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I didn’t see this article make any mention of the most common criticism of this notion, which is that you’re comparing the films of the past which have stood th

I didn’t see this article make any mention of the most common criticism of this notion, which is that you’re comparing the films of the past which have stood the test of time and are widely considered among the greatest films ever made with just any old blockbuster film released today. The same thing comes up all the time with pop music. If you really want to do this analysis you should have some mechanism of selecting historical films randomly instead of just considering the masterpieces that you remember off the top of your head.

ballenf 5y ago
Pick the top sci-fi movie rating-wise from every year, going back 50 years. Then rank them. Would the past be over-represented? My hunch is yes, but I think it's a fair metric.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Sci-fi is a weird genre because there was arguably more interest in it during the space race--Star Trek happened at the same time as early Apollo missions. There was just a lot more content and a lot more imaginative content.
- enkid 5y ago
  I mean, maybe? But I don't really think so. Here's a list from IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls009003184/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls009003184/ Let's take a look at a few of the entry's from the 1970's that actually had practical effects: Logan's Run - Here's Logan fighting a robot: https://youtu.be/USADM5Gk9Gs?t=106 https://youtu.be/USADM5Gk9Gs?t=106 Star Wars - : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k Soylent Green - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo Invasion of the Body Snatchers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_0dlmSq7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_0dlmSq7I Alien - here's the chest buster scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQ7om598OM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQ7om598OM I don't think these hold up as well as nostalgia would suggest, the exception being the alien chest buster scene, which is amazing. The others are much less ambitious and simply don't look as good as modern movies. Many of the practical effects look small or toy like. Maybe there's a sweet spot in the 90's?
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    The chest burster scene holds up, up until the baby alien scurries off at the end. But there's a hilariously terrible effect later on where it cuts from a model of John Hurt's head to the real thing. Edit: Ian Holm, not John Hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g
  - greedo 5y ago
    Using the low quality trailer for Star Wars is pretty disingenuous since it was intended to be viewed on small TV at 480i compared to 35mm (or 70mm) in the theater.
  - tasha0663 5y ago
    > Logan's Run Oh god. I can't imagine anyone ever thought Box (the robot) didn't look completely awful. It may lack good practical effects, but some of the matte paintings in that movie are gorgeous. I love when they get to the overgrown Washington D.C.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Are you controlling for things like, say, the age you were when you first saw a certain movie? It's kinda unfair to rank a brand new movie against the older movie that you watched a hundred times because it was one of the few VHS tapes at your house when you were growing up. There could be thousands of kids now watching that brand new movie hundreds of times on their iPads who are going to have similar attachments to that movie. Some of those kids will grow up to be filmmakers, movie critics, pop culture writers, etc.
xiphias2 5y ago
Even selecting randomly wouldn't be good enough: there are much more movies made nowdays. But if you look at only movies rated 8+ on IMDB, it's the same amount.
- wvenable 5y ago
  It's also significantly easier (and cheaper) to make films these days.
the_af 5y ago
Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high profile "modern" movies. "The Thing" to most people today is not "one of the greatest movies" but a horror classic and -- visual quality wise -- on par with "Phantom Menace" or "Jurassic Park", if not worse. I think the criticism is valid: that the physicality of classic SFX is still mostly unmatched by CGI, and the eye and mind notice this.
- carlob 5y ago
  > Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high profile "modern" movies. Mostly sequels, remakes, reboots or nth installments of a franchise.
  - the_af 5y ago
    Carpenter's The Thing is also a remake. So? I don't think this matters much.
    - carlob 5y ago
      You're not under the impression that most big budget movies nowadays are just attempts at milking the same character or universe to the maximum possible extent?
      - the_af 5y ago
        I am, but at the same time I'm reminded it's always been like this. But isn't it an entirely separate conversation? Of course CGI hasn't "ruined the movies", that part of the title is hyperbole. But the actual conversation about practical SFX vs CGI doesn't have much to do with originality, I think.
      - zardo 5y ago
        'The Thing' wasn't greenlit because it used existing IP with a guaranteed audience. It's just a short story that recieved two very different adaptations 30 years apart.
- 5y ago
carlob 5y ago
- Spivak 5y ago
  As someone really frustrated trying to buy a home that isn't soulless this still begs the question why we seemingly can't build buildings that are exceptional quality by the standards of 100 years ago -- at any price! For fun I've toured 5+ million dollar mansions for sale and they're just as shitty as any mass-produced suburban neighborhood, they're just bigger. Like what was even the point of technological advancement, better construction equipment, logistics, materials science just to make worse houses?
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I’m guessing it’s just a race to the bottom? I suspect if you were willing to pay significantly more you could still get a house constructed according to whatever your specifications are.
    - saltminer 5y ago
      If you have money, you can absolutely get a house that will stand the test of time. But corporate builders aren't concerned about that. They do shoddy work because they know they can get away with it. It's just good enough that an overworked inspector will pass it, but by the time the buyer moves in and the honeymoon period has ended, the corporation which built it has been dissolved and its profits reabsorbed into the parent company. Good luck going after them at that point.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        Right, that's what I'm saying about the race to the bottom. I'm sure you could find a corporate builder (perhaps even the same corporate builder!) to build whatever project you're talking about for 3 times the price and it will be significantly better quality. It's easy to lament the way the market has trended, but are you willing to pay 3 times more? Probably not.
iratewizard 5y ago
An easy litmus test to show its not the test of time is to plot the number of exceptional quality films made per year. In any form of art, there have always been pieces motivated by artistic drive (i.e. a work of art like seven samurai or loan's run) and pieces motivated by profit (i.e. a product like all of the capeshit movies or the transformer movies). What we're seeing in film and other similar industries is a cabal of gatekeepers who don't fund things unless it fits the mold of proven, profit driven products. Remove the Larry Finks of the world from power, and you remove the powerwhore gatekeepers that have no concept of beauty.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  The problem with that is that you also need to consider how much time has passed since each film was released. In many cases, if it’s been 10 years since a film is released it would be difficult to know how people will view that film after another 10 years have passed.
tannhauser23 5y ago
The author is not saying that modern movies are artistically worse than old movies. He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion: "Consider Ridley Scott’s 1985 Legend, wherein Tim Curry’s onscreen presence as a horned devil is heavy, weighty—despite playing a fantastical devil, his clopping around in hooves comes across as ontologically solid. Your eyes are not deceived. And moreover, under the slathered makeup and prothestics, he is still acting—when his lip curls, that’s a real lip. Compare that to Steppenwolf, from the 2017 Justice League. After almost a quarter-century of “progress” in cinema he comes across as digital dust, a void where physicality should be. His superstrength is unthreatening, because deep in our occipital lobes we know Steppenwolf weighs nothing, impacts nothing. Therefore the entire movie has no stakes. Of course the bad guy will be defeated, he’s a hologram." Yes, of course the article ignores the hundreds of old movies with terrible prosthetics and costumes. I think the author tries his best to compare similar things. For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies. Specifically, he discusses how the desert scenes _look_ to our eyes: "Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin costumes hanging out in a desert ... For instance, the shadows both characters cast to their right. In the 2021 Dune, it is a monochrome chunk, despite the billowing fabric around the character. In the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, the shadow of the fabric is actually see-through. It has dimensionality, thinness and thickness. Because it’s a real shadow. So despite both being filmed in similar locations, one scene unconsciously triggers more belief in the ontology of the fictional world—the directionality of the light, the blue above the dune—while the other comes across as an ersatz reality." I felt this coming out of the latest Star Wars movies: the space battle scenes felt so... flat, despite being technically amazing. There's something to be said for actually shooting on location and using physical props.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  I'd argue it's CGI's ambitions. A lot of old practical effect and green screen work doesn't hold up at all, either. CGI just made it easy to completely overdo it.
  - 5y ago
duped 5y ago
I watched Voyage of the Rock Aliens the other day which didn't stand the test of 1984, let alone the test of time. It's a great example of practical effects that can stand up to modern scrutiny... and those that can't. The flying V spaceship looks better than CGI in B-movies today, and the talking fire-hydrant robot had more character than BB-8 in the most recent Star Wars films. But the sheet of plexiglass used as a "force field" was comically terrible, even for 1984
patrec 5y ago
Indeed. An easy fix would be to compare, say, the year's biggest crossing action movies from 1980-1990 and 2010-2020 or similar.
munificent 5y ago
I think that's a fair criticism for music where there is so much of it that the filtering of time makes a real difference to our perception of past music. But cinema is a smaller world. Yes, there are plenty of independent films, but most audience attention has always been focused on the small number of tentpole films. And if you look at just those over time, everything the author says here still holds up. Watch some of the top ten box office grossing films from 30, 20, 10 years ago, and today. The change in style, tone, and quality is enormous. Pick any random comedy or drama from the 80s or 90s and it will have more realness, more sense of being there than movies made today for 10x the budget. This being despite the fact that the older films were shot literally on film and the grain is visible. Digital color, an obsession with CGI, and a fixation on storytelling that plays well across an internation audience (which means violence, action, physical comedy, and simplistic morality tales) has made today's movies a shadow of what they used to be.
enkid 5y ago
I think the other thing that is missing from this conversation is the bar of entry has lowered so much with modern CGI. Look at a YouTube channel like Dust[0], which has literally hundreds of sci-fi short films using CGI to tell stories. Sure, they aren't 2022 blockbuster level, but they are 2010 TV level. There is simply no way practical effects would be able to scale the way that CGI has. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/watchdust https://www.youtube.com/c/watchdust
Spooky23 5y ago
I think that’s missing the point. Most movies are mostly forgotten, and the merits of the story and storytelling carry the movie as a thing. If you pick a mediocre movie in 2019 and compare to a mediocre movie in 1959, the garbage storyline will be the thing you will turn the movie off for. In my mind, the weakness with CGI overuse is it enables lazy/sloppy practices that don’t scale. Similar to in graphics work where Photoshop is abused to create impossible edits for expediency. My family has a tradition of watching Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” every holiday season. It’s quaint how you can see the painted backgrounds and stages… the opening scenes feature cardboard bricks and cheesy props. The point of the article is that this era of filming is bland and will look cheesy in the future because of the reliance on tools. You can already see it today - compare the Sony Spider-Man movies to the last iteration - the age is apparent.
rbanffy 5y ago
You make an interesting point - the article is not comparing apples to apples - but I think that the issue is different. It's not that CGI looks fake. The latest Dune is impressive in every sense and I don't think the CGI looks fake. I think the toughest thing about VFX facing a director is the temptation to abuse it. They have to remember the effects are there to tell the story. They should resist to making everything spectacular/shiny/tridimensional/hectic where not everything needs to be. Compare the dark Los Angeles of Blade Runner with the lower levels of Coruscant. And yes. Darkseid is a ridiculous villain, with a lazy design and even lazier lines. No amount of CGI could save it. Not even if he were blue and lived in a Roger Dean album cover.

ballenf 5y ago

Pick the top sci-fi movie rating-wise from every year, going back 50 years. Then rank them. Would the past be over-represented? My hunch is yes, but I think it's a fair metric.

dehrmann 5y ago
Sci-fi is a weird genre because there was arguably more interest in it during the space race--Star Trek happened at the same time as early Apollo missions. There was just a lot more content and a lot more imaginative content.
enkid 5y ago
I mean, maybe? But I don't really think so. Here's a list from IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls009003184/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls009003184/ Let's take a look at a few of the entry's from the 1970's that actually had practical effects: Logan's Run - Here's Logan fighting a robot: https://youtu.be/USADM5Gk9Gs?t=106 https://youtu.be/USADM5Gk9Gs?t=106 Star Wars - : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k Soylent Green - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo Invasion of the Body Snatchers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_0dlmSq7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_0dlmSq7I Alien - here's the chest buster scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQ7om598OM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQ7om598OM I don't think these hold up as well as nostalgia would suggest, the exception being the alien chest buster scene, which is amazing. The others are much less ambitious and simply don't look as good as modern movies. Many of the practical effects look small or toy like. Maybe there's a sweet spot in the 90's?
- Joeboy 5y ago
  The chest burster scene holds up, up until the baby alien scurries off at the end. But there's a hilariously terrible effect later on where it cuts from a model of John Hurt's head to the real thing. Edit: Ian Holm, not John Hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g
- greedo 5y ago
  Using the low quality trailer for Star Wars is pretty disingenuous since it was intended to be viewed on small TV at 480i compared to 35mm (or 70mm) in the theater.
- tasha0663 5y ago
  > Logan's Run Oh god. I can't imagine anyone ever thought Box (the robot) didn't look completely awful. It may lack good practical effects, but some of the matte paintings in that movie are gorgeous. I love when they get to the overgrown Washington D.C.
tshaddox 5y ago
Are you controlling for things like, say, the age you were when you first saw a certain movie? It's kinda unfair to rank a brand new movie against the older movie that you watched a hundred times because it was one of the few VHS tapes at your house when you were growing up. There could be thousands of kids now watching that brand new movie hundreds of times on their iPads who are going to have similar attachments to that movie. Some of those kids will grow up to be filmmakers, movie critics, pop culture writers, etc.

xiphias2 5y ago

Even selecting randomly wouldn't be good enough: there are much more movies made nowdays. But if you look at only movies rated 8+ on IMDB, it's the same amount.

wvenable 5y ago
It's also significantly easier (and cheaper) to make films these days.

the_af 5y ago

Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high profile "modern" movies. "The Thing" to most people today is not "one of the greatest movies" but a horror classic and -- visual quality wise -- on par with "Phantom Menace" or "Jurassic Park", if not worse. I think the criticism is valid: that the physicality of classic SFX is still mostly unmatched by CGI, and the eye and mind notice this.

carlob 5y ago
> Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high profile "modern" movies. Mostly sequels, remakes, reboots or nth installments of a franchise.
- the_af 5y ago
  Carpenter's The Thing is also a remake. So? I don't think this matters much.
  - carlob 5y ago
    You're not under the impression that most big budget movies nowadays are just attempts at milking the same character or universe to the maximum possible extent?
    - the_af 5y ago
      I am, but at the same time I'm reminded it's always been like this. But isn't it an entirely separate conversation? Of course CGI hasn't "ruined the movies", that part of the title is hyperbole. But the actual conversation about practical SFX vs CGI doesn't have much to do with originality, I think.
    - zardo 5y ago
      'The Thing' wasn't greenlit because it used existing IP with a guaranteed audience. It's just a short story that recieved two very different adaptations 30 years apart.
5y ago

carlob 5y ago

Spivak 5y ago
As someone really frustrated trying to buy a home that isn't soulless this still begs the question why we seemingly can't build buildings that are exceptional quality by the standards of 100 years ago -- at any price! For fun I've toured 5+ million dollar mansions for sale and they're just as shitty as any mass-produced suburban neighborhood, they're just bigger. Like what was even the point of technological advancement, better construction equipment, logistics, materials science just to make worse houses?
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I’m guessing it’s just a race to the bottom? I suspect if you were willing to pay significantly more you could still get a house constructed according to whatever your specifications are.
  - saltminer 5y ago
    If you have money, you can absolutely get a house that will stand the test of time. But corporate builders aren't concerned about that. They do shoddy work because they know they can get away with it. It's just good enough that an overworked inspector will pass it, but by the time the buyer moves in and the honeymoon period has ended, the corporation which built it has been dissolved and its profits reabsorbed into the parent company. Good luck going after them at that point.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Right, that's what I'm saying about the race to the bottom. I'm sure you could find a corporate builder (perhaps even the same corporate builder!) to build whatever project you're talking about for 3 times the price and it will be significantly better quality. It's easy to lament the way the market has trended, but are you willing to pay 3 times more? Probably not.

iratewizard 5y ago

An easy litmus test to show its not the test of time is to plot the number of exceptional quality films made per year. In any form of art, there have always been pieces motivated by artistic drive (i.e. a work of art like seven samurai or loan's run) and pieces motivated by profit (i.e. a product like all of the capeshit movies or the transformer movies). What we're seeing in film and other similar industries is a cabal of gatekeepers who don't fund things unless it fits the mold of proven, profit driven products. Remove the Larry Finks of the world from power, and you remove the powerwhore gatekeepers that have no concept of beauty.

tshaddox 5y ago
The problem with that is that you also need to consider how much time has passed since each film was released. In many cases, if it’s been 10 years since a film is released it would be difficult to know how people will view that film after another 10 years have passed.

tannhauser23 5y ago

The author is not saying that modern movies are artistically worse than old movies. He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion: "Consider Ridley Scott’s 1985 Legend, wherein Tim Curry’s onscreen presence as a horned devil is heavy, weighty—despite playing a fantastical devil, his clopping around in hooves comes across as ontologically solid. Your eyes are not deceived. And moreover, under the slathered makeup and prothestics, he is still acting—when his lip curls, that’s a real lip. Compare that to Steppenwolf, from the 2017 Justice League. After almost a quarter-century of “progress” in cinema he comes across as digital dust, a void where physicality should be. His superstrength is unthreatening, because deep in our occipital lobes we know Steppenwolf weighs nothing, impacts nothing. Therefore the entire movie has no stakes. Of course the bad guy will be defeated, he’s a hologram." Yes, of course the article ignores the hundreds of old movies with terrible prosthetics and costumes. I think the author tries his best to compare similar things. For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies. Specifically, he discusses how the desert scenes _look_ to our eyes: "Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin costumes hanging out in a desert ... For instance, the shadows both characters cast to their right. In the 2021 Dune, it is a monochrome chunk, despite the billowing fabric around the character. In the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, the shadow of the fabric is actually see-through. It has dimensionality, thinness and thickness. Because it’s a real shadow. So despite both being filmed in similar locations, one scene unconsciously triggers more belief in the ontology of the fictional world—the directionality of the light, the blue above the dune—while the other comes across as an ersatz reality." I felt this coming out of the latest Star Wars movies: the space battle scenes felt so... flat, despite being technically amazing. There's something to be said for actually shooting on location and using physical props.

dehrmann 5y ago
I'd argue it's CGI's ambitions. A lot of old practical effect and green screen work doesn't hold up at all, either. CGI just made it easy to completely overdo it.
- 5y ago

duped 5y ago

I watched Voyage of the Rock Aliens the other day which didn't stand the test of 1984, let alone the test of time. It's a great example of practical effects that can stand up to modern scrutiny... and those that can't. The flying V spaceship looks better than CGI in B-movies today, and the talking fire-hydrant robot had more character than BB-8 in the most recent Star Wars films. But the sheet of plexiglass used as a "force field" was comically terrible, even for 1984

patrec 5y ago

Indeed. An easy fix would be to compare, say, the year's biggest crossing action movies from 1980-1990 and 2010-2020 or similar.

munificent 5y ago

I think that's a fair criticism for music where there is so much of it that the filtering of time makes a real difference to our perception of past music. But cinema is a smaller world. Yes, there are plenty of independent films, but most audience attention has always been focused on the small number of tentpole films. And if you look at just those over time, everything the author says here still holds up. Watch some of the top ten box office grossing films from 30, 20, 10 years ago, and today. The change in style, tone, and quality is enormous. Pick any random comedy or drama from the 80s or 90s and it will have more realness, more sense of being there than movies made today for 10x the budget. This being despite the fact that the older films were shot literally on film and the grain is visible. Digital color, an obsession with CGI, and a fixation on storytelling that plays well across an internation audience (which means violence, action, physical comedy, and simplistic morality tales) has made today's movies a shadow of what they used to be.

enkid 5y ago

I think the other thing that is missing from this conversation is the bar of entry has lowered so much with modern CGI. Look at a YouTube channel like Dust[0], which has literally hundreds of sci-fi short films using CGI to tell stories. Sure, they aren't 2022 blockbuster level, but they are 2010 TV level. There is simply no way practical effects would be able to scale the way that CGI has. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/watchdust https://www.youtube.com/c/watchdust

Spooky23 5y ago

I think that’s missing the point. Most movies are mostly forgotten, and the merits of the story and storytelling carry the movie as a thing. If you pick a mediocre movie in 2019 and compare to a mediocre movie in 1959, the garbage storyline will be the thing you will turn the movie off for. In my mind, the weakness with CGI overuse is it enables lazy/sloppy practices that don’t scale. Similar to in graphics work where Photoshop is abused to create impossible edits for expediency. My family has a tradition of watching Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” every holiday season. It’s quaint how you can see the painted backgrounds and stages… the opening scenes feature cardboard bricks and cheesy props. The point of the article is that this era of filming is bland and will look cheesy in the future because of the reliance on tools. You can already see it today - compare the Sony Spider-Man movies to the last iteration - the age is apparent.

rbanffy 5y ago

You make an interesting point - the article is not comparing apples to apples - but I think that the issue is different. It's not that CGI looks fake. The latest Dune is impressive in every sense and I don't think the CGI looks fake. I think the toughest thing about VFX facing a director is the temptation to abuse it. They have to remember the effects are there to tell the story. They should resist to making everything spectacular/shiny/tridimensional/hectic where not everything needs to be. Compare the dark Los Angeles of Blade Runner with the lower levels of Coruscant. And yes. Darkseid is a ridiculous villain, with a lazy design and even lazier lines. No amount of CGI could save it. Not even if he were blue and lived in a Roger Dean album cover.