Most special effects in Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park are actually practical. You know those scenes where T1000 is shot and the liquid metal is revealed? All those are practical effects, with blue screens and patches used where you can see through his body. It was difficult to use blue screens, morphs and warps at that time - but it was not revolutionary, it was just evolutionary - a better version of effects already used in Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes or The Abyss. Sure, it looks good - but technically, it's not the best.
The CGI in both movies was mostly used to smooth animations or replace minor details. It was used wisely so the flaws aren't obvious, for example nobody pays attention to the lower half of the T-Rex body in the museum scene. Today, the artifacting, the ghosting, the primitive mapping, the bad illumination and the ultra-smooth movement would be considered mediocre. When you see the *whole* body of the dinosaur, it's an entirely CGI scene. When you don't, it's practical. We don't know how dinosaurs looked like, so they saved time by making them undetailed, bland looking and grey.
Basically, the whole post-production time of a movie like Transformers 2 (where 50 hours were spent to render a single frame) was used for the 7 minutes of Jurassic Park CGI. It was a matter of time, computing power and intelligent shortcuts. Yes, it was good, it was evolutionary - but the praise it receives today when compared to other movies is completely unjustified. If anything, praise Spielberg's intelligent direction, which allowed them to use a lot of practical effects.
Technically, today's best CGI in a released movie is in King Kong and Transformers 2. Unfortunately they're both very long movies, so a few scenes were sacrificed - I'm 100% sure some textures were missing in the opening of T2 and sometimes the interaction of the real props and CGI objects was totally screwed up. In King Kong, it's obvious the dinosaur stampede didn't pass through the final rendering process - the actors aren't properly integrated in the green screen, the skin of the dinosaurs sucks and it's the only part of the movie where it seems not all of them have the muscles modeled. The weird look of King Kong is intentional, it's using a custom colour palette and illumination.
It's not intended to be photorealistic. Everything is infinetly more detailed than in any other movie except Transformers 2, and you can say that the variety of the CGI makes it even better than that one. If you have a HD version of King Kong, please analyse it - you'll even see insects flying in and out of the dinosaurs' mouths, landing on leafs... it's like a whole team was dedicated to this single task, an effect which almost isn't noticeable in the DVD's resolution. Every dinosaur has the skeleton and the muscles modeled and realistically moving, you'll see the muscles beneath the skin and you'll see how perfect and natural they move.
Watchmen and POTC 2/3 are also great. Dr. Manhattan and Davy Jones are almost photorealistic.
Other movies use simple, yet time consuming CGI techniques that aren't obvious - so I don't really think it's fair to compare them to "stars of the movie" like dinosaurs, monsters and **** blowing up. For I Am Legend, all the pedestrians, people at the windows and moving cars were digitally removed. That looks great. The CGI creatures - the animals and the zombies - are just mediocre. It's the same situation as in Jurassic Park - the CGI that's not obvious, that only enhances the scene, is good and effective, although not complicated, just time (and money) consuming. The CGI that is intended to be at the forefront falls flat.
Artistically, I choose Speed Racer. I find it very beautiful and it's extremely creative. It's not worth seeing it in anything other than HD.
Excuse my rant, but I'm just tired of people praising the practical effects of Terminator and Jurassic Park and calling them CGI. Anyway, the quality of the CGI only matters when you're analysing it on purpose or when it's very badly used. Sometimes, cartoony design saves the technically inferior CGI, like in Immortel or Casshern, but when it's mediocre/bad and also tries to accomplish realism it fails - like in Spiderman.
Cloverfield is another example of smart filming that saves the CGI. The handheld camera, the practical effects (especially smoke and debris) and the miniatures make it look awesome, when in reality it's at the same level with Outlander (mediocre-to-good, but that movie's monster had the best design in years). The money shot of the Cloverfield monster is the only scene where they worked their asses off to make it very good, and even there they used the focus trick to save time and work. The impact of the scene is enhanced by the build-up, by the revelation that it's the first time you actually get a good look at it and you don't know where to start from - and it's over before you analyse it...
Log in to comment