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909

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What makes the effects in John Wick 4 "practical"?
All the fighting is something you can see and you know a computer didn’t generate the image. There are very few green screen shots. The only one that sticks out is when they obviously filmed a multiple car scene in a paved lot somewhere and placed ‘Paris’ into the background. But you know that someone is actually dodging cars.

Or how about the nazi scene in the Last Crusade. You don’t need to film everything with backgrounds any lay person can tell are computer generated. People have obviously had their fill of this by now. To film a CGI filled Indiana Jones movie, and for people to not see it, doesn’t that speak for itself? It’s antithetical to the first three movies. There’s no magic getting anyone in the door. The sets aren’t something you can touch.
 

cobainwasmurdered

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That is a totally useless answer. I've only seen one movie this year, and I was told it was shit, but I didn't agree. "Shit" according to whom/what?
All the people who are not seeing these movies or saw them and hated them apparently? Critical reviews? Virtually every metric? If you like it great. Did you actually go or did you just buy some tickets to support it.
 

AA484

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People still have an appetite for these 3 hour CGI movies if they are good (GOTG 3) but it seems they will have less tolerance for them going forward.
 

cobainwasmurdered

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yeah if its good people are going to watch it, that's not even a question to me. but you can't just trot out Harrison Ford or Michael Keaton for a money grab and expect people to nuts for it
 

909

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People still have an appetite for these 3 hour CGI movies if they are good (GOTG 3) but it seems they will have less tolerance for them going forward.
Yeah exactly, and that’s good and fine. If you’re gonna send out a 5/10 movie you deserve a 5/10 level box office. The only surprising thing is that it took this long for people to come around and stop blindly buying movie tickets for things that aren’t that good.

You can’t just send out an 80 year old white guy and think people are gonna nut their shorts anymore. And that’s good.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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All the fighting is something you can see and you know a computer didn’t generate the image. There are very few green screen shots. The only one that sticks out is when they obviously filmed a multiple car scene in a paved lot somewhere and placed ‘Paris’ into the background. But you know that someone is actually dodging cars.
I must be overdue for a new prescription, because I usually can't tell. Like I've said before, the only time I ever notice bad effects is when my mind starts to drift because I'm not engaged by the story.

Or how about the nazi scene in the Last Crusade.
Never saw it. My feeling coming out of Raiders was, "That was cool, but I'm good on that." Not that articulate, of course, because I was only six at the time, but that was my basic vibe. The pinball game they made based on the series was fun as hell, though.
 

Gary

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I feel like there's a problem here that goes beyond bad CG and capeshit: budget's have gotten too big. Right now, something like "Asteroid City" was Wes Anderson's biggest box office opening, and "No Hard Feelings" actually didn't have a big drop in it's second week. A part of me thinks people are beginning to crave more mid to low budget movies, and that Hollywood ultimately has gotten greedy and put too much money into things. When you look at the budgets for stuff like "Quantumania", "Fast X", "The Flash" and the latest "Indy" movie-movies don't need to be that expensive, and it's especially noticeable when you see clips for some of these and the CG looks like dogshit. It comes off as 1.) treating their effects artists like shit (which is true) and 2.) that the studios have gotten lazy and no longer care if the movies look like shit. There's no excuse for that.

People still have an appetite for these 3 hour CGI movies if they are good (GOTG 3) but it seems they will have less tolerance for them going forward.
"Guardians 3" feels like an exception in that it's a beloved franchise (even some people who don't like the MCU enjoy those) that's also a director's swan song to a cinematic universe as he goes to a new one. Plus, it actually feels like a real movie made by somebody who isn't interested in empty fanservice, nostalgia or using the whole multiverse thing as a marketing gimmick (hi "The Flash").
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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All the people who are not seeing these movies or saw them and hated them apparently? Critical reviews? Virtually every metric? If you like it great. Did you actually go or did you just buy some tickets to support it.
The latter. I bought a ticket, and then waited until it hit Disney Plus to actually watch it. The only movie that I've actually seen in a theater since COVID was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The next one will be The Marvels.
 

HarleyQuinn

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Such as?

EDIT - That's a serious question: I legitimately don't watch enough movies to know the difference between whatever kind of effects you hate and "practical effects" are.
Think of any time you'd watch a "driving" scene from a 1940s-1960s movie where it was obvious the actors were sitting stationary in a car on set with the background moving vs. say a 70s-90s movie where they were literally driving the car on a real street while it was being filmed. Modern-day CGI (done just average or poorly) is the equivalent of the car being done on set. Movies like the recent Mission Impossible series with its stunt scenes or the John Wick movies with its fight scenes are proof that "practical" effects can still work.

As a viewer, Avatar 2 is gorgeous to look at but I still get a more visceral reaction seeing the T-Rex crash through the roof window in Jurassic Park because it was a real animatronic and not CGId. Compare that scene to the Velociraptors kitchen scene when they're jumping up on the tables after Tim moves to the utensil area, where they are noticeably CGI and it takes me out a bit.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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im still trying to figure out not knowing the difference between practical effect and CGI
It's just not a term I'm familiar with. Also, maybe it's because of the fucked up way my brain compartmentalizes things, but I usually don't mentally associate special effects and CGI, at all. For some reason, they fall under unique categories in my brain, like the same way that I never saw WBB as inferior to men's basketball, because my brain doesn't recognize them as the same sport, but rather two different sports with a lot of superficial similarities. To me, there's "special effects," and then there's CGI, so I'm over here like, "What's the difference between special effects and 'practical' effects?"

EDIT - And you guys be having me fucked up, because you apparently use 'effects' and 'CG' interchangeably, and I don't. I'm over here thinking we're having two different conversations...
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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Think of any time you'd watch a "driving" scene from a 1940s-1960s movie where it was obvious the actors were sitting stationary in a car on set with the background moving vs. say a 70s-90s movie where they were literally driving the car on a real street while it was being filmed. Modern-day CGI (done just average or poorly) is the equivalent of the car being done on set.
Give me an example of a TV show where they would have done the same thing: there's only about a five percent chance that I've ever seen any movie that would fit the criteria.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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Holy shit what a plunge for Flash.
The only good things I've heard about The Flash were based on nostalgia for Michael Keaton's Batman and/or Sasha Calle's performance as Supergirl... Which seems like a bad omen for a movie that's literally named The Flash. Like, I was excited to see Namor in Wakanda Forever, but I went to Wakanda Forever because I wanted to see the Wakandans.

EDIT - Apropos of nothing, I just noticed that I've made more posts in the last hour than I have in the last two weeks.
 

Cackling Co Pilot Kamala

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I think The Flash is a case where maybe the studio should've spoiled more. I don't think it would've saved it since movie's apparently not very good but if people knew some of the slew of cameos, it

Ezra Miller just really screwed them though ultimately. You can't really put your heart behind selling a movie with a transparently garbage person lead. I imagine things end up a lot differently if they had been able not to be an abusive creep.
 

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You're too online if you think Ezra Miller's horrendous personal life really made that much a difference. Did Miller tank the Shazam sequel and Black Adam, too? Or the new Indiana Jones?
 

cobainwasmurdered

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yeah i really dont think ezra miller's personal life made any real difference. DC has made a string of bad movies. People learned.
 

Cackling Co Pilot Kamala

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I am not saying wide swaths of movie goers stayed away because of Ezra Miller ‘s shenanigans. I just think the studio didn’t know how the hell to market the movie with their lead being trash was a factor in the movie’s failure. DCEU being notoriously mediocre was main factor but it’s right up there in top 3 IMO.
 

Incandenza

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More people seeing the really good No Hard Feelings this weekend than The Flash? LOL LMAO.
 

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Overkill is an underrated factor as well. Too much capeshit, whether bad or good, is dominating theaters. Marvel will always make money at the box office but unless something changes, it's dominance will continue to wither away.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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Overkill is an underrated factor as well. Too much capeshit, whether bad or good, is dominating theaters. Marvel will always make money at the box office but unless something changes, it's dominance will continue to wither away.
What do you expect to fill that void? (please have a better answer than "movies that aren't shit")

Also, since I inadvertently led the board off on this weird tangent, @909, when I asked you what meant when you said you'd like to see movies with more practical effects fill the void, I meant more along the lines of genre, like do you want to see the void filled by more generic action movies, like all the bullshit that Tom Cruise does? Or mob movies? Horror, comedy, Oscar bait?

If the market declares that the American moviegoer is "off" Comic Book Movies, what takes their place? Scorsese has all the hot takes about CBM, but we don't actually believe that if they stopped making them that we're all going to pack the AMC to go see his shit... or do we?
 
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