CG visual effects overload!

Are audiences getting sick of lifeless event movie carnage fests?

posted May 10, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's some commentary on the state of CG effects.

 

There has been talk recently that movie audiences are perhaps a bit numb to an overabundance of CG in large-scale blockbuster films. And this is exactly one of the observations of “Avengers: The Age of Ultron” that I came away with, even though I continue to feel it’s a spectacular installment with writer/director Joss Whedon and crew having pulled out all the stops once more quite successfully.

 

But here’s the thing.

 

As we watch the Avengers taking on hundreds of robots in a populated area, dispatching them in droves, was there perhaps a small sense that we’ve been here before? The Battle of New York in “The Avengers” was spectacular in its size and scope, with CG effects taking ahold of the screen in a new way on a grand scale and not just as a city was being destroyed by a natural disaster, but by a team fighting the very thing that brought destruction in the first place. But I digress.

 

Hollywood now has the ability to mount incredibly expansive events on film like never before, but in movies where show-stopping scenes bring on a sort of lifeless indifference, will the industry at some point learn that audiences are slowly but surely becoming tired of “CG mania” almost as much as what was suppose to be “the new norm” in filmmaking, 3D, has once again been relegated as a fad, likely to rear its head again on another 30 years with the pronouncement that “this is it!” While I don’t believe CG will ever be considered a fad, it must grow out of the current state of simply performing whenever it can as opposed to whether or not it’s really necessary.

 

Paraphrasing Jeff Golblum’s character, Ian Malcolm’s line in “Jurassic Park”: “Digital artists and studios were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.”

 

George Lucas proved far and away that all the pretty colors and bright toy-like shapes of his “Star Wars” prequels and their overstuffed computer generated backgrounds and props couldn’t hold up a script that was too clouded with political clutter and acting that was laughably subpar by one of its leads.

 

"Man of Steel" played the CG card to the hilt, yet became a numbing mess of horrendous destruction with little or no human element of pure emotional strife. And even one of the next big summer movies, "San Andreas" presents us with one more city spectacularly caving in on itself (think “2012”) and one more giant ocean wave about to engulf a major city. Even the Transformers movies have become a confusing conglomeration of metal forming and reforming with CG precision all to the confusion of movie audiences who can’t figure out what’s going on exactly.

 

Despite gi-normous box office figures telling everyone that these movies are the best ever, there is an audience out there that’s weary of these films for the exact hollow quality of the inevitable final act of unrelenting mayhem.

 

Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely love how CG effects can enhance a movie, bringing the reality of it to life in ways we’ve never imagined. And while small screen fair such as "The Flash" and even the hit Netflix show "Marvel's Daredevil" can give as much bang with smaller budgets, we have to wonder how these large scale superhero movies will fair when studios and CG artists have topped themselves and can’t go any farther without massively repeating the work presented.

 

BTW, there’s one thing I didn’t mention in my review of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" which pertains to my thoughts here. Right away I felt the use of CG to articulate Ultron’s metal mouth was unnecessary. It actually took me out of the action a bit because I felt a hard metal, immovable mouth piece would have worked just fine as opposed to something that seemed way beyond what was possible technologically in our present day, even coming from the hand of Tony Stark. In the 23rd Century, perhaps. There was no need for the mouth to articular and metal lips certainly would not have caused human-like voice and words to form the same way they do with us.

 

That might seem like a minuscule thing in comparison to the rest of the film, but it was just one more element of “Ultron” that caused me to question the overuse of CG animation. Darth Vader’s mouth, and in fact his entire mask didn’t need to move to show anger or emotion, right? And that was a hard practical costume prop. - Flix-Men David Blanchard