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Just saw a trailer in 3d and IMAX and am thoroughly excited for this movie. Anyone else?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9ceBgWV8io

From the trailer, I thought the alien scenes looked like a computer game.

James Cameron is a mixed bag in my opinion.

Terminator was wonderful, but T2 was hugely overrated. The Abysmal was dreadful, Aliens has dated faster than warm milk, and I won't even start on Titanic...

Oh, and nobody ever mentions Piranha 2 - the Flying Killers....

Not holding my breath.

Pete

I think that CGI is becoming a problem. Mark Kermode was ranting a couple of weeks ago about the effects in 2010. when the guy falls through the ship in The Posseidon Adventure, he said, a stuntman did it for real. It's a rubbish film, but with great effects like that. You see amazing things today and you know they're just CGI or bluescreen. The excitement has been reduced to a puzzle.

I'd rather go to the dulux factory and watch their walls.

Since when did the effects come before plot and character development? In actually does link with magic. You can do the most visual of effects but it will never have the impact of the story or emotion you hook on to an effect.

Luckily for Hollywood the idiot masses will always go to see stuff explode along with loud noises and no plot to complicate matters.

I really wonder why we bothered coming down from the trees sometimes

I for one would love to see a blockbuster film in which several famous buildings get blown up, washed away or crushed in slow motion. Maybe I should give Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich a call?

At the risk of sounding like part of the idiot mass, I'm quite looking forward to this one (in case you hadn't already guessed). But I do agree about special effects in general. It seems like more and more films are relying on CGI these days; I don't mind if it's done well and is seamless, but bad CGI can spoil a film. This is why I don't watch programs like Primeval, for example - the effects are so blatantly computer generated it makes me cringe with embarrassment for them. The same goes for many films.

Tomo wrote:I think that CGI is becoming a problem. Mark Kermode was ranting a couple of weeks ago about the effects in 2010. when the guy falls through the ship in The Posseidon Adventure, he said, a stuntman did it for real. It's a rubbish film, but with great effects like that. You see amazing things today and you know they're just CGI or bluescreen. The excitement has been reduced to a puzzle.

I have to echo what's being said and go a step further... I'm tired of paying even the matinee admission fee just to see an elaborate cartoon...

We get it! CGI will allow anyone to be a god but enough already! Especially with the lower-end/poorer quality work that's starting to become a norm, even in some of the bigger budget films (like 2012).

The film in question however, has me a hint miffed in that the title was deliberately usurped by Cameron who knew that M. Night Shyamalan had opted and was working on a live version of AVATAR: The Last Airbender {http://www.filmjunk.com/2009/06/23/m-night-shyamalans-the-last-airbender-teaser-trailer/}... (finger's crossed that it's not as bad as Dragon Ball Z turned out)

It would simply be nice to see Hollywood (figuratively speaking) get back on track when it comes to using actual talent and technique to make things happen, rather than computers and animation.

Yeah, I feel the same way about CGI. You always have the "this isn't real" nagging feeling when you're watching, so I don't enjoy CGI films as much as non-CGI fims

But then, I don't think this is anything new. CGI (particularly Disney/Pixar) is just one step up from 'normal' animation which has been with us for decades. I remember hearing recently about Walt Disney always using the very latest in animation techniques, and this is the natural progression. Disney films have never been my cup of tea (I was always a Warner Bros kid), so it doesn't really surprise me that I'm not a CGI person either

But people watch them and people enjoy them. At the end of the day watching a movie is all about enjoying yourself, and if people like watching CGI movies I'm not about to complain about that. I have to admit, Disney and Pixar both do a fantastic job always trying new things, and the quality of work is far from poor

Don't get me started on this!! The main reason I gave up my job as a special effects technician was the increasing reliance on CGI... It's become a plague these days with images being created digitally just for the sake of it, even when there are perfectly acceptable real world solutions instead. When it's used properly it's a wonderful tool and, like all effects, the best ones are the ones the audience never notices - no more actors in cars or planes with horrible rear projected traffic and sky outside the windows, no more eye-bulgingly horrible matte lines around spaceships, no more strings or wires visible anywhere!! (for one of the greatest modern uses of CGI, watch Tom Cruise drive his kids along the highway full of stalled cars - the camera starts inside the car, pans everywhere, moves outside and finally pulls out for a long shot.... absolutely nothing looks amiss until you realise no camera in the world could pull it off and the car and actors were filmed against a green screen and the background added later... fabulous!! And no one notices!!). The reason something like Jurassic Park works and, say, Transformers doesn't is the careful blending of 'real' on set effects and models combined with CGI (plus the fact that the fx supervisor was Phil Tippett - a fantastic old school stop-motion animator who could impart a sense of character and 'soul' to the digital creations).
To be honest, in some ways it's incredible that these days anything that can be imagined can be created, and every now and again I'll happily watch things blow up again and again in the latest blockbuster... but it in no way matches the sense of wonder that I first felt (and still do) watching an old Ray Harryhausen film and knowing the love and dedication it must have taken to bring a cyclops, or a hydra, or a bunch of undead skeletons to life..... now that's real magic.

Getting back to the original thread.... like him or loathe him (and personally I think Pirahna 2 is the finest flying fish movie ever made ) at least James Cameron tries to be different and push the barriers. I mean Terminator was made for 'two bob and a toffee apple' but he turned it into one of the most iconic films of the 80's; Aliens features maybe the strongest female lead in a movie ever (still a rarity even now); The Abyss - let's train the whole cast and crew to scuba dive and really film it all under water!! Madness... but it looks totally authentic (and features some of the best and worst models ever committed to celluloid); T2 - groundbreaking CGI (started the craze... for better or worse..);True Lies - Arnie's best non robot film, great set pieces and best use of a Harrier in a movie! Titanic - biggest chick flick ever, but hats off for building a near enough fullsize replica ship down Mexico way!! Proper megalomanical filmaking just like the good old days! He then spends the next 10 years building cameras and diving on the real Titanic and waiting till he felt technology had reached a point where Avatar could be made.... will it be any good? Who knows? But at least it's trying to be different.

I still remember the sense of shock I felt when I heard that Clash of the Titans was the only movie in which Ray Harryhausen had an animation team behind him. All the effects in his other films were done single-handed.

Huckin' Fell!

I used to dislike CGI, but soon realised that - as a tool - it all depends on how it's used.

For example, I love the way in which Peter Jackson uses CGI - Heavenly Creatures was utterly stunning, and King Kong was jaw-dropping.

And then there's the fact that CGI has allowed low-budget movies and TV shows to be made with the type of effects that would have been way beyond their budget constraints if they'd been done optically.

I think that we become more aware of the fakeness of CGI when there's nothing else for us to pay attention to - decent plotlines, sharp dialogue, sympathetic characters and slick performances are marvellous forms of misdirection for the FX wizards out there...

Pete

flashman wrote:...personally I think Pirahna 2 is the finest flying fish movie ever made

Maybe... but this was a follow-on from Joe Dante's Piranha. And when it comes to Joe Dante vs James Cameron, I'm in Joe's corner all the way.

Piranha 2 was a poo movie, but the original - with all the same budget limitations - was top-class entertainment.

I don't think Dante's ever come near the budgets that Cameron commands, but his movies are far more entertaining.

Pete

Personally I think the plot behind the terminator is stupid.

"Let's go back in time and kill the Connor's when their all grown up in order to stop the apocalypse"

"How about instead we go back when they were babies, that would be a lot easier than spanning this out over three times."

I wasn't being entirely serious about my devotion to Piranha 2. Agreed, the first film is way, way better. Bradford Dillman is one of my favourite actors (especially in 'Bug' and 'The Bridge at Remagen). Joe Dante never really got the kudos or the breaks he deserved in my opinion. Gremlins and Innerspace are amazingly entertaining (Gremlins II stinks though..). Much like John Carpenter, he never seemed to thrive on bigger budgeted films.

flashman wrote:Much like John Carpenter, he never seemed to thrive on bigger budgeted films.

Carpenter had the misfortune of releasing The Thing only two weeks after E.T. hit the cinemas - and when people wanted heatwarming stories about cute aliens, and not the last word in visceral alien terror...

It was all downhill from there, as studios saw the box office flop as a sign that he needed reigning in...

Interestingly, though, The Thing still stands up as a masterful genre classic, while E.T. is, and always shall be, setimental cack.

Pete

I've never liked Spielberg's films, they're too sickly in my opinion. Loved his cartoons though