XENOPHONZ opened this issue on Dec 11, 2007 · 68 posts
XENOPHONZ posted Tue, 11 December 2007 at 2:37 AM
The two prime examples being Beowulf and The Golden Compass.
In the case of The Golden Compass, I believe that there's a lot more going on than the CG aspect of the film........the movie is probably losing audience share in the US (at least in part) for some of the same reasons that The Da Vinci Code did. Many people won't go to see the movie because of the philosophy which underlies the story, and because of the publicly-cited motivations of the author (Philip Pullman) for writing the story in the first place.
Plus there's the fact that many of the critics are panning The Golden Compass simply because they say that it's a bad movie.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/his_dark_materials_the_golden_compass/
When it comes to the CG aspect of the situation found in The Golden Compass, one reviewer says this:
"The actors can hardly move among all the computer graphics, much less express any emotion or spontaneity; there's no sense of wonder."
Beowulf, on the other hand, comes in for somewhat friendlier press from the critics -- but it's still not setting the world on fire in terms of box-office draw:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beowulf/
"This is what happens when directors with lots of money and powerful computers get all hot and bothered about the latest new toys."
http://www.film.com/movies/story/weekendwrapupbeowulftriumphsehnotsomuch/17370314
For the purposes of this forum -- I am particularly interested by the fact that I often see a lot of movie critics who gripe about the overuse of CG in films -- and who gripe about CG in general. Many of the professional movie critcs just plain don't seem to like CG. That's tough: seeing as how CG is taking over the fantasy / scifi movie industry these days. But the complaints against CG seem to be growing in proportion to the use of CG in film.
Some individuals appear to think of CG as nothing more than a type of fakey trickery, and therefore not worthy of any stories / movies which are supposed to be taken seriously.
I wonder what movies like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments would have looked like if they had been put together using CGI: instead of real-world models, fully-constructed sets, and thousands of hired & costumed extras. The Ten Commandments used some primitive (but effective) FX -- however: it was very little by today's standards.
Would those movies have been considered to be as "classic" as they are if CGI technology had been available back then, and if CGI had been heavily utilized in making those films? Much as I personally like CG......I tend to doubt it.
While CGI is by no means is going away.......I think that one lesson which we are learning -- and this is key to understand -- is that no amount of action-packed, semi-realistic-looking flash can make up for a well-written story.
Of course, CGI is steadily getting better with time. But even at it's best, CGI is what spice is to the main course of a meal: it's a flavor enhancement to the actual sink-your-teeth-into meat of the story. Spice by itself is not a meal: and CGI cannot replace the underlying story. If it tries to, then it fails. A meal that's all spice is no meal at all.