How did they have cheaper effects with a bigger budget?
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Gothor — 17 years ago(September 08, 2008 11:00 PM)
It's a mystery. Sort of like, "How did Hellboy II's budget increase from $60 to $80 million, yet the movie looked like it cost three times as much as the original?"
It all comes down to the skill and dedication of the filmmakers, set designers and CGI team. You can do a lot with a little. Or you can not give a crap and squander resources.
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ShrunkenHeadonKnightBus — 17 years ago(September 13, 2008 11:55 AM)
Honestly, I think the visual effects in both films were rather cheesy.
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Gothor — 17 years ago(September 15, 2008 09:32 AM)
Reptile from the first film always looked a bit cheesy, but some of the effects (like the purple portal Shang Tsung hops through) were amazing and still hold up to this day.
Personally, I've always been impressed with how they handled Goro. I rememeber when the movie was announced, I thought there was no way they'd make a convincing giant dude with multiple arms. (This was before you could just CGI up an ogre.) And boy, I'm glad I was wrong, because Goro rules.
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ShrunkenHeadonKnightBus — 17 years ago(September 24, 2008 11:50 PM)
Agreed. Goro was pretty damned impressive!
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tbone_pearson — 15 years ago(October 15, 2010 04:46 AM)
I would blame the director John R. Leonetti, who didn't direct the first one. He had more money but made a worse film. Not sure why they didn't have Paul W.S. Anderson direct this one, perhaps he didn't like the script. Not having all the original actors back really hurt this film too.
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Black-Wolf — 17 years ago(November 24, 2008 02:19 PM)
Paul W.S. Anderson (director of MK1) wasn't on the project. At the time, he was the only one who could make a video game movie that was good. So it's no surprise to me that it sucked. Anderson never directs sequals. I'm not sure why. But the only Video game movie sequals I liked were Resident Evil, and the first one still kicked more ass than either of the other two.
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MrC_the_Amazing — 16 years ago(March 15, 2010 11:52 AM)
Just look at Annihilation: the sets, locations, props, cast and special effects are much larger than the first film. There are only a handful of special moves in the first film that are adapted from the games, whereas Annihilation is chock full of them. Plus, there are the huge sets depicting the barren wastelands of Earth and Outworld, the effects for the Animalities (lots more FX work there than the Liu/Shang finale in 1). And like others have pointed out, a director can either be very good at using what resources they have, or they can squander them easily.
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lilmarkuk — 15 years ago(January 19, 2011 05:32 AM)
well the locations in mk 2 could of been filmed anywhere
there was no reason for them to film in here in the uk or anywhere else
also the sets were not that great either also outworld was depicted in the 1st mk movie.
1 thing though i back then CGI was still really expensive to use plus took longer to do
so with the crappy budget this movie had the CGI was always going to suck plus he people doing the cgi would have been paid more as would of taken them longer.
the cgi animals in the power rangers movie looked alot better haha. -
liono86 — 15 years ago(March 14, 2011 12:21 AM)
They shouldn't have tried skipping the second video game on go to the third. They should have stuck with MKII as the source material, b/c then, the only new charaters would be Shao Kahn, Kintaro, Baraka and Kung Lao. Also, they should have just left off the whole Animality part. If they did those two things, I think the film could have done wonders for its time.
Shutter Island 7.5/10
Secretariat 7/10
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lcri-1 — 14 years ago(June 11, 2011 11:40 AM)
It might have had something to do with not wanting to delay the film's release out of the holiday season. It's clear some of the effects went unfinished - the clear seams in the "swirling sky" texture at the beginning of the movie, a frame in the same scene where a CG cloud supposedly thousands of feet in the air appears in front of a monk's face, the scene in Shao Kahn's war room where the rope moving Motaro's tail hasn't been airbrushed out and Sheeva only has two arms with little nubs on the costume signifying where the CG team was supposed to put in the others, the low-resolution stock footage lava and explosions in the backgrounds of some scenes that I assume were placeholders, Raiden suddenly appearing with a thunder sound effect, but the CGI stormcloud is missing and he just materializes mid-flip between frames - and the editing seemed rushed as well.
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joshua-psychoj87 — 14 years ago(July 15, 2011 07:09 PM)
Like someone posted earlier, you can do a lot with a little and stretch a dollar for all its worth.or you can have all the money and resources available and not have the vision to make a project a success. This reminds me of the Tremors movies. The first one was an absolute success while the sequel(s) didn't even hold up against the original whatsoever. CGI doesn't always produce great scenes in movies.
"Ha, let me tell ya about 20 year old's my friend, half of them are 16." - 30 Rock -
RevengeOfToonces3 — 14 years ago(November 12, 2011 05:44 PM)
I remember renting this when it came out and thinking it was awful, then finally turned it off around the half-way point after that horrible effect where Rayden comes flipping off that mountain. He literally came out of nowhere.
"Dad! The cable's out again! Can you FIX IT?!"
Hellboy 2 was terrible and it looked cheap compared to the 1st one. The fish story ruined the whole movie.