Puppet monsters with glowing eyes are scary, CGI monsters are not
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luvdalz68 — 16 years ago(December 13, 2009 07:16 PM)
I agree, I think the best CGI monster ever was the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, especially when it breaks through the fence. That still gives me chills, and when I first saw it, I was just floored. "How did they
do
that?"
Moldy mildew, mother of mouthmuck, dangle and strangle and death!" -
reecespieceshero — 16 years ago(February 05, 2010 12:15 PM)
The OP couldn't be more right! Take Gmork in NeverEnding Story. I still shield my eyes as an adult. The Skeksis are as terrifyingly ugly as ever, especially the death of the emperor. I like the idea of even older films such as the Time Machine where the cannibals are wierd and freaky, and YES, their eyes can glow. If anyone has ever seen the Cannon Movie Tales series. Those have frightening imagery as found with the modern filmmaking. MOst effective to me was "Snow White" in which Diana Rigg as the evil queen has a magic mirror that talks to her by way of heads that surround the mirror. The heads have black eyes, and are quite mean looking.
There's also Tim Curry as darkness in Legend, and the Power Of Shadow in Supergirl.
With every beat of my heart, there's thunder inside -
zeta1983-1 — 16 years ago(February 22, 2010 08:03 PM)
I've said it once and I'll say it again: I'll take animatronic puppets and robots and actors in make up and rubber suits over CGI anyday. CGI monsters are like having a cartoon character in a live action film. My kudos to the actors for running in terror and making it look effective even though they are just standing there in front of a blank green screen. CGI is widely used because it's cheaper but you can tell the difference. I think movies from the late 1960s-mid to late 1990s made the best monsters & aliens. This was before CGI was widely used but beyond the days when you could see the zippers on the back of the monster's suit. Things looked real and you couldn't tell it was a puppet or actor. Some CGI can be effective though, particularly when mixed with puppets, actors etc. District 9 is a fine example. The aliens looked so real I assumed they were actors in costumes rather than CGI characters.
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exsulis — 16 years ago(March 06, 2010 08:14 AM)
I'm one of those people who would rather see real world puppets/models over the CGI type any day, but to claim that CGI these days still looks fake is showing your only looking at the bad examples on those cheap sci-fi shows.
A decent CGI creation is in no way cheaper than making a puppet version, it's only because most movies try to pay the cheapest for their CGI that you get those bad fake look creations. Go onto a site like CGTalk and you will see exactly what CGI is capable of by artists that aren't restricted by a budget. The only reason puupets/models can be made to look more real than CGI is because the materials that go into their production to make them look real is far cheaper. And not to insult a lot of those artists out there but creating a realisitic looking living creature using CGI methods takes an aweful amount of skill, your talking 3D creation methoids, 2D texturing, knowing anatomy to create realistic muscle movement, so for those wanting to think CGI is the easy way out hopefully you'll begin to understand it isn't even close to being easy.
I do agree though that a lot of CGI is wasted in movies under some fake illusion that is wows the audience, just as someone mentioned the LOTR movies showed perfectly how to use CGI; Use it to create your word/inhabitants and let the story/script wow you. -
Merry-Go-Girl — 16 years ago(March 28, 2010 04:52 PM)
Its so true, puppets have much more life in them. Even when a CG character was motion captured theyre pretty much soulless cartoons. You can just feel it when what youre looking at is actually there on screen, and characters cant affect you if they literally have no substance. And its the same with gore. People getting torn apart digitally is funny, but the special effects in older films like The Thing or The Fly make your limbs feel numb. And dont get me started on the new and improved ET special edition, a paraplegic in a suit can capture peoples hearts ten times better then a digital drawing.
Why do people so frequently get told to "read the book" on a
movie
database? -
luvdalz68 — 14 years ago(November 01, 2011 09:53 PM)
I agree - just look at the animals in "Jumanji". They didn't have "weight", they didn't move right or naturally. They ran past so fluidly and so lightweight as to be unbelievable. The elephant that crushed the car didn't move right, in the same way that you'd expect a real elephant to crush a car. You couldn't feel its "weight".
"I can't take his drivel anymore, Counselor, do something!" -
Brady1000 — 13 years ago(March 08, 2013 09:54 AM)
I agree totally. CGI is way overused at this point. A good example is Yoda from Empire Strikes Back verse Yoda in Revenge of the Sith. All of the charm and realism was completely lost.
Lord of the Rings was a movie that mixed CGI with matte paintings and costumes, which in my opinion was the greatest use of CGI ever on film. The Star Wars prequels was the worst example. -
Ponies_in_Jumpers — 10 years ago(April 14, 2015 08:00 AM)
CGI is best when used to enhance what's already there but is not as good when used to completely replace other effects. Prosthetics, make-up, animatronics and models really add the feeling that there's something there and often stand the test of time.
Like how the T-Rex looks amazing with it's mixture of animatronics and CGI but watching the trailer for the new version the creatures look so obviously cartoonish despite being high level CGI. It's like you can see the space where they've been pasted in.
The first LOTR trilogy often utilized CGI very well (though there were obvious exceptions where things had been created entirely out of CGI). By mixing physical effects and using CGI to enhance things they managed to create a world that felt real, compare that to the Hobbit trilogy which has much better CGI technology and a shockingly higher budget but looks rather like a video game. -
jfemaleder — 9 years ago(January 17, 2017 09:08 AM)
Rather late coming into this thread, but I'm here because of the basic topic of Muppets. I have no problem with CGI and am not going to talk about one vs. the other, but I will say one of the things I have always loved about the Muppets and any of Jim Henson's projects, is they were real. They were tangible, physical things. There was no concern about how hair should be generated on a screen. I understand that CGI is, in itself, an art, but the realness of the Muppets is what always impressed, and in some cases, scared me. That's what had me totally immersed in The Dark Crystal as a child. Yes, there were matte paintings, but the creatures were real, the sets were real, you could sense texture not because of imaging tricks but because the texture was a tangible thing that existed.
Watching the Skeksis Emperor die and fall apart freaked me out as a kid, and now, as an adult, I am still impressed with how it happened. It actually did happen. An actual puppet with a performer, crumbled apart. Yes, I am aware that special effects were used in the movie, as in where a Skeksis & his Mystic counterpart vanish in a poof of light, but the sets & all the misc. background creatures were physical things.
Sorry, just got caught up in reliving Jim Henson's magic.