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[Mahadev]

No. It's not nostalgia, it's not my age. I still see new movies from the time period, the effects hold up. Practical effects look real, even when they look fake (I'm sure some people know what this means), the best CGI can sort of pass for real, but most of it isn't particular great and just looks like video game effects thrown into a film.

Practical effects look real because they still exist in the real world and have real reflections, real physics and interact with the characters in a believable way which is why even if it looks fake like you said they still look like they exist in this world. CGI needs ridiculous amount of refining to reach the default level of practical effects which is why they should only be used when practical effects can't do what CGI does and even then they should be used to complement practical effects and locations. All this is common sense, only goes to show how fucking stupid Hollywood is, they have ruined countless movies with their obsession with CGI and show no indcation of stopping there.

 

[MetalAlien]

I used to love all the stop motion they used in the Indiana Jones movies... even when the movies came out we didn't think it looks real but we damn sure thought it was awesome. During the making of stuff on cable those parts were always my favorite. The mine car chase for example.

 

[Kenpachii]

I liked the movies more. They feel more real then what we got now. Also content was balsy and not this super safe space type of shit that kills all joy out of it.

 

[Reptars Revenge]

I love every decade of movies, they each have their own appeal. Last year was stacked with great movies too so its all good.

 

[rorepmE]

More risks were taken in the 80's. Which led to a more diverse range of genres and styles.

Due to rising production costs, modern films have to be far more market safe.

This.

The blockbusters era was in it's infancy so even people attempting to make "blockbusters" weren't rehashing and rebooting franchises.

 

[sol_bad]

People that whinge about films not being original only have themselves to blame. I can't count how many times I've said this but the people that whinge about this are the exact same people that don't go to the cinemas ever.

Two examples ........ granted, they aren't the best examples because they are not great films. But two examples are Jupiter Ascending and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, they are both heavily sci-fi based but sci-fi nuts didn't rock up to see them. These are big budget sci-fi adventures and original ideas and they failed at making money. Now like I said, they aren't the best films, but the fact that they failed is telling studios not to spend money on big budget sci-fi adventures unless it's Star Wars and Star Trek.
A fucktone of people hated The Last Jedi, but you can bet 90% of the haters still went and watched TRoS just because it had the Star Wars name attached. If Jupiter and Valerian had "Star Wars" in the title they would have made a shit load more money.

My long winded point is that audiences themselves are to blame. They should start supporting original films at the theatre no matter how shit it may be. You want original ideas? Support the original ideas.

*EDIT*
Pacific Rim is another example, if it were called Godzilla fights Giant Robots, it would have made more money.

 

[teezzy]

Hollywood creates what makes money. They have no reason not to. The amount of tickets they can sell just on brand recognition alone isstartling, which is why we occasionally will see movies greenlit based on like board games and stuff,. Id bet brand recognition is even more powerful than some big name director or acting talent these days.

I'll always prefer the smaller stories told in the indie arthouse stuff, and I dont feel like there's been any shortage of those coming out. I like these because they very rarely rely on star power or brand recognition, but instead utilize video as a medium to sell their merit.

 

[MetalAlien]

Sheesh Jupiter and Valerian are so bad sol_bad! I saw them both. Before this year I went to the movies almost every weekend. I don't think that will ever come back... I have given up hoping.

Every now and then a good movie pops up and word of mouth helps me find it but I can remember going to the movies a solid year back when I was a teenager and liking every damn one of them. That doesn't happen anymore.

 

[KiNeMz]

i rest my case

DILAN!!!

 

[brap]

Hollywood creates what makes money. They have no reason not to. The amount of tickets they can sell just on brand recognition alone isstartling, which is why we occasionally will see movies greenlit based on like board games and stuff,. Id bet brand recognition is even more powerful than some big name director or acting talent these days.

I'll always prefer the smaller stories told in the indie arthouse stuff, and I dont feel like there's been any shortage of those coming out. I like these because they very rarely rely on star power or brand recognition, but instead utilize video as a medium to sell their merit.

AA and middle budget is always the best. It's not dumbed down trash for fat ass Karen to watch with her autistic children and it's not pretentious garbage for people jerk off to whilst they inhale thy own anal fumes either. Just the right balance.

 

[MetalAlien]

AA and middle budget is always the best. It's not dumbed down trash for fat ass Karen to watch with her autistic children and it's not pretentious garbage for people jerk off to whilst they inhale thy own anal fumes either. Just the right balance.

Pishaw I bet you don't even like Jack and Jill.

 

[teezzy]

sol_bad

I saw both those in theaters and had fun
Same goes for Pacific rim

Did you check out Enders Game at all? I never read the book but I thought the movie was a lot of fun

I'm a fan of those 70s sci fi vibes

People in this thread are gonna front like Logans Run and Barbarella wasnt some cornball shit, just like Jupiter Ascending, but that's half the fun

 

[teezzy]

AA and middle budget is always the best. It's not dumbed down trash for fat ass Karen to watch with her autistic children and it's not pretentious garbage for people jerk off to whilst they inhale thy own anal fumes either. Just the right balance.

Another thing that's true about film with more reasonable budgets is that they're allowed to be more creative overall. The more money some investor throws at your movie, the more you have to appease em. Piss em off, and they pull their funding

I have a hunch that I like smelling my own farts while watching Oscar bait than you do, but I'm glad we agree there

 

[teezzy]

Just wanna further my thoughts before I shut up (its 2:30 am here) and sleep

But yeah investors wanna make sure they can get their money back making all these movies. That much is obvious. In turn, they wanna avoid as much risk with the finished product as possible. I think it's that risk averse, bumper bowling, attitude which is pushing you guys off more than anything . These things are focus tested to hell and back in order to hit every quota possible. Theres rarely any personal vision attached to em as a result

Older movies didnt have that as much. I believe they weren't nearly as expensive either

 

[teezzy]

This might also explain a thing or two

It’s Official: China Overtakes North America as World’s Biggest Box Office in 2020

Movie ticket sales in China for 2020 climbed to $1.988 billion on Sunday, surpassing North America's total of $1.937 billion.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[sol_bad]

sol_bad

I saw both those in theaters and had fun
Same goes for Pacific rim

Did you check out Enders Game at all? I never read the book but I thought the movie was a lot of fun

I'm a fan of those 70s sci fi vibes

People in this thread are gonna front like Logans Run and Barbarella wasnt some cornball shit, just like Jupiter Ascending, but that's half the fun

Yep, I saw Jupiter Ascending and Valerian at the cinemas and enjoyed them for what they were. Just recently bought Jupiter Ascending on 4K.

Say and enjoyed Enders Game too. My friend actually guessed the ending 2 minutes before the reveal.

Pacific Rim is the movie I've seen the most times at the cinema, I think it was 9 times.

Regarding lower budgeted movies, one of the reasons I was excited to return to Oz was to see more variety in films at the cinemas. Philippines mostly played the big budget films. Then I return to Oz and MY CORONA.

 

[Valonquar]

Nothing has really topped Aliens as far as sci-fi horror.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

People that whinge about films not being original only have themselves to blame. I can't count how many times I've said this but the people that whinge about this are the exact same people that don't go to the cinemas ever.

Two examples ........ granted, they aren't the best examples because they are not great films. But two examples are Jupiter Ascending and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, they are both heavily sci-fi based but sci-fi nuts didn't rock up to see them. These are big budget sci-fi adventures and original ideas and they failed at making money. Now like I said, they aren't the best films, but the fact that they failed is telling studios not to spend money on big budget sci-fi adventures unless it's Star Wars and Star Trek.
A fucktone of people hated The Last Jedi, but you can bet 90% of the haters still went and watched TRoS just because it had the Star Wars name attached. If Jupiter and Valerian had "Star Wars" in the title they would have made a shit load more money.

My long winded point is that audiences themselves are to blame. They should start supporting original films at the theatre no matter how shit it may be. You want original ideas? Support the original ideas.

*EDIT*
Pacific Rim is another example, if it were called Godzilla fights Giant Robots, it would have made more money.

Pacific Rim ended up making enough to get a terrible sequel. Jupiter and Valerian legitimately weren't anything more than mediocre at best, not sure why they should have lit up the box office, tbh. People are slaves to known properties but maybe you could pick better films to make your point. It sometimes doesn't even matter if something is based on an existing property if that property isn't quite popular enough, like the stellar Dredd or the more fun than any MCU movie Punisher War Zone, (R rating is a bigger death kiss to some movies than anything else). I think a lot of the issue is how expensive movies are now, movies in the '80s were 20 million about when they were expensive, even considering inflation you don't hit today's budgets. And considering effects looked better in the big movies usually I'm not 100% on why so many studios insist on still doing so much expensive CGI. Hopefully people like Nolan who still use mostly practicals aren't ruined by this 'rona business.

 

[sol_bad]

Pacific Rim ended up making enough to get a terrible sequel. Jupiter and Valerian legitimately weren't anything more than mediocre at best, not sure why they should have lit up the box office, tbh. People are slaves to known properties but maybe you could pick better films to make your point. It sometimes doesn't even matter if something is based on an existing property if that property isn't quite popular enough, like the stellar Dredd or the more fun than any MCU movie Punisher War Zone, (R rating is a bigger death kiss to some movies than anything else). I think a lot of the issue is how expensive movies are now, movies in the '80s were 20 million about when they were expensive, even considering inflation you don't hit today's budgets. And considering effects looked better in the big movies usually I'm not 100% on why so many studios insist on still doing so much expensive CGI. Hopefully people like Nolan who still use mostly practicals aren't ruined by this 'rona business.

I chose my examples because their success was unknown to the studio, the studios took a chance at some original ideas. Those original ideas blew up in their face and lost them money. If those films were successful, studios would be more willing to take chances on original ideas. Dredd is a known IP, we are talking about original ideas.

Comparing an 80's budget to a current day budget just via inflation isn't exactly fair. Taking Back to the Future for example, even if you made the exact same film with the exact same special effects usage it would cost more today than it did back then. You can't just take the 20 million budget from 1985 and say it would cost 48 million to make today. Using todays technology, there is no doubt in my mind that Robert Zemeckis would have done much more visually than what we saw in the 1985 original

Dredd cost 40 million to make and it's fairly lowkey in terms of special effects even compared to Back to the Future. Cast Away cost 90 million in 2000 and what CGI usage does that film have? Flight cost 31 million, does that have any CGI?

You then bring up Christopher Nolan in the exact same argument where you say Hollywood movies cost too much to make because of CGI? Have you seen the budgets of his films? With what your saying, less reliance on CGI should equal smaller budgets but that is not the case.
Barman Begins - 150 million
The Dark Knight - 185 million
Inception - 160 million
The Dark Knight Rises - 250-300 million
Interstellar - 165 million
Dunkirk - 100-150 million
Tenet - 200 million

CGI is not the issue, it can be used well and it can be used poorly, same with physical models. I watched The Mothman Prophecies the other night and the entire final bridge scene took me out of the experience because I could tell the bridge and cars were miniature scale. It's about skill and time as to whether CGI/scale models look good or bad.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

I chose my examples because their success was unknown to the studio, the studios took a chance at some original ideas. Those original ideas blew up in their face and lost them money. If those films were successful, studios would be more willing to take chances on original ideas. Dredd is a known IP, we are talking about original ideas.

Comparing an 80's budget to a current day budget just via inflation isn't exactly fair. Taking Back to the Future for example, even if you made the exact same film with the exact same special effects usage it would cost more today than it did back then. You can't just take the 20 million budget from 1985 and say it would cost 48 million to make today. Using todays technology, there is no doubt in my mind that Robert Zemeckis would have done much more visually than what we saw in the 1985 original

Dredd cost 40 million to make and it's fairly lowkey in terms of special effects even compared to Back to the Future. Cast Away cost 90 million in 2000 and what CGI usage does that film have? Flight cost 31 million, does that have any CGI?

You then bring up Christopher Nolan in the exact same argument where you say Hollywood movies cost too much to make because of CGI? Have you seen the budgets of his films? With what your saying, less reliance on CGI should equal smaller budgets but that is not the case.
Barman Begins - 150 million
The Dark Knight - 185 million
Inception - 160 million
The Dark Knight Rises - 250-300 million
Interstellar - 165 million
Dunkirk - 100-150 million
Tenet - 200 million

CGI is not the issue, it can be used well and it can be used poorly, same with physical models. I watched The Mothman Prophecies the other night and the entire final bridge scene took me out of the experience because I could tell the bridge and cars were miniature scale. It's about skill and time as to whether CGI/scale models look good or bad.

You notice Dunkirk costs the least despite having the most action? A good deal of the budget for a Nolan film comes from paying the talent, including Nolan, himself. Nolan was paid 20 million to direct Dunkirk PLUS a percentage of backend receipts. Dunkirk has the least costly cast of a Nolan film, so despite having the most set piece sequences costs the least. Nolan opted for crashing a real plane in Tenet partially because it was actually CHEAPER than building miniatures, the more real the less it costs, essentially. 200 million isn't that much either when you consider demonstrably uglier films like Avengers Endgame cost 356 million. The other thing is Nolan films on location which often costs more than doing otherwise.

You make a weird argument here, btw, you go from "exact same film with the exact same special effects usage" to the idea that Zemeckis would use today's technology, so... not the same special effects usage? Not the exact same film? There are ways filming is actually cheaper now, like shooting on digital, Nolan insists on shooting on film, it looks better.

I wouldn't call Dredd lowkey in terms of effects. It's cheap by today's standards, for sure, but I would argue we're still talking about how much less it costs for a less well known cast...


The movie Upgrade, one of the best movies of the decade with some of the best effects cost between 3 to 5 million, depending on the source. Movies can be done well on a budget similar to in the '80s but the movie also wasn't especially successful, people want big dumb CGI-filled movies that look fake, clearly, at least so long as it has MCU branding or something. Movies like The Fountain and 2001 look better than 99% of films coming out today and don't use CGI. CGI is a decent tool when needed, Nolan uses it in his films, just incredibly sparingly.

The problem with CGI, for me, is that so many films rely on it for everything and it just doesn't look great. Toy Story 3 cost as much to make as Tenet, but which one are people seeing for a thrilling effects-driven ride? Even Wall-E cost 180 million in 2008, 5 million shy of the biggest movie of that year, TDK, without any of the major talent in the cast to have to pay (half the film has no dialogue even), not to mention voice acting gets a smaller payday than acting in person. Avatar was 237 million in 2009 starring mostly little known actors, CGI being costly is pretty provable, how bad it looks is more subjective but it's probably possible to objectively measure level of detail in CGI, most movies don't come close to Transformers films by Michael Bay (which use practical effects whenever possible, including ripping in half an actual bus because even Bay knows practicals > CGI) these days even that last Star Wars suffered from some bad CGI, in particular in its overly busy climax, much different to the OT or even the prequel trilogy where the effects got better by the entry, part of the problem with CGI is number of effects studios.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

i just think the 80s/90s has the modern era beat in terms of pure IPs. original franchises and brands from back then far outweigh modern stuff.

to me, an original idea is more impressive than any technical skill or visual effects. something like Back to the Future has some special effects in it, but honestly not that many, most of it is just costume work and editing.

a lot of that is financial. as the industry shrinks and becomes more and more consolidated, companies are larger and larger and more and more risk averse. the best investment is a proven IP, a property that is already known to sell, with numbers and marketing info already at the helm for projecting likely grosses. new ideas are risky. they are unknown. a company is far less likely to pick up on them. back in the 80s/90s, it was the opposite. because they picked risky movies, we ended up with Star Wars and Back to the Future and Gremlins and Terminator. i honestly can't think of a wholly new IP since Avatar that isn't based on a pre-existing property.

it is interesting to think about how technology has changed movie making. i always say there is something to be said for restraint, that often the best art is made when there are limitations involved, and the artist has to really test their abilities to the limit, finding new peaks of creativity and expression in the process. ROTJ at one point would have had multiple Death Stars as well as a giant imperial city planet, and this was mostly scrapped due to budgeting concerns. because of that choice, the movie had to go with other scenes, and it went a different direction. would the original version, given the limitless powers of modern CGI filmmaking, have been as successful? of course there is no way to tell, but it's fun to think about.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

I used to love all the stop motion they used in the Indiana Jones movies... even when the movies came out we didn't think it looks real but we damn sure thought it was awesome. During the making of stuff on cable those parts were always my favorite. The mine car chase for example.

it is like old world craftsmanship vs corporate mass production tbh. those old movies featured so many different artisans working on them. you had carpenters, painters, model makers, puppeteers, electricians, camera operators, engineers, etc. all these people joining in, combining their efforts. all of them learning their unique trade separately and bringing them together. when you instead do a scene in CGI, they kind of do everything all at once. since the software is standardized, it feels like there is a less collaborative effort.

 

[Kenpachii]

The problem with movies is that a lot of them are not grounded in reality which breaks the immersion instantly.

U can make a massive sci fi movie with huge ships but if they move faster then a bee and turn around like that, it feels fake as hell because a massive space ship needs to feel like a cruise ship in the ocean a ship that is hard to manuvour with.

This is what made the first 3 star wars movies so interesting to me, and the ones after it not much anymore.

This is realistic, a car that looks like a piece of shit in that enviroment that hovers but cant do anything else. It feels like a car and acts like a car and it limits itself by car physics of staying close to the ground.

This also looks believable, fast fighters that can manouver effectivly with a juggernaut of a warship that can barely move in space other then going forwards and steer a tiny bit. It's grounded in reality and it makes things believable.

Now look at this beginning of it and 1:55, like wut?



Now look at this. does this look like a lot more believable? yes. it moves exactly like u would expect such big ship to move flying straight forwards basically with little movements.



Then add with it, lots of issue's the spaceship has and u feel like dam we finally got it to work. Also more people are needed to do tasks as luke isn't this all knowing being that simple does it himself without effort because reasons. No u need people and experts on departments to get somewhere and that's what the series shows.

While later movies u see this all mighty super jedi chick that can do everything. Hack / fly / shoot / best super powers all in one unit that simple doesn't feel real and a total joke.

This is why matrix for example also felt real, its because things even in a fake world have real world limitations and flaws that keep stuff grounded.

That's the issue i got with current cgi movies and current acting with those woke type of movies. Everything just feels fake as hell to the point its not believable anymore and it snaps you out of world itself.

Then all the signalling and safe space enviroments that nobody needs to be hurt in which makes even simple jokes like "u sound gay bro" massively a no go. with people mixed together that simple do not feel real. Also a reason why game of thrones was such a success. THe people in the series felt like they where people from those enviroments. And the big reason for this is the casting that took place at the country's itself. It's believable because of it.