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Being old-enough to remember the live-action SpiderMan, and The Hulk TV shows; I was happy to see SUPERheros in multiple forms and mediums. One could argue tha

Being old-enough to remember the live-action SpiderMan, and The Hulk TV shows; I was happy to see SUPERheros in multiple forms and mediums. One could argue that CGI is finally good enough to match with the imagination of the directors. And that's a very good thing. I do however wish that other things were being produced. Heavy Sequel'ization of movies just leaves me bored. The same can be said of the Star Trek franchises, and quite frankly anything more then "2" has grown tiring. Game of Thrones* has shown hollywood that there is an appetite for epic storytelling, and that people are willing to sit through 7 season of shows to be entertained by an engaging story. (In my heart Babylon5 pioneered grand-story telling.) There are thousands of great books that would do well adapted to TV/Movies, I'd like to see some of these instead of another superhero flick.

ekianjo 5y ago
> One could argue that CGI is finally good enough to match with the imagination of the directors. If anything the abuse of CGI leads to boring fighting scenes where you know everything is 100% fake. I'd rather they use much, much less of it.
- adrianN 5y ago
  That seems perfectly appropriate for superheros where the expectation is that no actor can even come close to what the character can do in-universe.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    I hear ya but I agree with the comment above. I was a comic book kid, and love a lot of these characters. But I find these movies where the climax is just a bunch of cg puppets punching each other boring and formulaic. If I had to pick a "uses superpowers action scene" from any of these movies over the years, it's probably still Magneto escaping the plastic prison. I like that scene because it shows the character isn't just powerful in a brute force way, but can do amazing things given even the slightest opportunity. Obviously they had an incredible actor in Ian MacKellen to sell it, but they also didn't need to turn him into some cg puppet to make a big impact scene. I feel like that more creative and subtle conception is missing from most of the more recent movies.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > But I find these movies where the climax is just a bunch of cg puppets punching each other boring and formulaic. Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade said he liked the first Dr. Strange film because the ending was one in which things weren't resolved where one character punches another in face until submission/death. Dr. Strange negotiates.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
        Yeah, I'd totally agree with that. I liked that movie since Strange's arc was mostly about him conquering his inner turmoil, and because as powerful as Strange is, he has to use his brain to prevail.
  - hawski 5y ago
    Then I think about Tom Cruise's stunts especially in Mission: Impossible series. It got his own brand out of doing things more real. Similarly how Mad Max: Fury Road was received. Most also have very good writing (certainly not M:i-2). It may be not superhuman by Marvel standards, but certainly are by real life standards. At the same time in superhero flicks they are often unable to do things they should be able to do, because they did something like it before. Also most humans, that do not posses super strength in those movies are fighting almost like equals with bunch of baddies. Funny thing about Ethan Hunt from M:i is that his biggest super power is luck, like Rincewind from Discworld.
- josteink 5y ago
  This is what makes some recent movies (like Mad Max Fury Road) so much more intense. The director has intentionally decided to not use CGI for anything which can be done with real vehicles and real actors. And unlike the Marvel superhero snore-fest, it actually looks and feels real, because it is real. And your mind can tell. This makes you actually care. CGI is instead just used for matte painting, to touch up the scenes or scenery, rather than compose core of the shot. And the result looks brilliant. So yeah. Less CGI please and more restraint.
- tssva 5y ago
  It is a movie. It is all 100% fake whether it is CGI or involves real people fake fighting with the use of practical effects.
- deleted 5y ago
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- agumonkey 5y ago
  reminds me of Se7en, IIRC there's one gun shot in the movie, it's so surprising that it shocks way more than constant gun fights in other movies
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- WalterBright 5y ago
  I turned on Terminator Dark Fate today, and was totally bored with it. It was nothing more than hitting things, shooting things, blowing up things, and crashing things, without respite. Should take away the graphics cards from the film crew.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I have a hard time distinguishing if the reason I find almost all new media content boring is because I am getting older and I have already seen a version of it, or if it is objectively overdone.
    - Joeboy 5y ago
      In an odd paradox, it seems to me that some of the best Marvel things are the ones that really lean into older tropes. Eg. Winter Soldier ('70s style conspiracy thriller), Logan (Classic western), Guardians of the Galaxy (jukebox musical).
      - mhh__ 5y ago
        Is that because those tropes are better or because the ones without recognizable tropes are just plain boring?
        Joeboy 5y ago
        I suppose they're tried and tested formulas, that have become sufficiently unfamiliar that they stand out from their contemporaries. In 30 years maybe you could do the same with films about superheroes discovering their true inner strength and having a big CGI fight at the end.
        WalterBright 5y ago
        > having a big CGI fight at the end Before CGI, it was always the "climactic fight in the darkened warehouse" finale. It would go on and on, the machinery would get turned on at some point, the bad guy would have to be killed several times, etc. Oh, for a movie where people don't keep fighting after massive blows to their head, or are little affected by a shot in the shoulder, etc.
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  That's why I really like Bourne movies vs the BS Marvel movies.
- baxuz 5y ago
  And let's not forget the obligatory scenes where you have the protagonist(s) beating up and killing hundreds of generic robot/alien/monster goons. Because you can't have graphic mass murder in a PG13 movie. Hell, the Putty Patrollers had more character than these guys. On a similar note, I recently decided to watch the Hobbit trilogy after rewatching LOTR for the 20th anniversary. Whereas everything had weight and tension in the original (up to a point), in the Hobbit everything is cranked up to 11 and it suffers from the exact same thing. Every scene becomes a zergling rush vs 5 units with cheat mode turn on. There's an actual line in the last movie along the lines of "You go, there's only a 100 goblins, we can easily take them."
  - mnd999 5y ago
    Legolas was a bit imba though.
- firecall 5y ago
  There is no tension! As an example, I remember how good the original Bourne Identity was!
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- hef19898 5y ago
  One of the examples making that point is Star Wars. JJ's CGI heavy films almost killed the franchise, The Mandalorian, focusing on good story telling, using almost no CGI and having exactly the right amount of nostalgic moments (Clone Wars, the old extended universe) saved it. IMHO CGI is simply making film makers lazy, getting "epic" fight scenes is easy now, getting good story telling still is hard.
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    > The Mandalorian ... using almost no CGI Um.... Edit: Just to elaborate, I'll note that when the first JJ film came out a lot of people's take was "thank God it's not an awful VFX fest like the prequels", despite it actually being vastly more VFX heavy. It's funny seeing this repeated.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      The Mandalorian used CGI for sure. Background and a lot of other stuff was screens, as opposed to green screen, so. and it showed, the set was way more realistic than a pure CGI one. also, it had much less boom and bang for the effects only in it.
      - Joeboy 5y ago
        It's basically souped-up rear projection[1], which suits the "classic western" feel of the material really well. I'm not sure it's exactly "more realistic" - maybe we're just less used to seeing that look in 2021. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy68UCbcP3o&t=460s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy68UCbcP3o&t=460s Edit: To be clear this aspect is really about the way the elements are combined, rather than the way they're generated. The way they're generated is with vast amounts of CGI.
      - acomjean 5y ago
        They apparently did a lot of the cgi in real time with an curved led wall and some version of unreal engine. They track the camera position so they can move the image on the screen to match properly and They only render high resolution what’s in the camera viewport and the other stuff just provides some nice realistic ambient light. ILM video: https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-shot-on-a-holodeck-esque-set-with-unreal-engine-video-shows/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-s...
- Joeboy 5y ago
  I simultaneously violently agree and violently disagree. This is kind of my main beef with the Marvel stuff I've seen - they all end with these boring flying, shooting, punching VFX scenes, even if they started more interestingly (eg. WandaVision). But for me that's a writing choice, if they'd written something better we wouldn't have to sit through it, and if it'd been shot without VFX it'd still be boring. Complaining about the "CGI" is complaining about the wrong thing. Nobody complained about the VFX in The Wolf of Wall Street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU
- dragontamer 5y ago
  But most fight scenes were fake, even before CGI. In fact, almost nobody ever gets hurt on set... and when people do get hurt, its in stunts (not the fight scenes). The number of "realistic fight scenes" are incredibly slim. Chinese martial arts are mostly Wuxia: a branch of martial arts that was developed for stage performance (flips, spins, etc. etc.) that has very little practical relevance. "Kung Fu" films (ie: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan) reduce the number of filps... but even then, Jackie Chan's use of hilarious stage props is anything but realistic. I mean: just imagine "Die Hard", no one can sustain that many injuries realistically and keep going. Its fake action, yes with practical effects / non-CGI (blood packs and stunts), but its still fantasy. And "Princess Bride" duel is fully ridiculous: with more flips and gymnastics than actual fighting (arguably the point: it was a comedy film making fun of tropes). Anyone who has actually been in a fighting-sport (themselves mostly "fake", as duels took place centuries ago), will instantly recognize the bad form most of these older fight scenes had. Enemies charge the protagonist one at a time (yes: even in "practical" Kung Fu movies with few special effects) ---------- "Fake" is fine. But there's a lack of progression or understanding going on in a lot of the CGI-fight scenes. They're willing to spend tons of money on big explosions or special effects, but they don't always hit home with me. The famous "Jackie Chan Ladder Fight" is a good example of a ridiculous fight scene, barely plausible. But its highly imaginative and has a great progression and rhythm. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrRFzwPE0d4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrRFzwPE0d4). I'm not here because I want to watch a realistic 4-person Bo-staff fight vs a single dude with a ladder (which would almost certainly result in the ladder-user in getting beaten up). I'm here to watch crazy stunts and imaginative fights. The use of music / rhythm (notice how the fight is on beat to the soundtrack) increases the entertainment value. These little things should be easier in CGI, but somehow aren't being done.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    The best part of Jackie Chan films is the blooper reel at the end where you get to see him handle real injury with grace and humor.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > But most fight scenes were fake, even before CGI. There's fake made with human actors, and there's "f--k it, just cut and paste 1000 zombies or robots in the next scene and make the heroes cut through them like butter" fake. We've broken new ground.
emilsedgh 5y ago
Im not in the film business, but it appears that cgi is a “resolved” problem. Quality storytelling and good screenwriting is not.
- sbacic 5y ago
  This! I am absolutely flabbergasted by the difference in the quality of the visual effects and acting when compared to the dialogue and storytelling. I feel like the script is either intentionally dumbed down or that the script receives a disproportionately small part of the overall budget.
  - watwut 5y ago
    I think the reason is in theory. When you read movie analysis and contemporary writing advice, following them literally leads to those repetitive boring scripts. They are not badly written, then are well written, but in tradition that is fundamentally stiff and don't allow complication.
  - MrScruff 5y ago
    If you are making a product that has an intended market of billions of people, it needs to have incredibly universal appeal. This is in direct opposition with producing a memorable piece of art.
    - sbacic 5y ago
      That doesn't really make sense to me - a market of that size ought to have niches and market segmentation. After all, no matter how generic and broad-appealing the script is, I don't think my 60+ year old mother is going to get excited about the next Marvel movie.
      - MrScruff 5y ago
        Yes but if you're making a movie that costs $200m then it needs to target the average of the planets expectations for a movie to make money. Any divergence from that ends up confusing some of your target audience. Sure this will end up turning off a bunch of people who have tastes that demand something more authentic, but you don't care about that because most peoples tastes are clustered around the mean. Look at pop music for comparison. Or imagine the Apple of the 00s announcing Memoji as a feature.
agumonkey 5y ago
I've been a CGI head for a while, and IMO, Iron Man was the first movie to be reaching organic/transparent realistic fantasy level of details (geometric, texture, animation). It had weight and yet the superpower quality to moves and actions that people drew in comics or animations before. Prior this, Transformers had a shot but it was overblown and used for extreme wow (apt for a monster-blockbuster movie). Compare this to Star Wars prequels, which were a massive leap in tech (full blown CGI everything, planets, nature, armies) but was clearly still just a tad too cartoonish.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  I'm fascinated by this because I'm beginning to suspect it's impossible to really escape uncanny valley, almost by definition. The CGI "style" seems to rely on battering the viewer into submission by packing as much detail and movement into every frame. But it's exhausting to watch and even if everything is perfectly photorealistic it's still kind of jarring. If what I'm seeing on the screen cannot exist physically then it doesn't matter how detailed it is - my brain responds with "That's just CGI" and it loses credibility. My partner works on opera productions and it's been really interesting watching high quality theatrical effects create believable settings on a stage. Physical objects have a weight and credibility that I suspect 2D CGI can never match. With skilled designers those physical objects can be made to do impossible things, but somehow they're still believable - which actually makes the experience more convincing and magical when they do something extraordinary or uncanny. There's also an element of sketching and leaving elements to the imagination of the audience. A lot of staged work implies something, and it turns out this makes the experience more engaging. CGI tries to make everything as explicit and busy and huge and detailed and overwhelming as possible, which actually has a distancing effect. We'll have immersive VR movies soon and we'll see if they work any better than 2D.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I too felt that the uncanny valley would never be closed. That said superhero movies don't need to close the gap, just to provide the amplified organic real life movements that we expected from comics and animation shows. Also practical effects often have something else. Probably the fact that they live on atomic scale of complexity. Colors have more depth and diversity, particles too. Also it impacts actors around them a bit more than green screen studios which may influence the final result too. A slight anecdote, the first time I lit an LED (noob electronics kit) it felt so utterly magical to me. I was 30, did advanced studies, interacted with LEDs all my life, but "creating" light was so soul sucking. Same goes for other experiences. The brain sense when something lies on the plane of "it affect your life, body" rather than "it's only advanced sensory input fooling you". Your gut gets involved I guess. And I agree that modern tools push movie maker to explain too much, logify too much, show too much. A few 80s reboots were mostly trying to add a logical layer onto what was self sufficient already.
Joeboy 5y ago
> I do however wish that other things were being produced Here's a list of films produced in the US in 2020. I didn't count, but it looks to me like not much of it is superhero-based. And this is just the US, and ignores a lot of low budget / less notable films. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 I get a bit frustrated by people complaining everything's a superhero movie or a sequel, when there are so many options they're ignoring. Edit: If you only watch heavily advertised films, you're basically limiting yourself to films with mass, cross-continental appeal, which is inevitably going to be heavy on culturally-neutral stuff like big CGI fight scenes.
- adrian_mrd 5y ago
  Whilst that is a useful list, that’s somewhat of a misnomer in isolation. To provide a fuller comparison, you’d need to also incorporate: share of viewing (per title), average box office returns (per studio eg Marvel/Disney), number of articles in mainstream media, etc.
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    Why? Can we not assess the films produced by looking at the list of films produced? I'm not saying as many people watch or know about the other films. In fact that is precisely the reason I don't like it when people imply they don't exist.
    - adrian_mrd 5y ago
      You can, but the total output is not the same as that ‘consumed’ and the importance in this context is the influence, not the sheer output. For example, it could be that 10% of the films on that list are produced but never released (studio dumps, legal issues between producers and creatives, etc). Just look at the USA box office impact of Black Widow, and Shang-Chi. Only two films but a huge proportion of post-covid box office revenue.
      - Joeboy 5y ago
throw0101a 5y ago
> Game of Thrones has shown hollywood that there is an appetite for epic storytelling, and that people are willing to sit through 7 season of shows to be entertained by an engaging story.* If you haven't already, check out The Expanse. The book series is set to be finished with the final (9th) book being released this fall. The final (6th) season of the television series wrapped filming this past spring. (The discrepancy is because of a large time jump between the second and third 'sub-trilogies' in the novels.)
samstave 5y ago
100% --- I wish there was less "plastic" looking CGI though...
pieno 5y ago
> Game of Thrones* has shown hollywood that there is an appetite for epic storytelling, and that people are willing to sit through 7 season of shows to be entertained by an engaging story. I really want to believe this, but I’m afraid Hollywood understood GoT’s success as “people want to see dragons”. Even early TV reviews were focusing on the dragons part, and recommending other shows that had dragons (or Middle Ages fights). A lot of Hollywood and TV reviewers apparently failed to appreciate that people may just have really like the epic story of a world, rather than a typical story of a couple of main characters. This is also apparent from the evolution the show went through, diverging into a more mainstream story focusing on main characters rather than the story/world itself.

ekianjo 5y ago

> One could argue that CGI is finally good enough to match with the imagination of the directors. If anything the abuse of CGI leads to boring fighting scenes where you know everything is 100% fake. I'd rather they use much, much less of it.

adrianN 5y ago
That seems perfectly appropriate for superheros where the expectation is that no actor can even come close to what the character can do in-universe.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  I hear ya but I agree with the comment above. I was a comic book kid, and love a lot of these characters. But I find these movies where the climax is just a bunch of cg puppets punching each other boring and formulaic. If I had to pick a "uses superpowers action scene" from any of these movies over the years, it's probably still Magneto escaping the plastic prison. I like that scene because it shows the character isn't just powerful in a brute force way, but can do amazing things given even the slightest opportunity. Obviously they had an incredible actor in Ian MacKellen to sell it, but they also didn't need to turn him into some cg puppet to make a big impact scene. I feel like that more creative and subtle conception is missing from most of the more recent movies.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > But I find these movies where the climax is just a bunch of cg puppets punching each other boring and formulaic. Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade said he liked the first Dr. Strange film because the ending was one in which things weren't resolved where one character punches another in face until submission/death. Dr. Strange negotiates.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      Yeah, I'd totally agree with that. I liked that movie since Strange's arc was mostly about him conquering his inner turmoil, and because as powerful as Strange is, he has to use his brain to prevail.
- hawski 5y ago
  Then I think about Tom Cruise's stunts especially in Mission: Impossible series. It got his own brand out of doing things more real. Similarly how Mad Max: Fury Road was received. Most also have very good writing (certainly not M:i-2). It may be not superhuman by Marvel standards, but certainly are by real life standards. At the same time in superhero flicks they are often unable to do things they should be able to do, because they did something like it before. Also most humans, that do not posses super strength in those movies are fighting almost like equals with bunch of baddies. Funny thing about Ethan Hunt from M:i is that his biggest super power is luck, like Rincewind from Discworld.
josteink 5y ago
This is what makes some recent movies (like Mad Max Fury Road) so much more intense. The director has intentionally decided to not use CGI for anything which can be done with real vehicles and real actors. And unlike the Marvel superhero snore-fest, it actually looks and feels real, because it is real. And your mind can tell. This makes you actually care. CGI is instead just used for matte painting, to touch up the scenes or scenery, rather than compose core of the shot. And the result looks brilliant. So yeah. Less CGI please and more restraint.
tssva 5y ago
It is a movie. It is all 100% fake whether it is CGI or involves real people fake fighting with the use of practical effects.
deleted 5y ago
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agumonkey 5y ago
reminds me of Se7en, IIRC there's one gun shot in the movie, it's so surprising that it shocks way more than constant gun fights in other movies
- deleted 5y ago
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WalterBright 5y ago
I turned on Terminator Dark Fate today, and was totally bored with it. It was nothing more than hitting things, shooting things, blowing up things, and crashing things, without respite. Should take away the graphics cards from the film crew.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I have a hard time distinguishing if the reason I find almost all new media content boring is because I am getting older and I have already seen a version of it, or if it is objectively overdone.
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    In an odd paradox, it seems to me that some of the best Marvel things are the ones that really lean into older tropes. Eg. Winter Soldier ('70s style conspiracy thriller), Logan (Classic western), Guardians of the Galaxy (jukebox musical).
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Is that because those tropes are better or because the ones without recognizable tropes are just plain boring?
      - Joeboy 5y ago
        I suppose they're tried and tested formulas, that have become sufficiently unfamiliar that they stand out from their contemporaries. In 30 years maybe you could do the same with films about superheroes discovering their true inner strength and having a big CGI fight at the end.
        WalterBright 5y ago
        > having a big CGI fight at the end Before CGI, it was always the "climactic fight in the darkened warehouse" finale. It would go on and on, the machinery would get turned on at some point, the bad guy would have to be killed several times, etc. Oh, for a movie where people don't keep fighting after massive blows to their head, or are little affected by a shot in the shoulder, etc.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
That's why I really like Bourne movies vs the BS Marvel movies.
baxuz 5y ago
And let's not forget the obligatory scenes where you have the protagonist(s) beating up and killing hundreds of generic robot/alien/monster goons. Because you can't have graphic mass murder in a PG13 movie. Hell, the Putty Patrollers had more character than these guys. On a similar note, I recently decided to watch the Hobbit trilogy after rewatching LOTR for the 20th anniversary. Whereas everything had weight and tension in the original (up to a point), in the Hobbit everything is cranked up to 11 and it suffers from the exact same thing. Every scene becomes a zergling rush vs 5 units with cheat mode turn on. There's an actual line in the last movie along the lines of "You go, there's only a 100 goblins, we can easily take them."
- mnd999 5y ago
  Legolas was a bit imba though.
firecall 5y ago
There is no tension! As an example, I remember how good the original Bourne Identity was!
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hef19898 5y ago
One of the examples making that point is Star Wars. JJ's CGI heavy films almost killed the franchise, The Mandalorian, focusing on good story telling, using almost no CGI and having exactly the right amount of nostalgic moments (Clone Wars, the old extended universe) saved it. IMHO CGI is simply making film makers lazy, getting "epic" fight scenes is easy now, getting good story telling still is hard.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  > The Mandalorian ... using almost no CGI Um.... Edit: Just to elaborate, I'll note that when the first JJ film came out a lot of people's take was "thank God it's not an awful VFX fest like the prequels", despite it actually being vastly more VFX heavy. It's funny seeing this repeated.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    The Mandalorian used CGI for sure. Background and a lot of other stuff was screens, as opposed to green screen, so. and it showed, the set was way more realistic than a pure CGI one. also, it had much less boom and bang for the effects only in it.
    - Joeboy 5y ago
      It's basically souped-up rear projection[1], which suits the "classic western" feel of the material really well. I'm not sure it's exactly "more realistic" - maybe we're just less used to seeing that look in 2021. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy68UCbcP3o&t=460s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy68UCbcP3o&t=460s Edit: To be clear this aspect is really about the way the elements are combined, rather than the way they're generated. The way they're generated is with vast amounts of CGI.
    - acomjean 5y ago
      They apparently did a lot of the cgi in real time with an curved led wall and some version of unreal engine. They track the camera position so they can move the image on the screen to match properly and They only render high resolution what’s in the camera viewport and the other stuff just provides some nice realistic ambient light. ILM video: https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-shot-on-a-holodeck-esque-set-with-unreal-engine-video-shows/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-s...
Joeboy 5y ago
I simultaneously violently agree and violently disagree. This is kind of my main beef with the Marvel stuff I've seen - they all end with these boring flying, shooting, punching VFX scenes, even if they started more interestingly (eg. WandaVision). But for me that's a writing choice, if they'd written something better we wouldn't have to sit through it, and if it'd been shot without VFX it'd still be boring. Complaining about the "CGI" is complaining about the wrong thing. Nobody complained about the VFX in The Wolf of Wall Street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU
dragontamer 5y ago
But most fight scenes were fake, even before CGI. In fact, almost nobody ever gets hurt on set... and when people do get hurt, its in stunts (not the fight scenes). The number of "realistic fight scenes" are incredibly slim. Chinese martial arts are mostly Wuxia: a branch of martial arts that was developed for stage performance (flips, spins, etc. etc.) that has very little practical relevance. "Kung Fu" films (ie: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan) reduce the number of filps... but even then, Jackie Chan's use of hilarious stage props is anything but realistic. I mean: just imagine "Die Hard", no one can sustain that many injuries realistically and keep going. Its fake action, yes with practical effects / non-CGI (blood packs and stunts), but its still fantasy. And "Princess Bride" duel is fully ridiculous: with more flips and gymnastics than actual fighting (arguably the point: it was a comedy film making fun of tropes). Anyone who has actually been in a fighting-sport (themselves mostly "fake", as duels took place centuries ago), will instantly recognize the bad form most of these older fight scenes had. Enemies charge the protagonist one at a time (yes: even in "practical" Kung Fu movies with few special effects) ---------- "Fake" is fine. But there's a lack of progression or understanding going on in a lot of the CGI-fight scenes. They're willing to spend tons of money on big explosions or special effects, but they don't always hit home with me. The famous "Jackie Chan Ladder Fight" is a good example of a ridiculous fight scene, barely plausible. But its highly imaginative and has a great progression and rhythm. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrRFzwPE0d4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrRFzwPE0d4). I'm not here because I want to watch a realistic 4-person Bo-staff fight vs a single dude with a ladder (which would almost certainly result in the ladder-user in getting beaten up). I'm here to watch crazy stunts and imaginative fights. The use of music / rhythm (notice how the fight is on beat to the soundtrack) increases the entertainment value. These little things should be easier in CGI, but somehow aren't being done.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  The best part of Jackie Chan films is the blooper reel at the end where you get to see him handle real injury with grace and humor.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > But most fight scenes were fake, even before CGI. There's fake made with human actors, and there's "f--k it, just cut and paste 1000 zombies or robots in the next scene and make the heroes cut through them like butter" fake. We've broken new ground.

emilsedgh 5y ago

Im not in the film business, but it appears that cgi is a “resolved” problem. Quality storytelling and good screenwriting is not.

sbacic 5y ago
This! I am absolutely flabbergasted by the difference in the quality of the visual effects and acting when compared to the dialogue and storytelling. I feel like the script is either intentionally dumbed down or that the script receives a disproportionately small part of the overall budget.
- watwut 5y ago
  I think the reason is in theory. When you read movie analysis and contemporary writing advice, following them literally leads to those repetitive boring scripts. They are not badly written, then are well written, but in tradition that is fundamentally stiff and don't allow complication.
- MrScruff 5y ago
  If you are making a product that has an intended market of billions of people, it needs to have incredibly universal appeal. This is in direct opposition with producing a memorable piece of art.
  - sbacic 5y ago
    That doesn't really make sense to me - a market of that size ought to have niches and market segmentation. After all, no matter how generic and broad-appealing the script is, I don't think my 60+ year old mother is going to get excited about the next Marvel movie.
    - MrScruff 5y ago
      Yes but if you're making a movie that costs $200m then it needs to target the average of the planets expectations for a movie to make money. Any divergence from that ends up confusing some of your target audience. Sure this will end up turning off a bunch of people who have tastes that demand something more authentic, but you don't care about that because most peoples tastes are clustered around the mean. Look at pop music for comparison. Or imagine the Apple of the 00s announcing Memoji as a feature.

agumonkey 5y ago

I've been a CGI head for a while, and IMO, Iron Man was the first movie to be reaching organic/transparent realistic fantasy level of details (geometric, texture, animation). It had weight and yet the superpower quality to moves and actions that people drew in comics or animations before. Prior this, Transformers had a shot but it was overblown and used for extreme wow (apt for a monster-blockbuster movie). Compare this to Star Wars prequels, which were a massive leap in tech (full blown CGI everything, planets, nature, armies) but was clearly still just a tad too cartoonish.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I'm fascinated by this because I'm beginning to suspect it's impossible to really escape uncanny valley, almost by definition. The CGI "style" seems to rely on battering the viewer into submission by packing as much detail and movement into every frame. But it's exhausting to watch and even if everything is perfectly photorealistic it's still kind of jarring. If what I'm seeing on the screen cannot exist physically then it doesn't matter how detailed it is - my brain responds with "That's just CGI" and it loses credibility. My partner works on opera productions and it's been really interesting watching high quality theatrical effects create believable settings on a stage. Physical objects have a weight and credibility that I suspect 2D CGI can never match. With skilled designers those physical objects can be made to do impossible things, but somehow they're still believable - which actually makes the experience more convincing and magical when they do something extraordinary or uncanny. There's also an element of sketching and leaving elements to the imagination of the audience. A lot of staged work implies something, and it turns out this makes the experience more engaging. CGI tries to make everything as explicit and busy and huge and detailed and overwhelming as possible, which actually has a distancing effect. We'll have immersive VR movies soon and we'll see if they work any better than 2D.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I too felt that the uncanny valley would never be closed. That said superhero movies don't need to close the gap, just to provide the amplified organic real life movements that we expected from comics and animation shows. Also practical effects often have something else. Probably the fact that they live on atomic scale of complexity. Colors have more depth and diversity, particles too. Also it impacts actors around them a bit more than green screen studios which may influence the final result too. A slight anecdote, the first time I lit an LED (noob electronics kit) it felt so utterly magical to me. I was 30, did advanced studies, interacted with LEDs all my life, but "creating" light was so soul sucking. Same goes for other experiences. The brain sense when something lies on the plane of "it affect your life, body" rather than "it's only advanced sensory input fooling you". Your gut gets involved I guess. And I agree that modern tools push movie maker to explain too much, logify too much, show too much. A few 80s reboots were mostly trying to add a logical layer onto what was self sufficient already.

Joeboy 5y ago

> I do however wish that other things were being produced Here's a list of films produced in the US in 2020. I didn't count, but it looks to me like not much of it is superhero-based. And this is just the US, and ignores a lot of low budget / less notable films. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 I get a bit frustrated by people complaining everything's a superhero movie or a sequel, when there are so many options they're ignoring. Edit: If you only watch heavily advertised films, you're basically limiting yourself to films with mass, cross-continental appeal, which is inevitably going to be heavy on culturally-neutral stuff like big CGI fight scenes.

adrian_mrd 5y ago
Whilst that is a useful list, that’s somewhat of a misnomer in isolation. To provide a fuller comparison, you’d need to also incorporate: share of viewing (per title), average box office returns (per studio eg Marvel/Disney), number of articles in mainstream media, etc.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  Why? Can we not assess the films produced by looking at the list of films produced? I'm not saying as many people watch or know about the other films. In fact that is precisely the reason I don't like it when people imply they don't exist.
  - adrian_mrd 5y ago
    You can, but the total output is not the same as that ‘consumed’ and the importance in this context is the influence, not the sheer output. For example, it could be that 10% of the films on that list are produced but never released (studio dumps, legal issues between producers and creatives, etc). Just look at the USA box office impact of Black Widow, and Shang-Chi. Only two films but a huge proportion of post-covid box office revenue.
    - Joeboy 5y ago

throw0101a 5y ago

> Game of Thrones has shown hollywood that there is an appetite for epic storytelling, and that people are willing to sit through 7 season of shows to be entertained by an engaging story.* If you haven't already, check out The Expanse. The book series is set to be finished with the final (9th) book being released this fall. The final (6th) season of the television series wrapped filming this past spring. (The discrepancy is because of a large time jump between the second and third 'sub-trilogies' in the novels.)

samstave 5y ago

100% --- I wish there was less "plastic" looking CGI though...

pieno 5y ago

> Game of Thrones* has shown hollywood that there is an appetite for epic storytelling, and that people are willing to sit through 7 season of shows to be entertained by an engaging story. I really want to believe this, but I’m afraid Hollywood understood GoT’s success as “people want to see dragons”. Even early TV reviews were focusing on the dragons part, and recommending other shows that had dragons (or Middle Ages fights). A lot of Hollywood and TV reviewers apparently failed to appreciate that people may just have really like the epic story of a world, rather than a typical story of a couple of main characters. This is also apparent from the evolution the show went through, diverging into a more mainstream story focusing on main characters rather than the story/world itself.