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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

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.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Agree very much, and that's really the triumph of a movie like Jurassic Park— judicious, minimal use of CGI supplemented by lots of practical puppet work, miniatures, etc.
  - aprdm 5y ago
    minimal use of CGI? Have you looked into the netflix series "behind the scenes"?
    - Melatonic 5y ago
      It also holds up so well because it had some damn good compositors working it. An underappreciated realm in the VFX world.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      Hmm, I will check it out, but I don't think my take is an uncommon one, for example: "Spielberg and his effects teams succeeded in creating convincing visual effects because they didn't rely on CGI as their go-to tool. In fact, only four to five minutes of the 14-15 total minutes of dinosaur scenes were entirely computer generated. All the other visual effects were created using Stan Wintson's various physical dinosaur models. The legendary technician, responsible for creating practical models for Predator and Terminator, built everything from animatronic puppets, to to a full-size animatronic T-Rex, and even Velociraptor suits that could be worn by stuntmen. CGI was then used to build on top of what the production team had already created on-set. In other words, Jurassic Park's CGI still looks so good today because there isn't much of it in the film, which makes sense considering the limitations of the technology at the time. ... But perhaps even more important than the breakthrough graphics was Spielberg's decision to still keep the CGI to a minimum. According to Dennis Murren, visual effects supervisor at ILM, once the director saw how convincing the digital dinosaurs looked, he actually rewrote the ending of the film to include the now-famous full-body shot of the T-Rex letting out a final roar in the Jurassic Park visitor center rotunda. But despite clearly being impressed by the capabilities of ILM, Spielberg still limited the CGI elements and retained the use of Stan Winston's puppets for much of the memorable dinosaur scenes viewers still love today. In fact, there's said to be a total of just 63 visual effects shots in the whole film, a tiny number compared to Jurassic World's more than 2,000 VFX shots." https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-cgi-still-good-how-explained/ https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-cgi-still-good-how-expl...
cmckn 5y ago
I think another great example is Jackson’s LotR vs. The Hobbit films. The first trilogy was way more immersive, primarily because of the different balance of practical and special effects.
- aprdm 5y ago
  What?! You should check your facts. It was way more immersive because they had way more time to do it and didn't had turmoil in the direction of the movie. LOTR is an example of great CGI done in almost every shot of the movie
  - deleted 5y ago
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- mikepurvis 5y ago
  To be fair, though, the Hobbit had a lot more issues than just that, chief among them being a ridiculously large and undifferentiated ensemble cast + the fact that there was nowhere near enough main story material to fill a 10 hour runtime. The Critical Drinker has a good take on the failures of the Hobbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-0pW6BNSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-0pW6BNSs
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
    Also, I think a lot of it was having to make Orlando Bloom (Legolas) look younger instead of 10 years older (like in real life). It seemed to give a certain fakeness to all the faces.
  - spc476 5y ago
    It would have been better to make one film, and treat it like the fantasy it was (more geared towards children). Have a framing sequence where Bilbo is telling a very young Frodo about his adventure "there and back again." But alas, that's not the world we live in.
    - 5y ago
ericmcer 5y ago
The weight of special effects is also lowered by just the sheer quantity of them. I would like to see a comparison of how much time is spent on battle scenes in star wars 4-6 vs 7-9. I turned 9 off because it felt like a 10 minute cgi fighting scene was needed between each sparse bit of plot forwarding dialogue. It may be a bit overdone when people fast forward through the action to try and find some kind of meaningful character interaction.
mikepurvis 5y ago
Interesting— I actually found Dune 2021 extremely immersive and weighty. Though that was without any knowledge of which parts were practical vs CGI. Hopefully it holds up to multiple viewings.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  I had another experience. I had the experience that everything was there (checkbox style), but seemed to miss the gravitas. Or maybe I was just mad that they didn't include the dinner party scene...which was pivotal to the story because it gave the reader the sense that there WAS hope, that the game was just starting...and only THEN betrayal. but that's what you get for being a fan.
- mordymoop 5y ago
  Yeah, I don’t think anybody except thr OP has ever complained about Dune not feeling visually weighty and powerful, so it almost comes off as a disingenuous criticism of the film. OP is comparing stills from two movies and essentially pointing out that one is obviously digitally color-graded and the other is obviously filmed on celluloid and not color-graded. The difference is obvious in a side-by-side comparison. However, if you actually watch Dune beginning to end, your brain accepts the color palette as part of the visual language, you don’t even notice it.
  - unhammer 5y ago
    OP didn't complain about it not feeling "weighty and powerful", but feeling less real: > digital post-processing seems to have ruined Villeuneve’s more realistic vision > the complex colors of the world have been bleached out And I agree – Dune definitely feels less real, less believable. Dreamy, in fact. And I think it plays into that, they use the blandness as a strength, creating a feeling of bleak otherness.
davesque 5y ago
I don't know if it was just me or the theater I was in but I felt like some of the effects in Dune were second rate. Was a bit disappointed, especially during desert scenes. I wish I could think of a counterexample of good CGI from modern cinema. Actually, I remember certain parts of Interstellar, for example the black hole and the 5-dimensional book shelf, were really well done. I think I was able to suspend my disbelief and just have my mind blown by them.
- belval 5y ago
  I don't want to discount your experience, but this does seem like an unpopular opinion considering Dune won a lot of prizes for the special effects[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2021_film)
  - davesque 5y ago
    I don't want to act all offended and everything, but I honestly don't understand why a list of rewards is a counterpoint to my personal opinion. I'm aware that everyone loved the movie. I don't care and I'm not just trying to be a troll. Update: Actually, your response makes sense if you assumed, reasonably, that I actually wasn't sure how I felt and wanted expert opinions. Left some other similar comments further down in the thread. Sorry to snap back like I did.
    - belval 5y ago
      > I don't know if it was just me or the theater I was in but I felt like some of the effects in Dune were second rate. Your comment starts with a statement that seem to imply that you doubt your own assessment. The list of awards is a strong signal that the effects were not "second rate". Thus my comment confirming that seems to be an unpopular opinion.
      - davesque 5y ago
        [This was a bunch of needless snark so I voluntarily removed it] Update: Actually, I think you're right. I misrepresented my opinion as weakly held as though I was asking for a more authoritative source on the matter. So your response was appropriate and appreciated. I'm realizing now that I feel more strongly about it; like it wasn't just a matter of the theater having a bad projector.
tyingq 5y ago
> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion True, though many older movies without CGI also had terrible special effects the killed "suspension of disbelief". Comparing to just the best isn't really fair, unless the assumption is that all CGI is done poorly.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
My favourite point of comparison is car chase scenes. To this day, it's just so blatantly obvious when they're CGI cars that don't actually exist. Though action is pumped up to 11 (not to mention occasional Michael Bay syndrome of fast zooms,a whole separate gripe), it's not as believable and impactful than physical cars at their actual limit. That being said, that's me, and a few fellow car chase geeks and possibly film nerds.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  I know that at least one vehicle in this[1] car chase scene does not exist, but only because I've heard a director's commentary. I'm guessing most people wouldn't spot it either. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were others. I don't think it's a problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs
  - NikolaNovak 5y ago
    I mean, it's a 6 min clip; and the red subaru definitely exists (they went on sale after production ended if I recall, a bit out of my price range:)... although why they took a canonical AWD rally car and made it RWD is beyond my understanding. There are what - hundred or more individual shots linked in there? So we'd have to narrow on which one is CGI augmented and how much. But it's a lot more "Weighty" of a setup either way than most car chase scenes these days, and received praise at the time accordingly :). I just watched Red Notice last night, and beyond all the other horribleness, the car chase scenes had the classic shiny, unbelievable Star Trek Warp Space feel to them that's common in so many movies today - and with 5-6 times the budget of Baby Driver, it's not that it's a "cheap movie with cheap effects". edit after a brief Google: Indeed Edgar Wright takes tremendous pride on the car stunts and practical effects in the movie: https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-did-car-stunts-edgar-wright-george-miller-ansel-elgort https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-did-ca... https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-rwd/ https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-rwd/ In fact, the Baby Driver stunt drivers are complaining wildly about CGI in other movies: https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-condemns-cgi-in-car-movies https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-condemns... So I feel if anything, that movie proves my point :-)
jodrellblank 5y ago
I haven’t seen 2017 justice league, but I have seen enough modern day superhero films to be sceptical that’s why his strength is unthreatening. Of course he’s going to be defeated, he’s the villain. Heroes don’t get injured. Every strength based character is infinite strong. Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, then fly, then fly in space, then lift a continent made of kryptonite which is “Superman’s Kryptonite”, if you will. Tobey MacGuire Spider-Man hurt his knee trying to slow down a train, Tom Holland held a flying aircraft carrier together with his hands. Yesterday’s Doctor Octopus would be no match for today’s Spider-Man and his small scale plots no interest. Even so, Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc was a good and threatening character despite having CGI assisted arms. Hulk used to throw tanks about, now he punches alien spaceships into the ground. Iron man was a guy in a cyborg suite, with hulk buster he’s hulk strong. Magneto was a strategist who could push away wolverine, now he can lift sunken battleships and stadiums. Wolverine was an eternal soldier now he can survive a hit from a nuclear bomb(!) Batman was a strategist who worked out, now he’s strong enough to fight superman hand to hand. Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody dies unless they’re about to come back to life[mostly]. Nothing is damaged unless it’s background scenery buildings and cars. Of course people aren’t thinking it’s hush stakes, it isn’t. That’s not CGI fault, it’s poor story telling papered over with CGI, bad character writing with CGI energy beam weapons instead of personality.
- mejutoco 5y ago
  I never noticed this, and now it seems obvioous: superpower inflation. Thanks!
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The last of these recent years’ superhero movies I saw had the protagonist fly from the ground on earth into space and fly through a fleet of supposedly extremely advanced and capable and enormous spaceships in order to win the fight. Literally, simply flying through as if playing a connect the dots game. One was left wondering how there could be any further movies with this person available to fly through anything.
aprdm 5y ago
There's so much CGI nowadays that even things you don't think are CGI, are actually CGI. Like buildings, glasses, doors, the most mundane things are done with CGI in many TV shows and movies. Jon Favreau was a person who was very much against CGI, until he was reviewing some of the first iron man work and couldn't actually differentiate CGI from non CGI shots, he gave up on that. There's bad cgi and good cgi, but 99% of the movies nowadays have a lot of cgi that you don't even notice, because it's good cgi :)
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Yep. Basically any time you think "it must have been difficult or expensive to shoot in that location," you're probably right, and it's probably CG. And I'm not just talking about obvious examples like "abandoned Times Square." I mean pretty much any public area (especially a popular recognizable public area) where it would be logistically tricky to shoot.
- crtasm 5y ago
  I enjoy this example from television, a name change for a popular baking show when it was brought to the USA led to editing the logo on a glass plate in many shots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OEwbocwYF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OEwbocwYF8
Melatonic 5y ago
Lawrence of Arabia is also one of the most expensive and most insanely massively epic films ever shot - I am not sure it is a fair comparison. Dune is a massive massive movie today but I am not sure I agree the comparison. Realistically yes we should just be doing more practical SFX but you have to realize it is not just some big hollywood exec deciding they want to ONLY do VFX - the available skill market for these things has drastically changed. In the 1980s there were lots of very skilled SFX people and studios that could do some incredible things. The amount of people with those skills has dwindled. I think the best example of this sort of thing is the OG Jurassic Park. Everyone has an armchair evaluation of why it holds up so well and many are correct but there is a subtle difference most people never bring up. Years ago I worked with a guy much more experienced than me who had originally been a talented stop motion artist and then as the industry progressed moved on to doing animation for VFX. He did a lot of animation for the CGI dinosaurs - imagine the scene where the T-Rex is chasing the jeep for example. The big difference is that because his back story was in stop motion he had a much more direct and real world experience of how things and people move and how their weight is thrown around. One of the underappreciated things in Jurassic Park and why it seems to hold up so well today is simply that the dinosaurs move like they should as huge, lumbering creatures - it ends up a subtle difference that ends up making a huge impact on what we unconsciously accept as "real".
- nfw2 5y ago
  Also, Dune is a science fiction movie. Looking as real as possible was not necessarily the goal, but rather to maintain a stylized glean appropriate for a movie with hunter-seekers, force-fields, and sand worms. I think the VFX approach worked well for the movie, and movie critics seem to universally agree that the cinematography and effects were magnificent. A better comparison would be a modern period epic like Dunkirk.
  - ChrisLTD 5y ago
    There is a great YouTube video breaking down how Dune's special effects were created to look as real as possible, as opposed to what you get in the average Marvel movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ
thereddaikon 5y ago
A common and worthwhile counterpoint to that is that people only notice bad or rushed CGI. Properly good CGI is never criticized because nobody can tell its CGI. The digital artists have the same problem as IT staff. People only notice you when something goes wrong. When everything is going right, you might as well not exist. A timely example is Disney's Book of Boba Fett. The show is almost entirely CGI except for the actors. There have been some criticisms about particular assets like the biker gang's speeder bikes. But I've yet to hear anyone complain about the environments looking fake. Mos Espa is almost 100% CGI and it looks like a real set. When it works your brain just accepts it. CGI is incredibly good at environments. I'd go as far to say that it has been indistinguishable from reality for the better part of a decade now. Where its gets noticed is in places where it doesn't do so well or when there were time or budget limitations. Fully CGI humans are still not believable and will probably be the last thing to get right. CGI non-human creatures have varying success. Compositing can still be difficult. Often its better to replace an actors entire body, save for the face, and create a CGI version in a fully CGI environment. Compositing a real person in a CGI scene is prone to floating body syndrome and lighting issues. The real answer isn't necessarily that one is better than the other. But these are tools which should be used together to make a better product. And I think you'll find that modern films with the best overall effects do blend the two. Mad Max Fury Road is a good example, the vehicles are real with real stuntmen climbing on them but the environment is artificial. Shooting a film in the middle of a desert with nothing in sight is not practical. But shooting the scene on a sandy path and compositing in the CGI desert is.
- chx 5y ago
  Yes! I remember a Game Of Thrones CGI breakdown reel, can't find it now, which showed the Lannister camp and it was very interesting how much of it was actually real but at the same time how much was augmented by CGI. You absolutely couldn't tell.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > A common and worthwhile counterpoint to that is that people only notice bad or rushed CGI. And similarly, people don't bring up the vast amounts of bad or rushed practical effects being produced at the same time films like Star Wars and Lawrence of Arabia were produced.
Izkata 5y ago
> 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. Calling Elon Musk, you know what you have to do.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  They are in fact building a film studio in space as we speak[1]. [1] https://nofilmschool.com/space-station-movie-studio https://nofilmschool.com/space-station-movie-studio
dmitriid 5y ago
> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion Because he choses to use bad CGI in comparisons and completely ignores all the cases where CGI is invisible. See Why CG Sucks (Except It Doesn't) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24 "I think that CG looks bad is because we only see bad CG. Amazing, wonderfully executed CG is everywhere, we just don't know it"
tshaddox 5y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with any of the few specific comparisons the author makes. Maybe Tim Curry's Steppenwolf does look better. But this small set of specific comparisons, even if they're uncontroversial, don't provide evidence that a CGI effect on average will look worse than a practical effect. I can think of plenty of examples of practical effects that looks terrible and CGI effects that look great (and, crucially, aren't even noticeably CGI to most viewers).
irrational 5y ago
> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion Other than Black Panther, I can't think of any Marvel movie that destroyed my sense of immersion. Maybe I have become used to it so I don't even see it anymore unless it's really really bad (like Blank Panther)?
xg15 5y ago
> For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies. But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a blockbuster, for sure, with enormous production budget, lots of public interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World, the Star Wars sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune will become an all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia remains to be seen. Maybe a fairer comparison would be something like Lord of the Rings vs Dragonheart or Conan the Barbarian or whatever else iconic fantasy movie there was before the CGI era? Or for Scifi, maybe the old Star Trek movies vs Avatar? (Blue cat people, not the other Avatar) Or Star Trek TOS vs Deep Space Nine vs Discovery.
- CollinEMac 5y ago
  > But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a blockbuster, for sure, with enormous production budget, lots of public interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World, the Star Wars sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune will become an all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia remains to be seen. Those movies have worse visuals than Dune imo.
ST2084 5y ago
Viewers never even notice good CGI, only bad.
js2 5y ago
Another example. I recently watched Knowing (2009) based on Ebert's review. One of the things he wrote in that review was: "The film has sensational special effects, which again I won't describe." I found myself wondering if we watched the same movie. I thought the special effects were pretty awful. Comparing the scene the subway crash to say, the train crash in Silver Streak (1976)[1] or Speed subway crash (1994)[2], I thought Knowing[3] was inferior and just looks terribly fake to me. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPAOarQxaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPAOarQxaU 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2bcpW7KFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2bcpW7KFU 3. https://vimeo.com/117341659 https://vimeo.com/117341659 Then there's the insane French Connection (1971) chase scene which they could never film today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEloJ5venk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEloJ5venk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#Car_chase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#C... https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/entertainment/videos/a24683/the-french-connection-chase-was-shot-on-uncleared-public-streets/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/entertainment/video... https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/secrets-of-the-french-connection-on-50th-anniversary/ https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/secrets-of-the-french-connecti...
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  From the comments: >Fun fact: this car scene was kinda an actual car chase. The director made the stunt man drive the car in the middle of street of Brooklyn without any acknowledge from the people and drivers there so they can capture real reactions. (It's illegal but apparently nothing happened to them) (!) If that's true that's definitely why that scene is so good but hard to replicate. Though there are some props getting destroyed so maybe it's only true for part of the scene.
  - js2 5y ago
    It was shot illegally (er, without permits). It really could not be done today: “The car chase was filmed without obtaining the proper permits from the city. Members of the NYPD's tactical force helped control traffic. But most of the control was achieved by the assistant directors with the help of off-duty NYPD officers, many of whom had been involved in the actual case. The assistant directors, under the supervision of Terence A. Donnelly, cleared traffic for approximately five blocks in each direction. Permission was given to literally control the traffic signals on those streets where they ran the chase car. Even so, in many instances, they illegally continued the chase into sections with no traffic control, where they actually had to evade real traffic and pedestrians. Many of the (near) collisions in the movie were therefore real and not planned (with the exception of the near-miss of the lady with the baby carriage, which was carefully rehearsed). A flashing police light was placed on top of the car to warn bystanders. A camera was mounted on the car's bumper for the shots from the car's point-of-view. Hackman did some of the driving but the extremely dangerous stunts were performed by Bill Hickman, with Friedkin filming from the backseat. Friedkin operated the camera himself because the other camera operators were married with children and he was not.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/trivia https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/trivia The director recently said he regrets the shot: “As successful as the film was, I wouldn’t do that now. I had put people’s lives in danger.” https://screenrant.com/french-connection-william-friedkin-car-chase-scene-reaction/ https://screenrant.com/french-connection-william-friedkin-ca...
sangnoir 5y ago
> 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 I don't quite feel that's a like-for-like comparison. All of the Denis Villeneuve's films I have watched have a surreal/unreal quality to them: from the top of my head Sicario, Arrival, and especially the one with the weird deer, whose name escapes me. That's just his "style" - I suppose it's how scenes are framed, color grading, and how his shots tend to linger; there's a dream-like quality to it, even for the "grittier" scenes - Sicario has a lot of those.
deanCommie 5y ago
These are still not fair comparisons. Legend and Justice League are both mediocre movies, but Legend won a ton of technical awards, including being nominated for Oscars for Makeup, BAFTAs for visual effects, and won an award for cinematography [0]. Justice League's list of awards is much more meager, and nothing for technical achievements. [1] The Dune and Lawrence of Arabia comparison is also flawed. Sure they're both "acclaimed", But Dune is acclaimed as "One of the best films of the year", and Lawrence of Arabia is acclaimed as "One of the best films OF ALL TIME." Also, Lawrence of Arabia is a real story of a real person set in the real world. So realism is bound to be important. Dune is a fictional story set thousands of years in the future in a different part of the universe. And specifically deals with a bit of mysticism and fantastical elements closer to fantasy than science fiction. Comparing the "reality" of their effects is apples and oranges. I'll give you Star Wars for sure. Star Wars most assuredly did NOT benefit from "improved" technology. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/awards/?ref_=tt_awd https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/awards/?ref_=tt_awd [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/awards/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/awards/
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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.

mikepurvis 5y ago
Agree very much, and that's really the triumph of a movie like Jurassic Park— judicious, minimal use of CGI supplemented by lots of practical puppet work, miniatures, etc.
- aprdm 5y ago
  minimal use of CGI? Have you looked into the netflix series "behind the scenes"?
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    It also holds up so well because it had some damn good compositors working it. An underappreciated realm in the VFX world.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Hmm, I will check it out, but I don't think my take is an uncommon one, for example: "Spielberg and his effects teams succeeded in creating convincing visual effects because they didn't rely on CGI as their go-to tool. In fact, only four to five minutes of the 14-15 total minutes of dinosaur scenes were entirely computer generated. All the other visual effects were created using Stan Wintson's various physical dinosaur models. The legendary technician, responsible for creating practical models for Predator and Terminator, built everything from animatronic puppets, to to a full-size animatronic T-Rex, and even Velociraptor suits that could be worn by stuntmen. CGI was then used to build on top of what the production team had already created on-set. In other words, Jurassic Park's CGI still looks so good today because there isn't much of it in the film, which makes sense considering the limitations of the technology at the time. ... But perhaps even more important than the breakthrough graphics was Spielberg's decision to still keep the CGI to a minimum. According to Dennis Murren, visual effects supervisor at ILM, once the director saw how convincing the digital dinosaurs looked, he actually rewrote the ending of the film to include the now-famous full-body shot of the T-Rex letting out a final roar in the Jurassic Park visitor center rotunda. But despite clearly being impressed by the capabilities of ILM, Spielberg still limited the CGI elements and retained the use of Stan Winston's puppets for much of the memorable dinosaur scenes viewers still love today. In fact, there's said to be a total of just 63 visual effects shots in the whole film, a tiny number compared to Jurassic World's more than 2,000 VFX shots." https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-cgi-still-good-how-explained/ https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-cgi-still-good-how-expl...

cmckn 5y ago

I think another great example is Jackson’s LotR vs. The Hobbit films. The first trilogy was way more immersive, primarily because of the different balance of practical and special effects.

aprdm 5y ago
What?! You should check your facts. It was way more immersive because they had way more time to do it and didn't had turmoil in the direction of the movie. LOTR is an example of great CGI done in almost every shot of the movie
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mikepurvis 5y ago
To be fair, though, the Hobbit had a lot more issues than just that, chief among them being a ridiculously large and undifferentiated ensemble cast + the fact that there was nowhere near enough main story material to fill a 10 hour runtime. The Critical Drinker has a good take on the failures of the Hobbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-0pW6BNSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-0pW6BNSs
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  Also, I think a lot of it was having to make Orlando Bloom (Legolas) look younger instead of 10 years older (like in real life). It seemed to give a certain fakeness to all the faces.
- spc476 5y ago
  It would have been better to make one film, and treat it like the fantasy it was (more geared towards children). Have a framing sequence where Bilbo is telling a very young Frodo about his adventure "there and back again." But alas, that's not the world we live in.
  - 5y ago

ericmcer 5y ago

The weight of special effects is also lowered by just the sheer quantity of them. I would like to see a comparison of how much time is spent on battle scenes in star wars 4-6 vs 7-9. I turned 9 off because it felt like a 10 minute cgi fighting scene was needed between each sparse bit of plot forwarding dialogue. It may be a bit overdone when people fast forward through the action to try and find some kind of meaningful character interaction.

mikepurvis 5y ago

Interesting— I actually found Dune 2021 extremely immersive and weighty. Though that was without any knowledge of which parts were practical vs CGI. Hopefully it holds up to multiple viewings.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
I had another experience. I had the experience that everything was there (checkbox style), but seemed to miss the gravitas. Or maybe I was just mad that they didn't include the dinner party scene...which was pivotal to the story because it gave the reader the sense that there WAS hope, that the game was just starting...and only THEN betrayal. but that's what you get for being a fan.
mordymoop 5y ago
Yeah, I don’t think anybody except thr OP has ever complained about Dune not feeling visually weighty and powerful, so it almost comes off as a disingenuous criticism of the film. OP is comparing stills from two movies and essentially pointing out that one is obviously digitally color-graded and the other is obviously filmed on celluloid and not color-graded. The difference is obvious in a side-by-side comparison. However, if you actually watch Dune beginning to end, your brain accepts the color palette as part of the visual language, you don’t even notice it.
- unhammer 5y ago
  OP didn't complain about it not feeling "weighty and powerful", but feeling less real: > digital post-processing seems to have ruined Villeuneve’s more realistic vision > the complex colors of the world have been bleached out And I agree – Dune definitely feels less real, less believable. Dreamy, in fact. And I think it plays into that, they use the blandness as a strength, creating a feeling of bleak otherness.

davesque 5y ago

I don't know if it was just me or the theater I was in but I felt like some of the effects in Dune were second rate. Was a bit disappointed, especially during desert scenes. I wish I could think of a counterexample of good CGI from modern cinema. Actually, I remember certain parts of Interstellar, for example the black hole and the 5-dimensional book shelf, were really well done. I think I was able to suspend my disbelief and just have my mind blown by them.

belval 5y ago
I don't want to discount your experience, but this does seem like an unpopular opinion considering Dune won a lot of prizes for the special effects[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2021_film)
- davesque 5y ago
  I don't want to act all offended and everything, but I honestly don't understand why a list of rewards is a counterpoint to my personal opinion. I'm aware that everyone loved the movie. I don't care and I'm not just trying to be a troll. Update: Actually, your response makes sense if you assumed, reasonably, that I actually wasn't sure how I felt and wanted expert opinions. Left some other similar comments further down in the thread. Sorry to snap back like I did.
  - belval 5y ago
    > I don't know if it was just me or the theater I was in but I felt like some of the effects in Dune were second rate. Your comment starts with a statement that seem to imply that you doubt your own assessment. The list of awards is a strong signal that the effects were not "second rate". Thus my comment confirming that seems to be an unpopular opinion.
    - davesque 5y ago
      [This was a bunch of needless snark so I voluntarily removed it] Update: Actually, I think you're right. I misrepresented my opinion as weakly held as though I was asking for a more authoritative source on the matter. So your response was appropriate and appreciated. I'm realizing now that I feel more strongly about it; like it wasn't just a matter of the theater having a bad projector.

tyingq 5y ago

> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion True, though many older movies without CGI also had terrible special effects the killed "suspension of disbelief". Comparing to just the best isn't really fair, unless the assumption is that all CGI is done poorly.

NikolaNovak 5y ago

My favourite point of comparison is car chase scenes. To this day, it's just so blatantly obvious when they're CGI cars that don't actually exist. Though action is pumped up to 11 (not to mention occasional Michael Bay syndrome of fast zooms,a whole separate gripe), it's not as believable and impactful than physical cars at their actual limit. That being said, that's me, and a few fellow car chase geeks and possibly film nerds.

Joeboy 5y ago
I know that at least one vehicle in this[1] car chase scene does not exist, but only because I've heard a director's commentary. I'm guessing most people wouldn't spot it either. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were others. I don't think it's a problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  I mean, it's a 6 min clip; and the red subaru definitely exists (they went on sale after production ended if I recall, a bit out of my price range:)... although why they took a canonical AWD rally car and made it RWD is beyond my understanding. There are what - hundred or more individual shots linked in there? So we'd have to narrow on which one is CGI augmented and how much. But it's a lot more "Weighty" of a setup either way than most car chase scenes these days, and received praise at the time accordingly :). I just watched Red Notice last night, and beyond all the other horribleness, the car chase scenes had the classic shiny, unbelievable Star Trek Warp Space feel to them that's common in so many movies today - and with 5-6 times the budget of Baby Driver, it's not that it's a "cheap movie with cheap effects". edit after a brief Google: Indeed Edgar Wright takes tremendous pride on the car stunts and practical effects in the movie: https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-did-car-stunts-edgar-wright-george-miller-ansel-elgort https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-did-ca... https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-rwd/ https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-rwd/ In fact, the Baby Driver stunt drivers are complaining wildly about CGI in other movies: https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-condemns-cgi-in-car-movies https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-condemns... So I feel if anything, that movie proves my point :-)

jodrellblank 5y ago

I haven’t seen 2017 justice league, but I have seen enough modern day superhero films to be sceptical that’s why his strength is unthreatening. Of course he’s going to be defeated, he’s the villain. Heroes don’t get injured. Every strength based character is infinite strong. Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, then fly, then fly in space, then lift a continent made of kryptonite which is “Superman’s Kryptonite”, if you will. Tobey MacGuire Spider-Man hurt his knee trying to slow down a train, Tom Holland held a flying aircraft carrier together with his hands. Yesterday’s Doctor Octopus would be no match for today’s Spider-Man and his small scale plots no interest. Even so, Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc was a good and threatening character despite having CGI assisted arms. Hulk used to throw tanks about, now he punches alien spaceships into the ground. Iron man was a guy in a cyborg suite, with hulk buster he’s hulk strong. Magneto was a strategist who could push away wolverine, now he can lift sunken battleships and stadiums. Wolverine was an eternal soldier now he can survive a hit from a nuclear bomb(!) Batman was a strategist who worked out, now he’s strong enough to fight superman hand to hand. Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody dies unless they’re about to come back to life[mostly]. Nothing is damaged unless it’s background scenery buildings and cars. Of course people aren’t thinking it’s hush stakes, it isn’t. That’s not CGI fault, it’s poor story telling papered over with CGI, bad character writing with CGI energy beam weapons instead of personality.

mejutoco 5y ago
I never noticed this, and now it seems obvioous: superpower inflation. Thanks!
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The last of these recent years’ superhero movies I saw had the protagonist fly from the ground on earth into space and fly through a fleet of supposedly extremely advanced and capable and enormous spaceships in order to win the fight. Literally, simply flying through as if playing a connect the dots game. One was left wondering how there could be any further movies with this person available to fly through anything.

aprdm 5y ago

There's so much CGI nowadays that even things you don't think are CGI, are actually CGI. Like buildings, glasses, doors, the most mundane things are done with CGI in many TV shows and movies. Jon Favreau was a person who was very much against CGI, until he was reviewing some of the first iron man work and couldn't actually differentiate CGI from non CGI shots, he gave up on that. There's bad cgi and good cgi, but 99% of the movies nowadays have a lot of cgi that you don't even notice, because it's good cgi :)

tshaddox 5y ago
Yep. Basically any time you think "it must have been difficult or expensive to shoot in that location," you're probably right, and it's probably CG. And I'm not just talking about obvious examples like "abandoned Times Square." I mean pretty much any public area (especially a popular recognizable public area) where it would be logistically tricky to shoot.
crtasm 5y ago
I enjoy this example from television, a name change for a popular baking show when it was brought to the USA led to editing the logo on a glass plate in many shots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OEwbocwYF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OEwbocwYF8

Melatonic 5y ago

Lawrence of Arabia is also one of the most expensive and most insanely massively epic films ever shot - I am not sure it is a fair comparison. Dune is a massive massive movie today but I am not sure I agree the comparison. Realistically yes we should just be doing more practical SFX but you have to realize it is not just some big hollywood exec deciding they want to ONLY do VFX - the available skill market for these things has drastically changed. In the 1980s there were lots of very skilled SFX people and studios that could do some incredible things. The amount of people with those skills has dwindled. I think the best example of this sort of thing is the OG Jurassic Park. Everyone has an armchair evaluation of why it holds up so well and many are correct but there is a subtle difference most people never bring up. Years ago I worked with a guy much more experienced than me who had originally been a talented stop motion artist and then as the industry progressed moved on to doing animation for VFX. He did a lot of animation for the CGI dinosaurs - imagine the scene where the T-Rex is chasing the jeep for example. The big difference is that because his back story was in stop motion he had a much more direct and real world experience of how things and people move and how their weight is thrown around. One of the underappreciated things in Jurassic Park and why it seems to hold up so well today is simply that the dinosaurs move like they should as huge, lumbering creatures - it ends up a subtle difference that ends up making a huge impact on what we unconsciously accept as "real".

nfw2 5y ago
Also, Dune is a science fiction movie. Looking as real as possible was not necessarily the goal, but rather to maintain a stylized glean appropriate for a movie with hunter-seekers, force-fields, and sand worms. I think the VFX approach worked well for the movie, and movie critics seem to universally agree that the cinematography and effects were magnificent. A better comparison would be a modern period epic like Dunkirk.
- ChrisLTD 5y ago
  There is a great YouTube video breaking down how Dune's special effects were created to look as real as possible, as opposed to what you get in the average Marvel movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ

thereddaikon 5y ago

A common and worthwhile counterpoint to that is that people only notice bad or rushed CGI. Properly good CGI is never criticized because nobody can tell its CGI. The digital artists have the same problem as IT staff. People only notice you when something goes wrong. When everything is going right, you might as well not exist. A timely example is Disney's Book of Boba Fett. The show is almost entirely CGI except for the actors. There have been some criticisms about particular assets like the biker gang's speeder bikes. But I've yet to hear anyone complain about the environments looking fake. Mos Espa is almost 100% CGI and it looks like a real set. When it works your brain just accepts it. CGI is incredibly good at environments. I'd go as far to say that it has been indistinguishable from reality for the better part of a decade now. Where its gets noticed is in places where it doesn't do so well or when there were time or budget limitations. Fully CGI humans are still not believable and will probably be the last thing to get right. CGI non-human creatures have varying success. Compositing can still be difficult. Often its better to replace an actors entire body, save for the face, and create a CGI version in a fully CGI environment. Compositing a real person in a CGI scene is prone to floating body syndrome and lighting issues. The real answer isn't necessarily that one is better than the other. But these are tools which should be used together to make a better product. And I think you'll find that modern films with the best overall effects do blend the two. Mad Max Fury Road is a good example, the vehicles are real with real stuntmen climbing on them but the environment is artificial. Shooting a film in the middle of a desert with nothing in sight is not practical. But shooting the scene on a sandy path and compositing in the CGI desert is.

chx 5y ago
Yes! I remember a Game Of Thrones CGI breakdown reel, can't find it now, which showed the Lannister camp and it was very interesting how much of it was actually real but at the same time how much was augmented by CGI. You absolutely couldn't tell.
tshaddox 5y ago
> A common and worthwhile counterpoint to that is that people only notice bad or rushed CGI. And similarly, people don't bring up the vast amounts of bad or rushed practical effects being produced at the same time films like Star Wars and Lawrence of Arabia were produced.

Izkata 5y ago

> 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. Calling Elon Musk, you know what you have to do.

Joeboy 5y ago
They are in fact building a film studio in space as we speak[1]. [1] https://nofilmschool.com/space-station-movie-studio https://nofilmschool.com/space-station-movie-studio

dmitriid 5y ago

> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion Because he choses to use bad CGI in comparisons and completely ignores all the cases where CGI is invisible. See Why CG Sucks (Except It Doesn't) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24 "I think that CG looks bad is because we only see bad CG. Amazing, wonderfully executed CG is everywhere, we just don't know it"

tshaddox 5y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with any of the few specific comparisons the author makes. Maybe Tim Curry's Steppenwolf does look better. But this small set of specific comparisons, even if they're uncontroversial, don't provide evidence that a CGI effect on average will look worse than a practical effect. I can think of plenty of examples of practical effects that looks terrible and CGI effects that look great (and, crucially, aren't even noticeably CGI to most viewers).

irrational 5y ago

> He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion Other than Black Panther, I can't think of any Marvel movie that destroyed my sense of immersion. Maybe I have become used to it so I don't even see it anymore unless it's really really bad (like Blank Panther)?

xg15 5y ago

> For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies. But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a blockbuster, for sure, with enormous production budget, lots of public interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World, the Star Wars sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune will become an all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia remains to be seen. Maybe a fairer comparison would be something like Lord of the Rings vs Dragonheart or Conan the Barbarian or whatever else iconic fantasy movie there was before the CGI era? Or for Scifi, maybe the old Star Trek movies vs Avatar? (Blue cat people, not the other Avatar) Or Star Trek TOS vs Deep Space Nine vs Discovery.

CollinEMac 5y ago
> But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a blockbuster, for sure, with enormous production budget, lots of public interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World, the Star Wars sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune will become an all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia remains to be seen. Those movies have worse visuals than Dune imo.

ST2084 5y ago

Viewers never even notice good CGI, only bad.

js2 5y ago

Another example. I recently watched Knowing (2009) based on Ebert's review. One of the things he wrote in that review was: "The film has sensational special effects, which again I won't describe." I found myself wondering if we watched the same movie. I thought the special effects were pretty awful. Comparing the scene the subway crash to say, the train crash in Silver Streak (1976)[1] or Speed subway crash (1994)[2], I thought Knowing[3] was inferior and just looks terribly fake to me. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPAOarQxaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPAOarQxaU 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2bcpW7KFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2bcpW7KFU 3. https://vimeo.com/117341659 https://vimeo.com/117341659 Then there's the insane French Connection (1971) chase scene which they could never film today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEloJ5venk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEloJ5venk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#Car_chase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#C... https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/entertainment/videos/a24683/the-french-connection-chase-was-shot-on-uncleared-public-streets/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/entertainment/video... https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/secrets-of-the-french-connection-on-50th-anniversary/ https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/secrets-of-the-french-connecti...

mardifoufs 5y ago
From the comments: >Fun fact: this car scene was kinda an actual car chase. The director made the stunt man drive the car in the middle of street of Brooklyn without any acknowledge from the people and drivers there so they can capture real reactions. (It's illegal but apparently nothing happened to them) (!) If that's true that's definitely why that scene is so good but hard to replicate. Though there are some props getting destroyed so maybe it's only true for part of the scene.
- js2 5y ago
  It was shot illegally (er, without permits). It really could not be done today: “The car chase was filmed without obtaining the proper permits from the city. Members of the NYPD's tactical force helped control traffic. But most of the control was achieved by the assistant directors with the help of off-duty NYPD officers, many of whom had been involved in the actual case. The assistant directors, under the supervision of Terence A. Donnelly, cleared traffic for approximately five blocks in each direction. Permission was given to literally control the traffic signals on those streets where they ran the chase car. Even so, in many instances, they illegally continued the chase into sections with no traffic control, where they actually had to evade real traffic and pedestrians. Many of the (near) collisions in the movie were therefore real and not planned (with the exception of the near-miss of the lady with the baby carriage, which was carefully rehearsed). A flashing police light was placed on top of the car to warn bystanders. A camera was mounted on the car's bumper for the shots from the car's point-of-view. Hackman did some of the driving but the extremely dangerous stunts were performed by Bill Hickman, with Friedkin filming from the backseat. Friedkin operated the camera himself because the other camera operators were married with children and he was not.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/trivia https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/trivia The director recently said he regrets the shot: “As successful as the film was, I wouldn’t do that now. I had put people’s lives in danger.” https://screenrant.com/french-connection-william-friedkin-car-chase-scene-reaction/ https://screenrant.com/french-connection-william-friedkin-ca...

sangnoir 5y ago

> 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 I don't quite feel that's a like-for-like comparison. All of the Denis Villeneuve's films I have watched have a surreal/unreal quality to them: from the top of my head Sicario, Arrival, and especially the one with the weird deer, whose name escapes me. That's just his "style" - I suppose it's how scenes are framed, color grading, and how his shots tend to linger; there's a dream-like quality to it, even for the "grittier" scenes - Sicario has a lot of those.

deanCommie 5y ago

These are still not fair comparisons. Legend and Justice League are both mediocre movies, but Legend won a ton of technical awards, including being nominated for Oscars for Makeup, BAFTAs for visual effects, and won an award for cinematography [0]. Justice League's list of awards is much more meager, and nothing for technical achievements. [1] The Dune and Lawrence of Arabia comparison is also flawed. Sure they're both "acclaimed", But Dune is acclaimed as "One of the best films of the year", and Lawrence of Arabia is acclaimed as "One of the best films OF ALL TIME." Also, Lawrence of Arabia is a real story of a real person set in the real world. So realism is bound to be important. Dune is a fictional story set thousands of years in the future in a different part of the universe. And specifically deals with a bit of mysticism and fantastical elements closer to fantasy than science fiction. Comparing the "reality" of their effects is apples and oranges. I'll give you Star Wars for sure. Star Wars most assuredly did NOT benefit from "improved" technology. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/awards/?ref_=tt_awd https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/awards/?ref_=tt_awd [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/awards/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/awards/

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