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What movie's visual effects have aged the poorest?

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aragronstandenhanced3pq1yw.jpg


this scene is pretty awful - theres also a golden flag waving at one point and it just looks sooo bad... i could tell it was cg when the movie first came out even.
 

Ogodei

Member
I would agree with Terminator 1, mostly in the part where the T-100's face was damaged. That mask looked NOTHING like Arnold, looked like a pinch-faced Christopher Walken or something.

The T-100 Skeleton's movements were kind of hokey, but that worked since it was meant to be uncanny and frightful anyway.
 
Nah, the lighting is just horrible in that clip.

Well, we're talking 2002-04 type CG here, in which case I would believe it's probably the best they could do for a full-frame CG shot without any assistance with practical stuff at the time. Similarly, full-CG shots in Jurassic World look horrible because you can obviously tell it's a CG shot, thereby breaking believability, but the quality of the CG itself is not necessarily bad, which was something that was brought up over and over in the trailer threads for it. I think the Plinkett Prequel reviews pretty much already have said everything there is to say about it being an unnecessary CGI-fest, ruining both the movie and the viewer's experience of it. Even if there was a good movie under all that CG somewhere -there isn't-, you would way too distracted by all the crap to notice it.

They never replaced the Alien with any CG. I never got how people saw the puppet as such, it doesn't even look remotely computer generated at all. It's more a result of awkward compositing.

Huh? Oh, I was positive they did something there. Well, fucked that up then. I do remember noticing it looking awkward ( so 'horrible' to my then teenage mind) on VHS rental in the 90s (pre-Resurrection). I actually like the movie though. When I comment on an effect or its particular aging, that doesn't mean I suddenly hate the effect or the movie, which goes to these quotes of my comment on The Thing '81 :

I'm not saying every shot is perfectly convincing, but in general isn't the thing still considered pretty much the holy grail of practical effects? I saw it twice in the last couple of years in cinema and it still has a ton of impact.

I disagree. Animatronics really didn't get any better, they were replaced (unfortunately, imo) by cgi. The Thing and Lifeforce are still spectacular. There are things to consider beyond photorealism, like craftmanship.

The thing with animatronics and other kinds of practical effects is that the people working on the film were generally much more aware about the limits of what they could reasonably show off. So they adapted the whole filmmaking process with camera angles, lighting, etc to work in conjunction with that.

A lot of CGI probably ends up poor because it's always added in post, and that makes it less likely that they properly plan the whole process in advance.

wut

The Thing still looks fantastic.

And I agree on pretty much all counts. I love The Thing, I think it's Carpenter's best and a great movie, and I love how every 'encounter' is framed differently for effect and everything (I've commented on this in a movie thread a year ago or so), and since I'm an '80s kid, I would never say "this looks bad", because I would be comparing to what was possible at the time, even if I had never seen the movie before today (like say, Halloween 1 & 3, The Fog, and Night of the Creeps that I only saw last year for the first time). I like to believe I'm a reasonable person in that regard. Alien and (OG) Star Wars are equally very well made movie where the effects are used and framed to create believability (and Terminator as well).

However, that is not what this thread was about, so pulling the creator-card like this one:

Oh jeez another GAF thread shitting on visual effects when you guys don't know anything about the process. Carry on as usual.

is completely irrelevant. Nobody cares how it was made because we don't need to know that when we're watching the movie. We're viewers, not makers. In fact, if we did, it would decrease our enjoyment of believability because we would know what we're looking at versus rolling with it and enjoying the movie (a -former- user here had a quote from Bruce Campbell on their blog where Campbell said that he see doesn't movies anymore, he sees actors, lighting, composition, etc. In video games, the same problem of understanding design was coined 'designeritis' by Ralph Koster in A Theory of Fun where a person can't help seeing every game as a 'rip-off' of another set of games because through playing many games they've gained too much understanding of the medium). Also, it's a product and it's sold to people on their viewing terms.

What we were (are) talking about is whether a particular effect shot, regardless of whether it is good or bad or how it is framed, has aged poorly. Any shot of miniatures for instances (Bond movies like Goldeneye or 70s movies has plenty of these) tends to age poorly because after a few years people automatically begin to be able to tell it's a miniature and the way it's put together doesn't help to maintain the illusion of it being a massive object. Reversed playback effects can also be detected but require a bit more background knowledge, as well as the mentioned front-projection in The Terminator. But the moment you see it, you can't suddenly unsee it (See Campbell). The illusion is broken, the effect revealed, and now it calls attention to itself for being an effect. Practical effects are kind of weird in this, because they are both obvious and 'ignored' at the same time. Any movie viewer knows that they are necessary, and will wilfully accept them for the sake of the movie, so they tend to last much longer, but not forever.

I think it's safe to assume most of us are '80s / '90s kids and so we grew up on a norm of 'ignore the effect' since there wasn't really an alternative. But I suspect '70s people would do the same to miniatures where 'we' would no longer do that. Similarly, I've seen plenty of 2000-born kids refer to practical effects as dated because they don't have to accept them as a norm. And this will get worse over time. Full-frame CG effects show this on high-speed because the technology has been developed within the last few decades, and so even movies made a decade ago or even more recently can be said to look terrible and dated (though the first tend to become the second).
Speaking of miniatures: that crash from In Time mentioned above should get a good laugh out of everyone, because everyone can tell what that is (someone also mentioned Independence Day, which is probably on the same merit, despite 'us' ignoring those miniatures). But the exact same scene might occur in a '70s movie and we would say it's the best they could do, but it's still a dated effect now, on account of it being an effect that now draws attention to itself for being one.
That was what I implicitly assumed we would all understand as proper ageing versus 'just being bad'. The Jaws 3 shark is just bad, but while the effect of that absolutely awful CG monkey in Lost in Space may not technically be bad at the time (I think it kinda was though), it is of course THE example, aside from the prequels, of an effect that immediately and irreversibly draws attention to itself for being an effect and horribly dated in terms of believability.

So to summarize for people with 'ain't got no time on the internet' (which is weird, you're weird): Is the The Thing a great movie? Absolutely. Does it have great practical effects for its day and age? The best. Can I watch the movie today while ignoring that certain effects (the dog) are effects? No, not anymore. That age has passed, and that's what I meant by ageing. It doesn't ruin the movie or make it bad. And now I'm done with this wall of text and ready to smash some computers.
 
CLU's face in TRON: Legacy. I mean, the rest of the movie still looks fine.

Clu-tron-legacy-18220429-600-400.jpg


I think even in 2010 people were put off and going "uncanny valley," but it was made extra jarring to me after being surprisingly impressed by Ant-Man 'de-aging' Michael Douglas and even Arnold in Terminator Genisys.

Honestly, I thought it looked really good and seemed to fit the Tron world. It only looked out of place in that scene from 1989. Should have kept him in the dark because it did not look good in natural lighting.

I was gobsmacked by the T-800 in Terminator Genesys. Pretty seemless.
 

Afa

Member
The rest of Jurassic Park holds up amazingly, that first T-Rex scenes and raptors.
JP aged like fine wine, except for the first dinosaur reveal scene, that brachiosaurus, when you watch it again in HD, it doesn't hold up well.

9gyaeFA.jpg
 
I think part of the problem is some of this stuff isn't that bad within the context of the movie, when not in a still photo where you can scan it for several seconds/minutes to nitpick, and when it isn't a gif that loops (again, allowing for nitpicking). Like, that Jurassic Park scene with the Brachiosaurus just posted is fine in the movie. Yes, it looks old, but you still get the sense of weight and scale.

I'm not saying all of the stuff in this thread is passable or good, because most of it is bad, but I just think context is important.
 

injurai

Banned
CLU's face in TRON: Legacy. I mean, the rest of the movie still looks fine.

Clu-tron-legacy-18220429-600-400.jpg


I think even in 2010 people were put off and going "uncanny valley," but it was made extra jarring to me after being surprisingly impressed by Ant-Man 'de-aging' Michael Douglas and even Arnold in Terminator Genisys.

This was intentional, but it still was really bothersome.
 
The falling scene in Robocop



Though the arms always looked off to me.

I think the long arms were suppose to create a sense of forced perspective, but it ended up backfiring on them. But I agree that this always looked hilariously bad. I still love the stop motion and matte paintings of Robocop though.
 

halfbeast

Banned
Blue Crush - back then kate bosworth's copypasta was a bit off. looking at it again, it feels like a joke in comparison to any random e3 gaf gif!

anigif_enhanced-7011-1394137061-1-1438885261.gif
 
Slightly unrelated but I watched this GIF so many times I can't unsee Wesley snipes adjusting his path mid spin to make sure he stops in the correct spot for the shot. You can see him look down to align himself hahaha.
That ain't Wesley Snipes, it's his stunt double.
 

Joe2494

Neo Member
aragronstandenhanced3pq1yw.jpg


this scene is pretty awful - theres also a golden flag waving at one point and it just looks sooo bad... i could tell it was cg when the movie first came out even.

Is this from a trailer or something? I just looked at the scene on blu-ray and it doesn't look like that at all. Looks far better.
 
There was just a huge era of film around the 2000's that were simply atrocious and have all aged terribly.

Fuck CG. Give me rubber puppets all day, every day.
 
I'm surprised by people saying Jumanji not holding up. Mainly because Jumanji didn't look good even back when it first came out. I remember seeing the commercial saying how it uses the same techniques as Jurassic Park. I scuffed at it thinking they were lying and using weaker computers to render the effects.
 

NekoFever

Member
Blue Crush - back then kate bosworth's copypasta was a bit off. looking at it again, it feels like a joke in comparison to any random e3 gaf gif!

anigif_enhanced-7011-1394137061-1-1438885261.gif

Is that the one where the actual surfers are clearly guys with her head superimposed? I've never seen the movie; I just remember reading about it when it came out.
 
The rest of Jurassic Park holds up amazingly, that first T-Rex scenes and raptors.
JP aged like fine wine, except for the first dinosaur reveal scene, that brachiosaurus, when you watch it again in HD, it doesn't hold up well.

9gyaeFA.jpg

While I agree that the CG here has "aged", it still holds up better than so many of the other examples in this thread. There was still a lot of careful attention to detail applied to the lighting, animation and positioning of the camera that helps the scene overcome its technical limitations.
 

greycolumbus

The success of others absolutely infuriates me.
The rest of Jurassic Park holds up amazingly, that first T-Rex scenes and raptors.
JP aged like fine wine, except for the first dinosaur reveal scene, that brachiosaurus, when you watch it again in HD, it doesn't hold up well.

9gyaeFA.jpg

This is probably my favorite shot in the movie. Too bad it's ruined by the CG face swap. Lousy stunt double looking into the camera!

DczjGGF.jpg
 

Kettch

Member
The worst bridge scene in the Hobbit movies wasn't even Legolas, it was this atrocity in the first one. I cringed at how horrible that looked in the theater.

Overall, I'd probably give the award to AotC though. A lot of the worst stuff can be forgiven due to low budgets, but not that.
 
I do this for a living too and seeing vfx-related posts in GAF is about the same as seeing the gaming side whine about 60fps vs 30fps. Basically, very uninformed bashing with little understanding of the actual subject.
Honestly, get over yourself. There are plenty of real-time and offline VFX artists like myself on GAF and you don't even need to know what we know about practical and CG effects to share what you feel has aged poorly.

If it bothers you so much how about not even post in the thread? It's not like people are at each other's throats in here. In fact a lot of interesting conversation is taking place about why some things looked the way they did, or their evolution across versions of the film.
 

DapperSloth

Member
Another obvious victim of aging are '80s animatronics or effects like in The Thing.

You serious? It is still to this day one of the movies that has the most convincing practical effects. I watched it again last year, very creeped out by it, could not understand how they pulled it off. Fantastic. Just marvelous.

Saw The Thing (2011), and laughed at it. My god that CGI over the practical effects creatures was so so dumb. Sat there, absolutely NOT terrified at all, just yawning... Test audiences doesn't know a good effect if it hit them in the head.

A movie that has 30 years on its neck can still scare me, and a 4 year old movie almost made me fall asleep.
 
You serious? It is still to this day one of the movies that has the most convincing practical effects. I watched it again last year, very creeped out by it, could not understand how they pulled it off. Fantastic. Just marvelous.

Saw The Thing (2011), and laughed at it. My god that CGI over the practical effects creatures was so so dumb. Sat there, absolutely NOT terrified at all, just yawning... Test audiences doesn't know a good effect if it hit them in the head.

A movie that has 30 years on its neck can still scare me, and a 4 year old movie almost made me fall asleep.

That and the fact John Carpenter's film is a masterpiece (my fav film) whereas The Thing (2011) is not very good regardless of prac/cgi effects.
 
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