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If anyone's seen enough bad B Movies from the 1950s they'd know not all rubber sharks or practical effects/models look good and can be shot with obvious strings, strange wide angles etc. I guarantee very few would accept a bad rubber shark shot badly in a film today (unless it's an overt nod to that sort of stuff). On the flip side anyone's who's seen Sharknado will know not all CGI sharks look good.
I'll go one further - does a CGI animal (or indeed any CGI) always need to look 'real'? Sometimes that uncanniness or strangeness helps make the scene (as mentioned some get that sense from the CGI Komodo dragons in SF and enjoy it for that). Personally, I've gotten a similar sense when watching films with obvious animatronics or whatever.
CGI and VFX are red herrings in that sense. Much of this depends on filmmaking and story. That's all any form of VFX is in service to.
Bingo, it could be the film Bond fans have been waiting decades for!
Precisely.
At any rate I don't personally want something like TLD - as much as I like it it's never been a top 10 of mine in terms of Bond films. It has some obvious downsides like weak villains and Bond girl. Plenty to love in there and to look towards, no doubt, but this one will be different. I think GE stands up a lot more but I know like any other Bond film it's not something we're ever going to get again, even if simply because it's a film that only could have been made in that post Cold War period.
Fair enough, I was just using that as an example of how I prefer a bad 'real' fake to a bad 'CGI' fake.
Or even better. I'm under no illusion that the CGI tiger in Life of Pi looks far superior to the stuffed tiger's head in OP.
I never claimed all practical effects look good.
Nor would people accept 1980s-era CGI in a film today (unless it was a deliberate homage).
Exactly.
I guess so, but it's not a feeling I get from the examples I've cited in the film. I don't feel unsettled by the glider unfolding or the shots of Safin's island. I just feel a bit disconnected from the reality the film wants me to believe in.
If I recall, @talos7 said the Komodo dragon was a great 'pulp' moment - the animal itself, not the effect, which I actually think is decent, so I wouldn't exactly call it strange or uncanny.
Of course, you could also make the same argument about an unreal looking practical effect.
But again, I'd ask why. There's no reason any of us should prefer one or the other strictly speaking. They're just techniques of visualising something in a film. It depends on how it's done.
Yes, although I'd argue strictly speaking neither look completely 'real'. But I think the design of the tiger in Life Of Pi works best and goes with the sheen of fantasy those sections of the film have.
I'm not saying anyone did :) My point wasn't that one looked 'good' or the other 'bad'. It's that if you have a film which doesn't know how to depict the VFX, or if the VFX isn't working in tandem with the story or visual strategy of a film, both can go wrong.
'Done badly' is the key phrase here. I'd say there's CGI from the late 80s/early 90s most of us easily swallow today (The Abyss and Terminator 2 being examples). Same goes for some wonderful practical VFX.
A masterpiece in its own right obviously! :)) But I don't think it's a bad film because of CGI in itself.
Maybe uncanniness or strangeness wasn't the right way of saying it (I was being very generalised - it's more about the film eliciting any emotional reaction or giving the viewer a specific impression through CGI/VFX. My point is we're thinking of it as what looks 'real' which isn't necessarily the point of an effect, or any film as a whole).
I'd say the glider scene in NTTD isn't a totally 'real' scene in terms of impression (it has a verisimilitude to it, but it's on the more outlandish/fantastical of Bond sequences). But there's this odd, part dream-like quality to the last third of NTTD for me anyway. Everything - even the long take and kinetic camera during the battle scenes - has this 'sheen' across it. So I think the VFX/CGI is integrated into that film fine.
My main point is that CGI isn't the issue here, and the way we're thinking about it is flawed. With a different Bond movie there could be just as much CGI used in the actual film, but it might not look as noticeable or get these same criticisms.
I kind of put TLD and CR together in terms of tone: they both have quite a similar, to my mind, way of approaching the Bond material, which is to take it very seriously and yet just with a hint of knowingness here and there: they haven't completely lost the Bond of it all. Plus they both have that pleasing Eurospy atmosphere which the Bonds I tend to prefer have.
And they're both followed up by films which, for my money, lean too far into that serious tone and lose the wink, and don't feel quite as Bondy to me. And funnily enough, both have a South American flavour which just aren't as to my taste as much as the Euro ones are.
If the new film could hit that TLD/CR tone for me, but in a new and fresh way, then I'll be happy.
Because, like I said before, I'm looking at a physical object or effect created in-camera. And yes, it depends on how it's done.
Then we agree.
I guess we just interpreted things differently. Maybe I haven't been looking at it in the right way.
If I didn't notice it, I wouldn't have any criticisms.