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Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek
brumgrunt writes "JJ Abram's hugely successful — on many levels — reboot of Star Trek has, for Den Of Geek, brought to the fore a lesson about special effects that many movie makers have been missing. Surely it's time now that special effects were actually used properly?" (The new film is not without some goofs, though only a few of the ones listed by Movie Mistakes' nitpickers are sciency.)
FTA: "when was the last time we had a blockbuster summer movie of any genre as downright entertaining as this one?" Iron Man last year. IMHO, Iron Man spent a bit too much time focused on taking on and off the suit. Other than that, the special effects were great and fit in with the movie. I especially loved him getting out of captivity using the original suit.
none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
Yes, it was the script and the acting that made them ponderously boring.
I might be risking my geek-card here, but none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
Boring? No. But I haven't watched any of them a second time, whereas I still watch the original trilogy every once in a while.
don't rely on special effects for content
Why not? The special effects were the only thing that kept me going. The storyline pissed me off both as a Trekker (destruction of Vulcan, Kirk as a whiny bitch, Spock and Uhura as an item) and as a normal movie goer (3rd year cadet gets command of the flagship at the end of the movie? yeah, right....).
The effects saved the movie for me. From the little touches (ships don't always share the same z-axis, the Arcologies in Iowa) to the re-imagined ships, engineering with actual engineering components (save the stupid water pipe scene) and a bridge that looked every bit as crowded and chaotic as you'd expect for controlling a starship with a crew of a thousand.
If it wasn't for the well done effects I would have walked out in disgust. The storyline wasn't as bad as some of the treknobabble particle-of-the-week plots that we've seen in the past but it was no Wrath of Khan or Pale Moonlight either. If I had to rank it with the other movies I'd put it behind Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered County, Generations and First Contact.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The thing that annoyed me the most about the new Trek was the abundance of 'shaking the camera during filming' shots I was subjected to. Can we give that a rest?
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Paying to see a movie that is still being exclusively shown in theaters is not an optional "tip" that you give to show that you liked the movie. You either pay for the movie and take the risk that you don't like it, or you wait until you can rent it or watch it for free on T.V.
Your subjective response to a movie is not a factor in the price. If you don't like the movie, then the price you paid subsidies the price paid by others who did like the movie. If you did like the movie, then the price paid by others subsidies the price you paid. On average, it tends to balance itself out.
don't rely on special effects for content
Or to put it another way: if your viewers realize that they are watching special effects, you're doing it wrong.
One of the biggest successful CGI movies ever was Forrest Gump - because nobody was thinking "cool special effects", everyone was concentrating on the plot of the movie. And the plot, after all, is the main point.
I think people who keep harping on this are missing one glaring fact:
Kirk successfully successfully got a distraught and emotionally incapacitated captain to step aside, and proceeded to save the earth from total destruction.
I could be mistaken, but I think the whole earth-saving thing is something they want to encourage in Star Fleet. That, you know, if you SAVE THE EARTH, the normal rules of promotion might become slightly more flexible.