by jellydonut25 » Fri Sep 18, 2015 11:50 pm
The comments about the effects kinda hurt, and it's even a discussion I was having the other day with a bunch of people.
For some reason, American audiences are conditioned to swallow CGI and not practical effects. I don't get it, but everyone always says it's "better" because it looks more "realistic." I call shenanigans. I've NEVER looked at a CGI effects and said, "Holy damn. That looks so REAL. It's like they found an actual [whatever that is] and filmed it. I'm BLOWN AWAY!" Now, that doesn't mean I hate CGI or think practical effects are "better" or look more "realistic," but I think you just have to judge each effect unto itself.
Personally, I think the CGI in both Godzilla 2014 and Pacific Rim is amazing. The composite effects are great, things move with a sense of weight to them, and they are great examples of just good solid effects in general.
The CGI in Hobbit and Jurassic World on the other hand...definite parts that were extremely underwhelming. Some of the early shots of raptors in Jurassic World were shoddy, as were things like the CGI gate and stuff like that. Hobbit has some awful compositing, and the whargs (are they wargs? I dunno...the wolf-hyena things) float rather than actually appear to be running across the ground.
NONE of the things I talked about above looked realistic. Not a single thing. But I have NO complaints about two of them, while the other two, I wonder what they actually spent their hundreds of millions of dollars on, because it wasn't those particular effects at all.
Same with practical kaiju effects. I never (well, except maybe when I was y'know like 4 years old and watching Godzilla movies) thought a Godzilla effect was REALISTIC...but the 90s Heisei movies have a sense of laziness, bulkiness, and general ineffectivity, while the better Showa films show what can be done with suitmation done right. Again, NONE of it is realistic, but it's not about REALISM, it's about getting lost in the movie and enjoying it for what it is.
When a movie is good and the effects are good, it's easy to just get swept up, no matter the TYPE of effect being used....
...or rather, it SHOULD be.
Unfortunately, I (and probably everyone here, and a bunch of people I know) are in the minority. Studios disagree (execs are constantly pushing for CGI in place of practical effects, and have even been known to outright replace shots of practical things with CGI), and so do audiences (as shown by people lapping up even shoddy CGI and claiming it superior to practical stuff).
It sucks.
ALL of that said, I wonder if perhaps this particular movie/series is just getting backlash because the movie itself isn't very good, a lot of people have already seen it, and they're just picking on it in general.