You were right, it featured some of the best CGI I have seen, but ironically some of the worst too. It is often the same. They combine clever stunt work, physical special effects (such as wired cars being launched through the air and stuff) and explosions with CGI elements to create the otherwise impossible, but when it comes to animating human beings it looked awful. The gravity and movement was all wrong. At times it just looked lazy, like the animators just had to get it done.
It was still pretty cool though. The car chase sequence at the beginning was awesome!
Were you being sarcastic? I just watched it, and thought it was uniformly awful and unconvincing. To me, it's a perfect example of what's wrong with a lot of action sequences in movies these days - it's kind of amusingly ludicrous, but it's so over the top that it's not exciting or exhilarating in the way that a well edited, practical effects action sequence is (e.g. anything in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Mad Max 2)
Were you being sarcastic? I just watched it, and thought it was uniformly awful and unconvincing. To me, it's a perfect example of what's wrong with a lot of action sequences in movies these days - it's kind of amusingly ludicrous, but it's so over the top that it's not exciting or exhilarating in the way that a well edited, practical effects action sequence is (e.g. anything in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Mad Max 2)
Hmm, the well edited, practical effects action sequences in Raiders of The Lost Ark may well have been down to traditional effects limitations rather than Steven Spielberg's intentions, he did make Kingdom of The Crystal Skull after all... I'm thankful he didn't get his hands on the CGI toolbox earlier in his career.
Hmm, the well edited, practical effects action sequences in Raiders of The Lost Ark may well have been down to traditional effects limitations rather than Steven Spielberg's intentions, he did make Kingdom of The Crystal Skull after all... I'm thankful he didn't get his hands on the CGI toolbox earlier in his career.
My understanding is that there was always a very deliberate and conscious effort to do things "old school" and use traditional methods and practical stunts as much as possible in the Raiders series, in order to retain a feel of the adventure serials the films were inspired by. Something that Spielberg insisted was going to be maintained in making Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but appeared to have been completely ignored when actually doing it.
I was thankful that there were so many physical elements in that movie (at least at the beggining of it), but it does seem to have been influenced by the idea that 'the more flashy the better'.
I was a bit dissapointed by that film in honesty. It was ok, and I was hoping for great.
To illustrate what bothers me I will use the Star Wars series. I'll admit that I am not a huge fan, I just like the films, but I always enjoyed watching the original three movies when I was a boy and even when I found out how the 'magic' was done, with models of x-wings and the Death Star and so on, I was all the more amazed because they were real and physical. This was especially so with the sets and the some of the models/puppets and make up. The last of the Star Wars films, Revenge o' the Sith, was the epitome of the the issue. there were hardly any sets and loads of the characters were not there. Everyhthing looked artificial and clean. Not in the spirit of what made Star Wars so interesting in the first place.
I think it's a over-reliance on CG to "fix" things, or an overestimation of what it can convincingly achieve, that is the downfall of some directors.
For me, the T-Rex attack in the first Jurassic Park is probably still the best example of how to combine CG and puppetry. Considering it was the first movie to really use CG characters in an extensive way, it's still a million times better than almost anything being done today.
Why? I reckon it's because a good director knows how to cut around, and shoot around, things that don't quite convince to minimise the screen time of potentially dodgy effects. It's something that Speilberg has constantly done (the shark in Jaws being a good illustration).
Something I like to point out to people is how little the CG T-Rex actually does appear in the attack scene. Other than a couple of "money shots", it's mainly short cuts of parts the animatronic dinosaur, the effects of the T-Rex on its surroundings, and reaction shots of the cast. In fact, for the end portion of the scene, from when Sam Neill and Ariana Richards go over the ledge on the wires, we don't see it at all (we just hear it, and see the jeep being pushed). Watch it and see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcfTvpqaoXE
For me, the T-Rex attack in the first Jurassic Park is probably still the best example of how to combine CG and puppetry. Considering it was the first movie to really use CG characters in an extensive way, it's still a million times better than almost anything being done today.
Jurassic Park was also directed by Steven Speilberg, going for CGI at that point was an ambitious move in fact the key dinosaur scenes were originally planned to be animated through stop motion technique. I think it's a combination of innovation plus expert use of traditional methods that makes Jurassic Park such a great film while an over-reliance on CGI later on makes The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull such a let down.
For me, the T-Rex attack in the first Jurassic Park is probably still the best example of how to combine CG and puppetry. Considering it was the first movie to really use CG characters in an extensive way, it's still a million times better than almost anything being done today.
If I could have put in a nutshell, it would have been this quote....
I don't trust this Em... fellow... he reads minds!
Chantika:
