Film Why does nobody talk about special effects any more?

Pogue Mahone

Queen of Fecking Everything
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Going back to movies like Jurassic Park or Avatar, or T2 - or even all the way back to Jaws and E.T. - one of the things people would talk about most about any blockbuster film was how good the effects were. That doesn’t happen any more. It doesn’t even merit a mention. The new Doctor Strange is surely as FX heavy as a film can get, yet the thread doesn’t include any reference to how it looks at all. Art direction and costume matters (e.g. Villeneuve Sci fi) but it’s like we don’t care about effects any more.

The most recent film I can think about where there was a focus on SFX was when everyone was raving about the Mad Max remake and that was because of the decision to use them as little as possible!

Are our palettes so jaded we don’t notice really impressive special effects any more? Are they so good that they’ve become completely seamless with live action and that’s why we don’t notice? Will this current plateau end and some new development blow us away all over again?

Discuss.
 
Over-saturation probably plays a part.

If you eat a few chocolate bars you probably talk about how nice they are but if everything you touch and see is made from chocolate you probably stop talking about it after a while.
 
Think its more of a case that we now notice bad special effects rather than good ones. Well done special effects tend to not take us out of the immersion of the movie and with the advancements in technology whether with special effects or projections in general we don't notice them unless they are bad. Even tv show special effects nowadays are pretty much movie level quality.
 
Are our palettes so jaded we don’t notice really impressive special effects any more? Are they so good that they’ve become completely seamless with live action and that’s why we don’t notice?

I think it's a combination of both of these. Even the most basic films nowadays are using VFX to such a heavy degree it's just how big budget films are produced. There's probably more effects in your bog-standard rom-com than was in Jurassic Park.

I also think a large part of the magic of visual effects in cinema was that "How the f*ck have they done that" moment. We don't really have that any more. It's all computers, render farms and crunched artists.
 
It’s pretty much the norm now so yea we’re just kind of used to it.

I only really notice it when it’s bad, like when something is clearly green-screened or the camerawork is shoddy like in the new Batman where he jumped off that building and it looked like they’d mounted a GoPro to his head. It looked shite and took me right out of the film, whereas when it’s done right you shouldn’t notice it’s happening because you’re absorbed in the film.
 
At this point I consider simple splash of blood made of real liquid an impressive special effect, when you have so many lazy crews using CGI for a slight detail like this.
 
Rado_N said:
It’s pretty much the norm now so yea we’re just kind of used to it.

I only really notice it when it’s bad, like when something is clearly green-screened or the camerawork is shoddy like in the new Batman where he jumped off that building and it looked like they’d mounted a GoPro to his head. It looked shite and took me right out of the film, whereas when it’s done right you shouldn’t notice it’s happening because you’re absorbed in the film.
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I watched the latest Spiderman the other day and they green screened a fecking cemetery scene. Like it was so hard to physically go there? All the cost saving really ruins some shots.
 
Solius said:
Over-saturation probably plays a part.

If you eat a few chocolate bars you probably talk about how nice they are but if everything you touch and see is made from chocolate you probably stop talking about it after a while.
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This
 
RE the walking dead deer scene, that was a case of them screwing up the lighting on the deer itself. If they'd have just darkened it and paid attention to the direction of the light and contrast on the deer in comparison to the setting, I doubt anyone would have noticed.
 
Smartphones and youtube are just every minute things.

CGI is seen on the phone just as much as the cinema so it's not that jaw dropping.

I'm hoping the next Avartar is 3D without glasses though.
 
Because every fecking film that comes out these days is a fecking Marvel or super hero film whereby 99% of the scenes are actors speaking to computer generated characters, in a computer generated environment.

Marvel, DC and Disney films (Star Wars in particular) can just bugger off the face of this earth, mainstream cinema has been ruined by this crap.

Films with raw human emotion and a distinct lack of CGI tend to do better at the award shows now because of this.
 
I'm personally still struck by CGI because most movies I watch don't have it, or at least it's not super obvious to me. I remember going to watch (getting dragged) to one of those Marvel movies a few years ago and the CGI felt remarkably in my face, like I couldn't stop thinking it was there.

So yeah, oversaturation I suppose.
 
A part of it is my own fault for being too cynical and for, a lot of stuff anyway, just knowing that it looks like this...

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To have the wonder of a child again.
 
Same reason that people largely stopped talking about video game graphics. They got so good people just take them for granted.
 
It's true there's definitely an absence of them being admired. You only really hear people discuss them in the context of flexing how smart they are for disliking CGI.
 
They use cgi for everything because the guys making it aren’t unionised. The art of doing actual special effects, building actual sets is dying due to this. Which is just sad. Movies like Alien or 2001 look better than anything marvel ever did and they did it all without computers.
 
Solius said:
Over-saturation probably plays a part.

If you eat a few chocolate bars you probably talk about how nice they are but if everything you touch and see is made from chocolate you probably stop talking about it after a while.
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Yep. Plus special effects have become so good that they can replace everything but the actors themselves. As you mentioned, Marvel just replaces entire filmable backgrounds with something computer-generated, just to get it just right. And in films like Guardians of the Galaxy, there is barely any real, filmable environment anyway.

So there is not much point talking about special effects anymore, we know everything can be done. The interesting part now is how they can be put to good use, by having the next level in scale (although we have been numbed by that as well given the 'huge' scenes that have already been created), or more interestingly: by having the camera do something special. But blockbusters, especially the superhero ones, don't care for that; pretty much everything is generic in terms of film style. That sort of thing would make people talk though, like when bullet time was new in The Matrix.
 
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Because it’s not anything special anymore. We’ve pretty much seen it all and technology doesn’t advance at the same speed it did in the early to mid 90’s onwards. Pretty much everything has been done now and we take it for granted.

I actually find myself appreciating non CGI laden films more now. Full circle.
 
Volumiza said:
Because it’s not anything special anymore. We’ve pretty much seen it all and technology doesn’t advance at the same speed it did in the early to mid 90’s onwards. Pretty much everything has been done now and we take it for granted.

I actually find myself appreciating non CGI laden films more now. Full circle.
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I'm still a big fan of animatronics.
 
The LOTR films are a great case study for this... we start out with a lot of practical effects and real sets subsidised with some great CGI. By the third movie the CGI got a bit uncomfortable and then when the Hobbit series came out, those films were just a pile of wank.
 
Technology has made insane stuff possible, 1 guy on his home pc today can do effects beyond T2 with time and effort.

As someone said above its just not special anymore.
 
Volumiza said:
I actually find myself appreciating non CGI laden films more now. Full circle.
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Same. I've gotten tired with CGI, something like Guardians of the Galaxy does nothing to me, just because of that (separate from its many other flaws :) ). But I also have that with those action blockbusters more generally, with all their random death and destruction.

Maybe I'm just getting old. :wenger:
 
Cheimoon said:
Yep. Plus special effects have become so good that they can replace everything but the actors themselves. As you mentioned, Marvel just replaces entire filmable backgrounds with something computer-generated, just to get it just right. And in films like Guardians of the Galaxy, there is barely any real, filmable environment anyway.

So there is not much point talking about special effects anymore, we know everything can be done. The interesting part now is how they can be put to good use, by having the next level in scale (although we have numbed by that as well given the 'huge' scenes that have already been created), or more interestingly: the camera do something special. But blockbusters, especially the superhero ones, don't care for that; pretty much everything is generic in terms of film style. That sort of thing would make people talk though, like when bullet time was new in The Matrix.
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I think this nails it. Linking it back to the comment about video games, I can still remember how in awe I was with the originalMax Payne game. The bullet time a dual pistol mechanic was amazing and totally groundbreaking (at least for me). I replayed parts of that game so many times just to use those mechanics. Also, sometime graphics can be done so well they do stand out. Ghosts of Tsushima was/is the most beautiful game I have ever played and I would find myself just stopping play to stare at what was on my screen in awe.
 
CGI was fun as a novelty. It got boring for me way before Avatar. Some people took longer, I guess?

You just can't beat actual action:




Everything apart from the (metal) umbrella is real, even the guys hitting the road head first.
And dont get me started on the directing :drool: None of that shaky cam shit with 5 angle changes per second.
 
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