How did they have cheaper effects with a bigger budget?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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beierfilms — 9 years ago(June 08, 2016 04:03 PM)
When I first saw this god-awful movie, I assumed that the studio had shelled out a far smaller budget than that of the first film which was why it looked so amazingly cheap. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the budget was almost twice that of the first film.
While I think a big part of it was due to in-experience on the part of the director; I'm still often at a loss as to how it turned out looking so bad (after all, the director of this one had been the cinematographer on the previous film so one would hope he'd have some idea how to make a film not look terrible).
Sure, the first film had some cheesy effects but they were light years better than those on this film. Further-more, the first film had FAR more convincing production design with sets that didn't look like they were borrowed from Power Rangers.
Did you see how many people were in that cast? There's a HUGE chunk of your budget. AND, it's SOP, when an actor returns for a sequel, he/she gets a bigger piece of the pie than then previous film.
Except many of the actors who would have been returning and thus asking a higher price were replaced in this film. Christopher Lambert was most likely the biggest pay check in the first film and he didn't return nor did Bridgette Wilson who would have commanded a much higher salary than the no-name actress who replaced her.
Most of the actors on this film where relative unknowns who probably weren't making much above scale (the lowest SAG union rate). Especially given that the biggest stars left after the first film, it's still stunning that this film cost as much as it did.
I don't doubt it. When a stuntperson takes an acting role, they get paid as an actor. While it wouldn't be the millions of dollars given to a bigger named actor, it's still more than they'd make just doing stunts.
Actually, it's not. A regular actor gets a pay bump for stunt work and professional stunt men usually have their own set rate. When they're given actual lines in the movie (as opposed to just being guys fighting in costumes), they'll get their stunt pay and an actor's scale pay which is much less than even a moderately recognizable actor Christopher Lambert would make.
Just ask any movie producer or casting director. The cast of MK: Annihilation would have been far cheaper than the cast of the original.