Here are my comments on the visual
effects nominees for this year's Academy Awards.
To recap, there were ten films on the
longer list, and five films nominated for the award. The films which
were nominated are Gravity, Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Star
Trek Into Darkness, The Lone Ranger and
Iron Man 3.
The films that were not nominated are
Oblivion, Elysium, Pacific Rim, Thor: The Dark World, and
World War Z.
Many of these films
had over 1,000 shots, in fact most of them did. That is an
astounding amount of work, I am not sure it is a record for any one
year, but it might be. However, quantity is not quality.
Of these, Gravity
will win the academy award for visual effects. I have forseen it and
so has everyone else. Yes, there could be an upset, but no one
expects that so far as I know (I guess that is the definition of an
upset...). Although there is some confusion about the various
techniques being used, there is no doubt that Gravity is a
filmmaking tour de force that uses visual effects brilliantly
to bring off their story. Of the people I know who have seen the
film, all but one of them declares that it is an amazing film. It
deserves to be there. The fact that we will now be forced to endure
nightmarish imitations is just a sad fact of life.
Hobbit/Smaug
was interesting but did not overwhelm me. The 48 FPS was, again,
interesting, but I have seen this all before (admittedly projected on
film when I saw it before) and yes the same problems that Showscan
had, Hobbit/Smaug had as well. Since no one seems to be the
least bit interested in learning from the past, I won't bore you with
this. There is nothing new under the sun. I had trouble seeing why
people acclaimed the visual effects, though. Dragons are hard and
this dragon is pretty good, but it never once convinced me it was
really there, nor did many of the other visual effects convince me
that we were there. If there was a category for visual effects in
the service of a fantasy/animated film, it might qualify but in the
pure visual effects genre I do not get it. However, obviously the
subsection did get it and it was nominated. It was certainly a
tremendous amount of hard work, whatever else we might say.
Star Trek Into
Darkness was very good, but was it that much better than Elysium
or Oblivion to have received the nomination over the other
two? I don't really see it. The problem is that there is a very
high level of effects across so many films. How can you choose ? I
felt that Elysium and Oblivion had elements that were
innovative and I did not feel that way about Star Trek. But
whatever.
It is the final two
films, The Lone Ranger and Iron Man 3 that I take some
exception to.
The Lone Ranger
reminded me a great deal of Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).
Lots of car chases, I mean train chases, lots of practical effects.
Nothing new. Good solid quality work. Could it be that the more
mature members of the subsection united behind the two films that
used the most practical and traditional (scale models) effects? (Lone Ranger and Iron Man
3). I think that is very likely what happened.
Best part of the movie. Could there be some subtle sexual imagery here?
Unbelievably stupid skydive rescue scene. I don't care how hard it was to do if the idea was dumb.
Of all the films,
Iron Man 3 was by far the worst. The classic visual - effects - means - exploding - shit film, par excellence. Loud, but stupid,
with none of the charm of the first movie. Just a lot of exploding
stuff and improbable physics, the parachute rescue was about as
stupid as I have ever seen. How could this have been nominated over
Elysium or Oblivion or Pacific Rim? Perhaps it
is just nothing more than the factions uniting to support the
traditional technology. I happen to like traditional technology, but
not on stupid films, please.
For me, the best
water was in Pacific Rim, the best monsters were in Pacific
Rim, and the best use of scale was in Pacific Rim. Sure
it was a silly "monsters eat Hong Kong" movie, but hey, so what else is new at the VFX
bakeoff?
Which brings me to
my final point. The problem with the bakeoff is that it is all
about visual effects films, and that does get tiresome. Maybe we
could slip in a little romantic comedy or something now and then just
to liven things up ?
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