Star Wars, King Kong, Matrix....... Animated Films or Special FX Movies? by TheSomnambulist

I'd class animated Movies as using either all hand drawn cell animation or all CGI and no live action chracters at all. Movies like Star Wars, King Kong etc I would class as live action movies with CGI special effects. I know what you are saying, where do you draw the line? Movies like the Polar Express is just Tom Hanks and the kids rotoscoped.

So is it truly an animated film? To be honest I cannot see the point of creating a film like that (unless it's a superhero film and the chracter is doing things that are beyond physics).

Personally in a live action film I am a fan of using models with CGI. I don't like too much use of CGI it takes away from the realism and as you said the actors chracters suffer from the fireworks display.

I class King Kong, LOTR, Star Wars as live action films. Toy Story, Shrek and Final Fantasy I class as animated movies. Roger Rabbit, Polar Express and Space Jam (good grief) I feel is a bit of a gray area.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 5:20 AM

Hi j6ngo1977.

That I have to admit is how I viewed things - but King Kong in particular changed my mind about how I view the use of CGI. At times it was clear that Kong was animated, Ann Darrow was also animated as too was the enitre background and I felt I was being subjected to a wonderful software demo. Granted it was a class above anything else, but all the same it was animation pure and simple. (This also often happened with the Star Wars films)

As you said you'd limit it to superhero films and I in part agree. I mean really if you're going to 'paint' in the background 'suit' up your heroes and then have them doing death defying acrobatics, via CGI, then what do you have? An animated event... So why are they bothering with the actors at all? Nostalgia? A reluctance to let the last element go or does the inclusion of a 'human' figure still give it enough weight over a strictly animated feature....?

Now you mention Toy Story, how funky would that be if the actors were blue screened and part of the film? I think that'd work quite well. With enough clever make-up ie 'The Mask' Buzz's jaw could easily be created :D

Hmm I dunno - I just wondered. Nice to have your take on things.

I think the thing that got me wondering is that after watching King Kong I came out feeling I need to watch something with acting and dialogue. Not to criticise King Kong but I didn't want to see that style of film.... I guess.

The
Somnambulist

www.cirqus.com

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 6:29 AM

I haven't watched King Kong myself but my friend has said similar to what you are saying. He said it's not a patch on LOTR which, for all its CGI, at the end of the day those films have good chracterisations and story but King Kong just seems to be a special effect tour-de-force.

I think Spiderman did a good job with it's characters. I liked Toby Mquire and Kirsten Dunce (who was also very hot) and their difficult relationship. But there was no real way to get around Spiderman's super-hero acrobatics other than CGI and some wirework. Ok maybe wirework as shown in Crouching Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle may have worked. That is a lesson in how it can be done.

I think actors will never be replaced with animation. They will always be 2 seperate mediums. You can't tell stories like Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and of course Firefly without the characterisations created by real live actors.

Oh also I must add alot of animation is also character driven like Futurama, The Simpsons and Toy Story but those characters are specificaly scripted for animation and would tend not to work if translated into real life (Flinstones, Scooby Doo etc).

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 6:39 AM

On the DVD audio comment on Star Wars VI George Lucas raises an interesting question: "Why is everyone considering CGI characters more artificial than rubber suites?" Well, my personal answer is: Handcrafted work has the charm of being imperfect.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 6:45 AM

Exactly CBY. CGI does not contain the chaos and imperfections of real life so is very hard to emulate. Some of the best CGI I have seen, I'm not being biased, is in Serenity - The Pilot when the Reavers are chasing Serenity through the atmos of Persephone. Joss Whedon is a pioneer from creating CGI with imperfections to make it look more real.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 7:04 AM

CBY

Gotta agree with you there. I think Lucas has become somewhat blinded by the technology. I also listened to that commentary and I was a little surprised to hear him say how he was refining the dialogue to an extent where he was using the music to 'speak' the stories. So certain lines of dialogue are used in each film and can be readily applied to the film before and after and so on... Allowing less and less meaning being derived form the lines.

i.e. "I have a bad feeling about this" It was funny when Han Solo first said it but by the six film it's meaning has become so abstract through parody and self reference that the meaning is lost.

I guess this means the film is really told in pictures as apposed to pictures and sound. Again I think this furthers the almost innevitable redundancy to those actors. I mean would it matter who played Obi Wan? Or Annakin? I don't think so. But Mal? There's only one Mal and that's because it was made his own by Nathan with those wonderful words he is allowed to utter....

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 7:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by j6ngo1977:
I think Spiderman did a good job with it's characters. I liked Toby Mquire and Kirsten Dunce (who was also very hot) and their difficult relationship. But there was no real way to get around Spiderman's super-hero acrobatics other than CGI and some wirework. Ok maybe wirework as shown in Crouching Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle may have worked. That is a lesson in how it can be done.

Very true.

Quote:
I think actors will never be replaced with animation. They will always be 2 seperate mediums. You can't tell stories like Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and of course Firefly without the characterisations created by real live actors.

Actually while I agree with what you're saying I must just point out there are some powerful Manga anime that does impact aswell as those you've mentioned.

Akira is quite brilliant, not just as an animation but as an incredibly well directed piece of cinema. Also I don't know if you've had the chance to see Perfect Blue, but that simply is an impecably crafted piece of film - really worth a look.

However Goodfellas.... What a film!

www.cirqus.com

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 8:39 AM

Good thread this Somn even though its just you, I and CBY posting .LOL.

Yes very splendid film is Akira. I'm not a big Manga fan but I do have Akira and Ghost in the Shell in my collection. Great films. The Matrix owes alot to Ghost in the Shell.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 8:52 AM

Speaking of animation, I am really sad that the traditional 2D animation is if pretty much dead (apart from Anime).

I am speaking of classics like Disneys "Aladdin" (I know, there was CGI in it, but they didn't even call it like that back then). I grew up with shows like "Darkwing Duck" and "Ducktales" and really miss that kind of animation these days.

Anime is - no offence - basically quickly drawn assembly line work and nothing like the old times.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 10:07 AM

THECOLLECTOR

Well would you call "Clash of the Titans" an animated movie? There was a tons of claymation in the movie.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:11 AM

CBY

I'm a little sad of that fact, although I'm optimistic that the drawn style will prevail. Just CGI needs to flex its mucles a little bit first.

Interesting your thoughts on Anime - I'd never really considered it in those terms. I must admit to not knowing a great deal about the procedure behind them. I'll have to investigate.

Cheers
The
Somnambulist

www.cirqus.com

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:15 AM

Hi TheCollector

Personally I wouldn't call Jason and the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans animated films - but I guess given the lack of clear boundaries it could be so. However what the Harryhausen films did was to create a character and animate that character within a 'lifelike' environment. Where as King Kong is basically animation with 'live' characters within the film...

The
Somnambulist

www.cirqus.com

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:18 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by j6ngo1977:
Good thread this Somn even though its just you, I and CBY posting .LOL.

Yes very splendid film is Akira. I'm not a big Manga fan but I do have Akira and Ghost in the Shell in my collection. Great films. The Matrix owes alot to Ghost in the Shell.

Thanks.

Yeah the anime influence is strong with the Matrix films. I actually feel the first Matrix perhaps made the blend of live action and animation better than any. It felt true to the story being told. Much as TRON did in fact.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:

Interesting your thoughts on Anime - I'd never really considered it in those terms. I must admit to not knowing a great deal about the procedure behind them. I'll have to investigate.

Well, it's a simple observation: The sheer amount of Anime paired with the technically simple animation. For instance, movement is never smooth (speaking of typical tv show Anime here), often they are only using a couple of frames and/or loop them.

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Thursday, January 26, 2006 2:04 PM

yep just us 3 guys :D
Jason of the argonauts and clash of the titans........fantastic

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Friday, January 27, 2006 11:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
I actually feel the first Matrix perhaps made the blend of live action and animation better than any. It felt true to the story being told. Much as TRON did in fact.

I think Matrix had the perfect balance. The famous rotating camera for instance was shot "by hand" so to say. And they had an actual story!

I'd say the same goes for LOTR. They could have used much more cgi but they didn't. There were many poor people in rubber suits (there you go Georgie boy).

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Saturday, January 28, 2006 1:05 AM

Yeh The Matrix is my 2nd fave movie behind Star Wars. The story just mirrored todays society and made you think. Before the matrix I used to relate to work as 'The best of both worlds' from ST:TNG. I am Borg resistance is futile etc (just to digress. Best of both worlds 1 of the finest ST:TNG episodes ever aired). But that was a personal thing as not many people are sci:Fi geeks. However now so many people say to me 'I feel like Neo plugging into the Matrix'.

Nothing wrong with rubber suits. Aliens was filmed with 6 guys in rubber suits and no CGI. Not 1 person on this site would say that Aliens is a bad movie. Outstanding piece of cinema which every time I watch I get the same tingle up my spine. '1 express elevator going to hell. Going down!'. fantastic!. John Carpenters The Thing. All prostetics and no CGI. Yes exactly LOTR. People dressed like orcs in rubber suits. I could go on.

CGI will get more realistic however people always like a good story. Movies have become like 'POP music' however people will always prefer a good song.

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Saturday, January 28, 2006 9:14 AM

soz j6ngo1977. I'm afraid I'm not a big fan of Aliens

but you're right it aint a bad movie :) It was a fair old action flick, and Stan Winstons creature work was great!

(Just the ethos of the 'Alien' was kinda lost under a barrage of lame army speak and kick-ass characters, just firing off bullets.) It just wasn't for me.

The Thing! Wonderful. Jaw dropping special effects!!!

The
Somnambulist

www.cirqus.com

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Saturday, January 28, 2006 10:25 AM

Another bad example of CGI is Sin City. I don't care if this fits to the comic, it is completely artificial, made with actors in a green painted studio. I think Sin City is - from a visual standpoint - a chunk of coal.

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Saturday, January 28, 2006 12:01 PM

THECOLLECTOR

There are two terms used in Cinema... there is Visual FX which is your CGI... and there are Special FX which is pretty much everything else from "Wire Fu" to whatever.

IMO if it has live people on screen acting it's Live Action and not Animated. I don't care if they're in a production studio or not. King Kong would've failed without using CGI. The Matrix would've failed without using CGI.

Sin City used an interesting visual style. What made it "Artificial" as you say. Because they wanted to make it look like a comic book?

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Saturday, January 28, 2006 1:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TheCollector:
Sin City used an interesting visual style. What made it "Artificial" as you say. Because they wanted to make it look like a comic book?

No, it's the way they actually did it: The movie is practically yelling every second: "Look, I am a formerly green wall replaced by pixels!". It's just so obvious that it really distracted me from the story.

EDIT: Nice to have a new one in this interesting discussion

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Saturday, January 28, 2006 2:03 PM

CYBERSNARK

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Quote:
I think actors will never be replaced with animation. They will always be 2 seperate mediums. You can't tell stories like Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and of course Firefly without the characterisations created by real live actors.

Actually while I agree with what you're saying I must just point out there are some powerful Manga anime that does impact aswell as those you've mentioned.

I'd also recommend Witch Hunter Robin as an example of expressing a great deal of character in animation, and of good use of CGI without being overbearing (they use it for backgrounds and such).

http://www.shiroitsubasa.com/shiroitsubasa/witchhunterrobin_review.htm

http://www.geocities.com/mark_a_brown/robin.txt

http://www.geocities.com/mark_a_brown/robin2.txt

EDIT: Er, those last two are screenshots that I borrowed from IGN (to avoid stealing their bandwidth). The .txt extensions are a way to foil Geocities' restrictions against linking image files, but now the board doesn't recognize 'em either. Just click 'em.

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Sunday, January 29, 2006 2:33 AM