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March 21, 2006
Spiderman II - and CGI
As it was a bargain and I'd missed seeing it at the cinema I bought the DVD of it the other day. So far I've only sat through it once and I was tired at the time and so nodded off during most of it -but woke up during the end fight scenes and even in my half-asleep befuddled state I thought "omigod they're so obviously cgi characters -they're so totally rubbish. Yeeesh", before falling back to sleep again.
I remember feeling the same way when I saw the second new Star Wars film on TV for the first time. I couldn’t get over how totally crappy the scene in the arena was - where the cgi human characters rode some cgi alien creatures. I mean at least in the old days when they used stop motion animated models - they all had a certain charm -it's something that computer-generated animation just doesn’t have for some reason. Not that cgi animation can’t have charm - see Reboot, or any of the Pixar films -etc. proving it certainly can have charm by the bucket-load. It’s exactly when it’s not pretending to be anything else is when it’s playing to its own strengths, but whenever it tries to take over from the ‘real’ (insofar as any film can be said to be ‘real‘) -is when it’s in its most danger of falling flat on its face.
So, in short, t’would appear I've become rather jaded with computer animation. What was once all exciting because it could invent and show us things that never could be seen before has now become wearisome from over-use, and oh my, isn’t it over-used. It’s problematical for film makers that for all their hard work they're still a long way off creating human-esque characters which are convincing enough for anything other than a quick glance - but when they insist on mixing live actors with their cgi-equivalents they only serve to make those differences all the more pronounced. Unfortunately for them when HD television starts making big inroads into everybody's life - those distinctions are only going to become even more noticeable to the masses.
Mind you - who’s to say that early cgi animation won’t develop a kitschy retro charm all of it’s own? If it hasn’t already. But it hasn't done so with me, maybe I need time. Until then I'll just go on grinding my teeth and whinging. Sorry 'bout that.
Posted by groc on March 21, 2006 05:21 PM
Comments
CGI can be done well, but it's usually not. The lord of the rings did it pretty well. But they used it mostly for non human creatures and long shots. Close ups were usually actors in makup. There were some shots though, where it was obviously cgi. And really, nothing is more distracting.
wibbled by: leff at March 21, 2006 07:09 PM
Couldn't agree with you more on Star Wars and CGI in general, but Spiderman II was a very significant improvement on the first for the quality of the CGI.
Animatronics, puppetry and live action models are still usually more effective than their CGI equivalents in films, not least because the actor at least has something to interact with. When the severed head grows legs and stalks off across the floor in John Carpenter's Thing? That still rocks.
wibbled by: Nathan at March 21, 2006 07:58 PM
that scene from 'the Thing' does indeed still rock - it's stood the test of time really well - whereas cgi -despite being so new is already showing it's age. I think a big part of the problem is that cgi is still too smooth and too perfect to be propery convincing.
wibbled by: groc at March 21, 2006 08:23 PM
Oh, I used to love Reboot. I used to watch that when I was a stoodent. I'll have to see if there's any torrents knocking about...
wibbled by: JB at March 22, 2006 08:38 AM