I sometimes wonder if these "tricks" are still better than CGI. A bit like using LED wall with Unreal Engine as Hybrid rather than everything CGI.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/unreal-engine-...
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/unreal-engine-...
I've also tried to avoid selection bias: I've seen bad (& not funny B-movie bad) films from the 90s
Death Proof is a masterpiece discarding CGI
This isn't to say there aren't good films anymore, there definitely are, CGI isn't what makes them good tho
Take a look at epics like Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia. They use HUGE scales with no need for CGI.
star wars ANH: $50 million
star wars ESB: $100 million
star wars RoTJ: $90 million
lawrence of arabia: $137 million
ben hur: $144 million
so yeah, the movies you mentioned had significantly larger budgets, but not massively so (at least compared to ESB and RoTJ). I'd argue the bigger difference is the subject matter. you can do a large 1930's battle without CGI just by throwing money at the problem. there isn't an amount of money you could spend in 1970 to do any of the prequel trilogy coruscant scenes. they probably could have done most of the naboo scenes, though.
I'm also not arguing that huge CGI renders are always a good thing. most stories are really just about the interactions between a few people. I do think it's a significant value add for the scifi genre especially, where the world itself is often a character.
This is a logistics issue not a technology issue of the major players who make action movies these days. Your average Avengers film has the action sequences already pencilled out and being created and finished before the rest of the plot is even really figured out and the connective tissue of these scenes is filmed later which is why the action scenes all feel like just random set pieces that are sometimes tonally different and also often don't really have any plot development or repercussions to the rest of the movie because they're just set pieces the director is slipping their story between.
"They say" GRRM is rewriting it because we disliked HBO's GoT story. I say he had no idea what to write and now he knows what not to write.
It's part sad and disgusting.
Tarantino on JRE described how the car crash scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imS39s9DKtQ) was done by pulling the two cars together with a wire & dummies for the gore
I think CGI is coming up on "effectively perfect", especially with the way it has gone from a post-production thing to becoming part of the world around the actors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StageCraft
So once people get used to perfection, I expect there will be a revival of "practical effect" productions, where people go for intentionally imperfect but more "human" approaches to making scenes. It'll be niche, of course, like low-fi games or fancy barista pourovers. But that's what feels like "better" to some people.
I'd certainly love that in the right context. In the same way Stranger Things was a success as an 1980s revival, I could imagine modern takes on sci-fi films of the 50s-70s that are intentionally done without CGI.
Then why does it still look ... like CGI? I've seen several of the biggest budget productions from recent years, and it seems to me like CGI is not getting any better. Take buildings with debris destroyed in recent Marvel movies for example, or almost any scene in the last film in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, or even Dune, which I just saw in theaters. The CGI sandworms look like CGI.
> especially with the way it has gone from a post-production thing to becoming part of the world around the actors
I can agree with you on this point. The good / unnoticeable uses of CGI are to add background details around the actors, not replace action / stunts, and use as few digital models as possible (the models are still the weak point). Mad Max: Fury Road was the one film where I'd say the CGI approximates "perfection".
If you look at Dune reviews, there was high praise for the look of the film. Ditto for audience reaction. So I think "coming up on effectively perfect" is a reasonable way to phrase it. Things can always be better, but as long as the effects are good enough to not be distracting to 95% of the audience, I think we'll still see the sort of plateau that will eventually lead to some directors and audiences getting bored enough with CGI that we'll see a revival of practical effects as an aesthetic.
I think a really good example of this is this comparison between the old and new Dune movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHPkdMGI6D4
The new Dune is masterfully crafted, and I was never once bothered by the CG, even though there was clearly a ton of it. The old Dune, on the other hand...I don't think it's aged particularly gracefully. Then again, I've never been a huge Lynch fan.