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I personally dislike the main establishing shot of the approach to Silva's HQ (on land) there's something slightly off with the motion and colour.
I'm pretty sure that was done for real, but the film cuts right after to end the stunt.
Absolutely. And we all evidently notice CGI differently and have different reactions to the CGI we notice. For me, the pasted-on faces during the PTS took me right out of the film the first time I saw Skyfall in theaters. However since then, perhaps because I was expecting it to be so bad upon rewatch, they really don't seem too bad to me. But Silva's collapsing face in close-up when he takes out his dentures has never looked good and every time I see the film, during that moment all I'm thinking is 'CGI...CGI...CGI...Gollum...CGI'
I should also mention that the elevator scene never looked off to me, but that, while I've managed to reach a point where I'm able to more or less enjoy the scene for what it is, the komodo dragons have always looked profoundly CGI-ish. Pretty good CGI, I'll admit, but they are nonetheless very obviously digital creations and they spend a good long amount of time onscreen interacting with Bond. So length of time onscreen is definitely a factor as well.
Don't need the cgi bike stuff
Don't need the cgi island
Don't need the cgi scorpion
Don't need the cgi Komodo dragon
Don't need the cgi face Silvia gollum
Don't need the cgi elevator
And my least favorite- you don't need cgi helicopters!!!!
That's why they're planning ahead for the next one. ;)
Did you want Daniel to get stung by a scorpion?! Explain that one to his publicist.
"Wait, catch me up on this. Why is Daniel having a real scorpion put on him?"
"Well you see, computer effects are costly and we can't risk the budget on it. We also want it to look super real. We got a bloke on set from the London zoo who brought one in special for us. It's tamed, trained, SUPER safe."
"What if it bites him?!"
"Like I said, SUPER safe."
Put Craig against a wall and then put a glass pane against him and then put the scorpion on the glass oh wait
I'm sorry Brady. You're hilarious! So great. I can see that conversation.
That's exactly why they should focus on writing practical stunts, instead of coming up with some bizarre, off-the-wall idea that'll require CGI for some reason.
They still do that though. The SF motorcycle chase and everything else, including the crane and all the PTS was done for real, and had Dan in most of it. In SP the same is true with the turning helicopter and plane.
It's just that CGI is used at minor moments to make audiences think that Dan is doing the more dangerous stunts, or the effects are in place of the green screen with him in a cabin to simulate that he's there. So really what what you should be asking for EON to stop are CGI replacements. The stunts are real, all they do is layer effects.
Seems quite apparent on the face of it - but Craig and Mendes have also been on record as having high praise for and inspiration from LALD.
Yes, and the L&LD homages extend to the film's skull imagery and SP's Day of the Dead parade as well. Jumping off the reptile's back was as plainly an homage as the shoe knife and the Acrostar in Q's lab in Die Another Day.
LALD was the first Bond film Dan and Sam ever saw as kids, so it's special to both.
Caking Bond/Patrice's face onto the stuntman's bodies through that green screen usage in SF is not my idea of being "done for real." Just cut out and show the stuntmen doing what they do best.
The actual stunt is real in every case, though; the fighting, driving, explosions, all of it is real. Minor effects are added, yes, but what you see was done with real stunt people and not computer models. The 60s movies had this same hurdle to jump through with back projection and what I view as an overuse of it, so Bond has never been perfect in the effects department and where EON choose to use them.
I think EON could actually-and should-use effects for some things. People complain about the bloated SP budget, but everything, even that massive explosion near the end, was real. What we need to fight for is the use of real stunt work for the action that matters, but effects only for things like explosions. The production burned money on that stupid explosion just so they could do it for real and get an award, and that is not a wise use of funds. They could've done a small scale model explosion (they have a great model team, after all) and spent a fraction of what they did on all the explosive material they needed to rig up that massive area.
Sometimes doing it for real makes no logical-or in this case, financial-sense.
Spending however much they spent on one large explosion might not be a sound idea given the massive budget, but neither is spending the amount they put into that Rome car chase. The kicker is that at the end of the day, even after the $30 million plus, they STILL used a cartoon-looking CG Hinx in a particular moment. For a movie that cost over $300 million, it sure doesn't show it on screen as well as it could have.
But the car chase couldn't have been done any other way. They could've just done effects for all of it, but that's not the Bond way with chases and they would at least be using their investment towards an actual sequence in the film that moves the story to another point.
The explosion at Blofeld's HQ is seconds long, and could have been done with miniatures and minor effects, as it isn't important to anything. It has no function or salient reason to exist other than for Mendes to jump up and down with his Guinness award and say, "It was real, we did it for real!"
As for the car chase, not sure what you mean by "but the car chase couldn't have been done any other way." Sure it could! For $30 million for ONE single chase, I expect something a bit more flavorful and fun than Bond casually talking to MP on the phone while Hinx is busy not being a danger in Bond's rearview mirror. There are moments throughout that are very beautiful to look at, but that's about all it has going for it. Surely they could've done so much more for such a hefty price tag.
If, of course, they truly couldn't manage anything else due to the rarity of the cars, then perhaps they shouldn't have written it into the film in the first place, and gone with something that would've saved them $20 million, while simultaneously being even more exciting.
I prefer them trying to be as realistic with the action as they can, and by that I mean through the effects and what have you, but it all has to be consistent. I think if SP cost them $100 million to shoot, nobody would've cared about that explosion, but when you're boiling over a $300 million price tag, then something needs to go or be changed.
Speaking of that explosion, do we know just how much it cost? I've heard people complain about the price tag of it, but can't say I concretely know what it was.
Not what I meant. I meant that it made more sense to use real cars than stage it all with computer models in post. How the cars were used doesn't come into it at that stage of thinking.