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I'd say "Destroy Silicon Valley" from View and "Mujahadin and Opium" from Daylights makes up for the slide whistle. All is forgiven.
At least they werent totally shit CGI,there is no excuse....
Also try to watch Catwoman or other action flicks of that time. They all use poor CGI, at that time it seemed to be ok.
If anything it is BB + MGW who should have known better, and that goes for all movies they made on their own.
The invisible car though looks great. As I said countless times before, DAD was a huge success in 2002 and got favourable reviews from critics and audience as the CGI was not at all an issue back then.
Maybe you're happy if that is the level of film Bond should be aspiring to. I think most of us would disagree.
This was 5 years after Titanic and 3 years after The Phantom Menace so there were films that were also using good CGI too.
Say it again if you like. The more you say it doesn't mean it has any bearing on whether or not the film is any good. Transformers and Avengers are also huge successes but they are still awful films even with the benefit of having pretty good CGI.
Avengers is an awful movie? We are talking about Joss Whedon's film?
I disagree strongly. It's one of the very best comic book movies ever.
If you want to name a movie that is awful and was hugely successful, name Avatar.
But then, sorry to say, Cameron always pushed the limits and provided us with the very best CGI there was at the time of each movie he made. The same goes for Star Wars.
The bad CGI in DAD is inexcusable that's for sure. What I meant is that DAD was nonetheless hugely successful AND got good reviews by critics and audience.
History will not be re-written just because some can't stand the Brosnan-era or are disliking DAD a lot.
But I will say that DAD nowadays is regarded as one of the least good in forums. It aged not that well as GoldenEye has for instance.
"Out there" though, if you search the internet for current rankings DAD every now and then pops up in Top 10s.
I refuse to accept the notion that DAD is generally seen as the least good movie. That one probably is DAF, AVTAK or TMWTGG.
Yeah that would be the one. If you are entertained by seeing skyscrapers getting knocked down over and over again and a plot based on the hackneyed premise of a load of disparate characters realising that they can achieve amazing things if they just, like, work together as a team then fine. Personally I found it entirely average.
I'm struggling to see your point.
If I gave the slightest toss what the critics and general public considered good my favourite Bond film would be GF and that would never change and I'd think Avengers was amazing.
Avatar, I loathed even more than I loathed the GB being put at the end of QoS. Avatar looks pretty much like any random CGI fest-a videogame.
Can't be doing with the Marvel films really. The ones I've seen are just insanely forgettable and (while fun enough to watch at the time) bland and safe imo, and the rate they churn them out makes it pretty much certain that I'll never see one in the cinema again.
I'm not a fan of the new DC ones either. I really, really liked Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy so it was all the more disappointing for me that they followed those films up by joining in with what Marvel are doing. Having said that, to be fair, I've only seen Man Of Steel. I did think it was one of the worst films I've ever sat through though and I think the reviews of Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad (which I was actually interested in before it came out) have put me off ever wanting to watch them.
Agree 100%.
Yet people remember Rick Sylvester skiing off a cliff 40 years ago. Coincidence?
Interesting that you single out the Nolan Batman films as they are the only superhero films of any great merit in the last 10 years.
So here's a hypothesis: does total reliance on CGI render a film's action sequences mundane and forgettable?
It's allright miss I've got you you've got me ! Who's got you ?.
It's also interesting to note that the Nolan Batman films (which were full of spectacle) used lots of really impressive practical effects and had loads of great stunts, which along with the writing is what made those films for me. They were very modern but, at the same time, refreshingly old fashioned blockbusters.
I think that you're probably right with the hypothesis but perhaps it might less be the total reliance and more the amount of CGI action sequences that make it mundane and forgettable, if that makes sense. Take the Die Another Day tsunami scene for instance. That's memorable for all the wrong reasons but I think even if the CGI was actually good, it'd still be memorable because it's a simple memorable concept (Bond surfs a tsunami). And in the same film you get a car chase, a sword fight, etc. Whereas Iron Man and Superman knock down so many buildings that all the action sequences blend into one. Total reliance on CGI renders the action sequences mundane but it's the lack of variety and creativity with these sequences, the constant destruction porn, that makes them forgettable. To use a better example than DAD, the scene in Die Hard 2 where he ejects from the plane and it blows up (or even the scene in 4 where he hangs off the fighter jet, which was way too OTT for Die Hard but the same principle applies), that's completely CGI/green screen/whatever, but it's memorable for two reasons: partly because the film isn't all CGI action scenes, most of the action scenes use actual stuntwork and practical effects, but it's also memorable because it's a memorable concept (unlike "Superman knocks over another building") and it stands out among the various action sequences. There's variety. Fist fights, shootouts, desperately trying to signal to a plane that's about to crash, etc. These two reasons should be rules for blockbusters to stick by imo, but the superhero films today don't.
I also think that no matter how convincing looking it is, we can just instantly tell what's real and what's computer generated. That's why the miniature and model work of the early Bond films still holds up and looks a lot better than modern blockbusters. Like when Atlantis comes out of the sea in TSWLM, to me it looks a lot more convincing than the environments in Avatar, because as stunning as that film was (but again, another one where I literally can't remember any of it, just remember thinking it was pretty when I saw it), it didn't look real. There was still something off about it. Whereas Atlantis was a model but it was still real. It was a real model in real water and that's why it works for me. Or you could even use Cameron's other work as a comparison, I'd argue that the aliens in Aliens are a lot more memorable than any of the creatures in Avatar, and that's probably mainly down to how well designed they are but I think the fact that they used practical effects helps massively.
Maybe eventually, we'll get to the point where CGI really does look exactly like real life. But for now, no matter how much money they spend on it, you can instantly tell. Like nobody sees the robots in Transformers or Iron Man flying round and thinks wow that looks just like real life. It's impressive CGI, but you can still tell from a glance that it's just that: CGI.
To be honest I'm not sure if I've even seen any of the old ones all the way through, if I have I was very young, I have a vague memory of watching one when I was a kid. But anyway I didn't have any attachment to the franchise (so I wasn't at all biased going into Man Of Steel, I didn't care about him killing people or any of the other complaints fans had, I just thought it was a shit film in terms of writing and entertainment value and was really soulless and dull on a technical level). I haven't seen Batman v Superman either but from what I can tell (and your comment about it being really overblown pretty much confirms it to me), instead of responding to the criticisms people had about Man Of Steel the filmmakers carried on down that route, which is why I didn't see it. I knew from the first trailer (which had a very positive reaction iirc, I think because Ben Affleck was closer to the source material than Bale? But for me that doesn't matter as I haven't read the comics, I just judge them as films) that it wasn't going to be my cup of tea.
Excellent post.
I'm in total agreement with you on both your main points above.
The plane surfing scene in DH4 is far more memorable than anything in Avengers/Man of Steel/Transformers (take your pick) because, even though it is way too OTT and you would prefer real stunts at least you can get your head round a concept there.
All these superhero films show the same thing - the hero flying at Mach 3 and defying the laws of physics to dodge stuff flying at the camera.
Your mind doesn't have time to process what is going on as they just throw more and more crap at your eyes.
And it goes on FOREVER. After the 2nd or 3rd skyscraper gets knocked down you are waiting for it to end but it goes on for another 20 minutes.
Contrast all this rubbish with TSWLM ski jump: all one shot, near silence rather than Dolby trying to rupture your ear drums, it happens gracefully, almost in slow motion.
And the crucial thing is your eye knows it's real!!
It doesn't matter how good your CGI is the human eye can tell.
The model spaceships in the original Star Wars still look better than anything they've done since, the shot of the space shuttle entering space in MR is better than anything in Avengers or Avatar because your eye knows it's a real thing. It doesn't matter it's a model and don't ask me how the eye knows that one illusion has physical form and another doesn't but it just does.
I think that creatively the trouble is that because they can do anything with CGI they do and that leads to ridiculously conflated overblown spectacle with more and more crap being piled on top of each other because in the last film we knocked down 10 skyscrapers so in this one we have to knock down 50 so we just end up with indecipherable destruction on a bigger and bigger scale. And because these films keep on making money they keep on doing it.
I prefer The Rocketeer over all these epileptic Marvel films. The only one I really liked was the first Captain America for its retro atmosphere.
As for Nolan's Batman, I did enjoy the first two but the last one I found really dull.
Now, all personal opinion aside. How can we explain the critical and box office successes of all this Avengers stuff?
Also, if we could explain how the Transformers films, despite being destroyed by critics, despite being basically 2.5 hours of CGI porn and pre-pubescent humour, manages to cross the $1 billion mark easily with each new film? Why was 'Transformers 2' a huge box office success but not 'Independence Day 2'? Both are the same thing, way too much CGI and the humour was extremely cringe-worthy in both.
So there just seems to be a large market (younger?) for wall to wall videogame-style action regardless of plot. There's no accounting for taste. I guess that market also doesn't give a stuff about the critical reviews either.
I also thought that the final battle in Batman Vs Superman had the same video game smash-em-up feel.
When I try these movies, I always end up saying I'd rather watch Tom and Jerry if I want to see cartoon violence.
The same reason cretins like Justin Bieber and the Kardashians exist - the general public are morons with no taste who will buy any old shite if you market it properly.
What I find totally depressing is that normally sequelitis ought to have set in by now and they should be looking at diminishing returns but here we are about 75 films into the Marvel universe and the box office shows no sign of dropping off.