Hammer!]

This is more for fun than anything else, but sometimes I just look at visual effects today and think to myslef "I wonder how audiences in the 30's, 40's and 50's would react to todays effects?"

I can just imagine reactions if you showed Jurassic Park in a theater in those era's, people would probably either keel over from fright or go running out of the theater Blob style.

I can see it now, news papers would be running headlines that real Dinosaurs exist somewhere and this Speilberg fellow found them and made a movie with them LOL.

My favorite scenario to imagine is taking Titanic back in time to, say, 1913 and showing it to an audience and maybe even some willing survivors of the disaster...on second thought, maybe not them.

This threads just for shites and giggles.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I don't know about showing them a modern movie, but I have thought how great it would be to be able to go back in time with this technology in tow and introduce it by releasing "revolutionary" new movies. Picture the pod race exactly as it appears in TPM in a Buck Rogers serial. Or, hell, the ultimate fantasy: Star Wars introduced in the '30s! Same great story, same great technology, but with '30s actors! That reminds me of the Far Side where the time traveller drops a Coke bottle millions of years in the past and says something like, "Let them figure that one out!" How different would cinema be today if the motion control camera and other '70s breakthroughs were introduced fourty years earlier?

 

[Shawn_KE]

Or how shocked some would be at some of the movie. Say Devils Rejects, show that to a 1930's crowd.

 

[StephenA]

I think it'd be even more fun to show people back in the early 1900s movies of today, especially since they didn't have movies with around back then.

 

[Leo Kerr]

I've a friend who'd rather drop Top Gun into, say, the 30's.

Maybe even the mid to late 40's.

Why? Because in some of the scenes, as the airplanes are doing steep maneuvers, you see 'instant-cloud' forming on the top side of the wings.

It's likely scientists would say, "that's impossible. In order for that to happen, you'd need to have..." all sorts of parameters that would be impossible for all known flight at the time (speed, air dynamics, et cetera, yielding flight dynamics that would rip even the best 'modern' airplane to shreds instantly.)

Yet it isn't even a special effect!

Leo

 

[Stephen Orr]

If you know your film history, there were folks who thought the dinos were real in the original "Lost World", animated by Willis Obrien.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Nah, they'd just complain that Spielberg's War Of The Worlds wasn't a 100% faithful adaption of the original radio broadcast, which would probably result in some new form of Hollywood blacklisting, and then you'd ruin the future for everyone!

But yeah, the dinosaurs would probably cause a few heart attacks.

 

[nickGreenwood]

Maybe if they had the technology, Tolkien would've more than approved of the LotR films.
Maybe some of the high def cameras Lucas and Rodriguez are using now. Heck I want one of those, but I don't a hundred grand to spend...

Actually, show them Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and see what they think.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Interesting topic... the line between what's real and what's fake on-screen has become pretty blurred. In fact, I don't find myself asking "how'd they do that" anymore and just write things off as CGI.. which, I must admit has taken some of the magic out of movie watching for me.

There's something to be said for watching a stuntperson risk their life being thrown through the air for a 3 second scene. There's a level of excitement there. Now wires are CGI'ed over and actual actors can fly through the air with little or no danger.

I'm not saying I don't like CGI effects.. I'm just saying, I don't find special effects that "special" anymore.

As for what people from the past would think... they'd freak... until they knew how it was done.

 

[Brent Hutto]

Here's a hint. If you see it in a movie, it's fake. The rest is just technique and willing suspension of belief.
To me that's the amazing thing about a good movie. Someone had to make it all up.

Someone asked John Irving in an interview about what person that he knew in real life was the basis for such-and-such a character in one of his novels. He told the interviewer in no uncertain terms that it was all made up and that it's an insult to assume he's just using a real person with the serial numbers filed off instead of doing the hard work of creating a believable and interesting character.

 

[Citizen87645]

I seem to recall an early film anecdote about people fleeing from their seats when they were shown a film of a train coming head-on. I think films like JP would elicit the same reaction.

I imagine most people would consider our modern films "obscene" and not just for sexual content. I think the sensory overload would be deemed offensive.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Film critics would be horrified that we've stripped the underlaying homosexual content from our Roman/gladiator films.

 

[Kevin Lamb]

Heh, I've sometimes wondered just what the reactions to modern movie *make-up* would be in either previous decades or primitive cultures of today.

Imagine how early American colonists would react to a guy running around in a Stan Winston werewolf costume, or how the African bushmen of today would react to a guy in a full blown Predator costume.

Okay, I know the answer, the actors in the suits would be killed by a terrified mob (or simply a well placed bullet or spear) but I'm sure the initial reactions would be absolutely priceless.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I tell you this, I would pay real money to see a crowd run out of the theater to escape Spielberg's T-Rex and I would laugh my freakin' ass off while I did it!

Kevin,
that scenario would probably create a couple of doozy urban legends LOL.

 

[todd s]

All of this would be cool. The closest you can get is by watching "Final Countdown". The scene where the F-14's engage the Japanese Zeros. The look of the Japanese pilots is priceless.

 

[Nick Martin]

This kind of reminds me of that scene in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me", where Dr. Evil played a clip of the White House destruction from "ID4" and it freaked the 1960's President out.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I think there is a lot of truth to that. In fact the sex wouldn't be nearly as bad. Nudity was around to some extent and certainly the implication of strong sexual situations, as well as violence, were quite common among pre-Code films.

King Kong has an ape pawing over Fay Wray even, not too much subtlety there.

But in terms of visual power the films of today might seem overly intense on all aspects.

 

[Robert Anthony]

showing an audience of 1920's filmgoers something like Jurassic Park, or even Star Wars, would induce puking, and maybe even rioting. I'm guessing a theater or two would be burnt down.

I'm not exaggerating.

And God Forbid you show them something like Terminator 2. And something like "What Dreams May Come" would inspire entirely new religions.

 

[Ricardo C]

I wonder how they would react to Debbie Does Dallas

 

[Colton]

The Exorcist (Director's Cut)



- Colton