Why Modern Movies Suck - CGI Overload

[ClockworkOcean]

The Drinker on modern Hollywood's overreliance on GCI

[burrunjor]

Well I know what he means to some extent. Been rediscovering my love for Bruce Lee recently and his fights are still better than the majority of fights in movies today because there is actual technique and skill involved. Okay obvs a lot of it is OTT, like the nunchucks, but still at the end of the day it is all real. IE nobody flying 10000 feet through the air with a single punch, or wires being used to make people fly etc. It's genuine kicks, punches and flips.

I'm not saying that CGI is worthless of course. I think that there needs to be more of a mixture of different styles. For instance I'd love to see mainstream movies rely on stop motion again. Sometimes stop motion is better for fantasy, as it has a more surrealist look. However CGI should still be used for what it's good for, IE realistic monsters like the ones in JP, planets etc.

We just shouldn't rely on it too much.

[iank]

He's not wrong. So many movies look so fake now that it's actually disengenous to call them liveaction anymore. Most of them are cartoons.

[Deleted]

He's right although I still can't stand him.

[ClockworkOcean]

Jun 5, 2022 16:38:12 GMT burrunjor said:

Well I know what he means to some extent. Been rediscovering my love for Bruce Lee recently and his fights are still better than the majority of fights in movies today because there is actual technique and skill involved. Okay obvs a lot of it is OTT, like the nunchucks, but still at the end of the day it is all real. IE nobody flying 10000 feet through the air with a single punch, or wires being used to make people fly etc. It's genuine kicks, punches and flips.

I'm not saying that CGI is worthless of course. I think that there needs to be more of a mixture of different styles. For instance I'd love to see mainstream movies rely on stop motion again. Sometimes stop motion is better for fantasy, as it has a more surrealist look. However CGI should still be used for what it's good for, IE realistic monsters like the ones in JP, planets etc.

We just shouldn't rely on it too much.

Of course, CGI definitely has its place. Particularly in sci-fi and fantasy, it has opened up on-screen storytelling possibilities that were off-limits prior to the mid-90s. The trouble - as with all of the incredible technology we now have at our disposal - is that it also enables laziness. As a general rule, I'd say that if you can feasibly do something with practical effects, you should, and reserve CGI for situations where it's absolutely necessary, a supplement to what is still fundamentally live-action filmmaking.

Even when it comes to monsters, I would argue that CGI is overused. A pitfall animators frequently fall into is having every single muscle in a creature's body move to a gratuitous and unnatural extent, perhaps as an overcorrection to the sometimes excessively rigid low-budget practical monsters of the 20th century. At their best, I often find that puppets and rubber suits achieve a much more realistic degree of motion closer to that of actual human and animal bodies, one obvious example being the puppetry of the original Star Wars trilogy vs. the cartoonish CGI of the prequels. Consider also the Zygons of 1975 vs. the ones from the Moffat era.

[Bernard Marx]

Jun 6, 2022 9:28:09 GMT ClockworkOcean said:

Jun 5, 2022 16:38:12 GMT burrunjor said:

Well I know what he means to some extent. Been rediscovering my love for Bruce Lee recently and his fights are still better than the majority of fights in movies today because there is actual technique and skill involved. Okay obvs a lot of it is OTT, like the nunchucks, but still at the end of the day it is all real. IE nobody flying 10000 feet through the air with a single punch, or wires being used to make people fly etc. It's genuine kicks, punches and flips.

I'm not saying that CGI is worthless of course. I think that there needs to be more of a mixture of different styles. For instance I'd love to see mainstream movies rely on stop motion again. Sometimes stop motion is better for fantasy, as it has a more surrealist look. However CGI should still be used for what it's good for, IE realistic monsters like the ones in JP, planets etc.

We just shouldn't rely on it too much.

Of course, CGI definitely has its place. Particularly in sci-fi and fantasy, it has opened up on-screen storytelling possibilities that were off-limits prior to the mid-90s. The trouble - as with all of the incredible technology we now have at our disposal - is that it also enables laziness. As a general rule, I'd say that if you can feasibly do something with practical effects, you should, and reserve CGI for situations where it's absolutely necessary, a supplement to what is still fundamentally live-action filmmaking.

Even when it comes to monsters, I would argue that CGI is overused. A pitfall animators frequently fall into is having every single muscle in a creature's body move to a gratuitous and unnatural extent, perhaps as an overcorrection to the sometimes excessively rigid low-budget practical monsters of the 20th century. At their best, I often find that puppets and rubber suits achieve a much more realistic degree of motion closer to that of actual human and animal bodies, one obvious example being the puppetry of the original Star Wars trilogy vs. the cartoonish CGI of the prequels. Consider also the Zygons of 1975 vs. the ones from the Moffat era.

On a practical level, I completely agree. Although I'd also say that another issue with CGI is that it completely dilutes the filmmaking process itself. The reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe is derided by some as mere "consumer content" as opposed to cinema is because little auteur or cinematic ingenuity goes into it, replaced instead by a series of artificial sequences dictated by the whims of computers. CGI, at its extreme, results in what can only be described as "cinema made by committee". 

It loses authenticity, which means that audience-induced catharsis (or the deliberate lack thereof) and active spectatorship is massively reduced. Regarding your point about laziness: Little time or energy is put into the mise en-scené, the editing, diegetic and non-diegetic sound, etc, because the overabundance of green-screen deems these considerations irrelevant.

The MCU are helmed by many different filmmakers, and yet with a few exceptions, you could barely tell any of the films apart stylistically. Cinematic and auditory language therefore becomes arbitrary, replaced by the same old bollocks repeated ad nauseam. It makes the cinematic experience mundane, and lacking in anything unique. 

I probably ought to take this advice myself when writing, but sometimes, you can accomplish and say far more with less. If you delve too deeply into CGI-laden spectacle at the expense of substance, not only do you become ever more mundane, but you end up saying nothing. The best filmmakers who delve into spectacle are those who amalgamate minimalism with great scale, with their filmography only declining in quality when completely sacrificing the former for the latter, as with David Lean (Ryan's Daughter), Peter Jackson (The Hobbit Trilogy), and arguably Christopher Nolan (Tenet).

A scene as simple as this, with mere cross-cutting, archive footage, little dialogue, and a series of deliberate tracking shots, is infinitely more powerful and investing than anything you will see in a Marvel film (excluding the excellent, and comparatively minimalist, Logan), for all their spectacle, celebrity star-power and quips:



And for an example of contemporary spectacle laden cinema done with pathos, and with little obvious CGI, here's a good one, from Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006):

[Bernard Marx]

Speaking of CGI overload, is it me, or does the Queen look visibly less convincing in this than Paddington?

She looks dodgier than the CGI models of deceased or aged actors in the recent Star Wars outings.

[UncleDeadly]

Jun 6, 2022 15:13:38 GMT Bernard Marx said:

Speaking of CGI overload, is it me, or does the Queen look visibly less convincing in this than Paddington?

She looks dodgier than the CGI models of deceased or aged actors in the recent Star Wars outings.

Why is it that i can't look at this without thinking of the old PG ads..?

[burrunjor]

Jun 6, 2022 9:28:09 GMT ClockworkOcean said:

Jun 5, 2022 16:38:12 GMT burrunjor said:

Well I know what he means to some extent. Been rediscovering my love for Bruce Lee recently and his fights are still better than the majority of fights in movies today because there is actual technique and skill involved. Okay obvs a lot of it is OTT, like the nunchucks, but still at the end of the day it is all real. IE nobody flying 10000 feet through the air with a single punch, or wires being used to make people fly etc. It's genuine kicks, punches and flips.

I'm not saying that CGI is worthless of course. I think that there needs to be more of a mixture of different styles. For instance I'd love to see mainstream movies rely on stop motion again. Sometimes stop motion is better for fantasy, as it has a more surrealist look. However CGI should still be used for what it's good for, IE realistic monsters like the ones in JP, planets etc.

We just shouldn't rely on it too much.

Of course, CGI definitely has its place. Particularly in sci-fi and fantasy, it has opened up on-screen storytelling possibilities that were off-limits prior to the mid-90s. The trouble - as with all of the incredible technology we now have at our disposal - is that it also enables laziness. As a general rule, I'd say that if you can feasibly do something with practical effects, you should, and reserve CGI for situations where it's absolutely necessary, a supplement to what is still fundamentally live-action filmmaking.

Even when it comes to monsters, I would argue that CGI is overused. A pitfall animators frequently fall into is having every single muscle in a creature's body move to a gratuitous and unnatural extent, perhaps as an overcorrection to the sometimes excessively rigid low-budget practical monsters of the 20th century. At their best, I often find that puppets and rubber suits achieve a much more realistic degree of motion closer to that of actual human and animal bodies, one obvious example being the puppetry of the original Star Wars trilogy vs. the cartoonish CGI of the prequels. Consider also the Zygons of 1975 vs. the ones from the Moffat era.

Well I agree to some extent re monsters. A reason I love 80s fantasy flicks is that they often featured practical effects and stunning make up like say the Thing. Imagine how much more bland that would be if it was just all CGI?

However I meant that some monsters do work better in CGI. Jurassic Park for instance. The Dinosaurs in that need to look like living, breathing animals, and even the best stop motion in the world couldn't achieve that effect. Neither could the best animatronics where they would still look stiff, apart from in close ups. 

However like I said the 7th Voyage of Sinbad suits stop motion as it has fairy tale creatures, who if made to look too realistic, might end up looking stupid because no creature actually looks like that. Harryhausens effects however work because the creatures do look animated, but the effect gives them a somewhat surrealist look which makes them look like more like creatures from a painting come to life. 

At the same time, guys in suits can be better for something. Like True Who. When it works it's better as not only is there something there, allowing the director to get a good idea of how to make it look imposing and atmospheric (like shooting the Dalek from below.) But an actor can also act in the role like Kevin Lindsay as Linx, and Michael Wisher as Davros. Hell even David Banks as the Cyberman. 

Even for things like Godzilla, sometimes the suits actually work better as the actors inside can give the monsters more personality and make them more anthropomorphic in how they fight than a CGI effect ever could. 

Again different effects for different films. 

[burrunjor]

Speaking of Bruce Lee an example of one of his films undoubtedly being improved with CGI is Game of Death. His last film in 1978. Now Bruce only shot a few fight scenes before he died. Naturally Hollywood wanted to cash in on his death and the Kung Fu craze, so they tried to build a whole movie around  a few fight scenes with doubles and stock footage of old movies and it was laughable, even by the standards of the time.

At one point they actually have a guy with a cardboard cut out mask of Bruce over his face. Not joking.




       

Also it doesn't help that the double they hire A/ looks nothing like Bruce, B/ they constantly film his face C/ the backgrounds, film grain and Bruce's hair cut from the stock footage of his old movies they use doesn't match at all. 

This fight is another infamous example. It's actually a pretty decent fight scene in terms of how its staged, but again the way it's cut and the close up shots of the double's face are laughable. I think there might have been some racism here in that "Chinese people all look alike." How else do you explain a close up of a double's face, only to then cut to a close up of the real Bruce?




I love the way you can see its outside when they cut to the shot of the real Bruce, despite them fighting indoors LOL. 

Needless to say the Peter Cushing from the latest Star Wars film was much better done than this.


As was the Crow. In fact I think the Crow, where tragically Bruce's son similarly died during production and they had to use a double shows how much of a leap CGI was. I honestly can't tell which scenes are not the real Brandon Lee and it was less than twenty years after Game of Death. 

Of course CGI like this does raise the question of whether or not it is right to use a deceased actors image. I think for Game of Death it would have been okay as you were finishing something Bruce Lee wanted to see finished, but the Cushing in the latest Star Wars film was just exploiting a dead man's memory. 

[Deleted]

What Can I say others have not?

CGI is a tool, but has sadly become a crouch for many film makers. A a lover of monster movies CGI has pretty much ruined the B-movie scene, and allowed truly awful, zero effort films to take over the genre.

It's part of the reason I love Ultraman, as the franchise remains true the style of kaiju movies, in that its all guys in rubber suits, but they use cgi and computer effects to better enhance the show.