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Motion Impossible: Tom Cruise Declares War on TV Frame Interpolation (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: At 9:46 last night, Tom tweeted an 87-second video in which he and his go-to director Christopher McQuarrie explained the concept of video interpolation and why it is the death of all good things. Video interpolation, they explained, is a digital video effect used to improve the quality of high-definition sport. "The unfortunate effect is that it makes most movies look like they were shot on high-speed video rather than film," said Cruise. "This is sometimes referred to as the 'soap-opera effect'." They explained that most HD televisions come with video interpolation switched on by default, they explained how to switch it off, and then they both nodded with total sincerity.
Now, it's worth noting that Tom Cruise is by no means the first film-maker to rail against motion smoothing. Back when he was still the Guardians of the Galaxy director, James Gunn tweeted that he, Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson and Matt Reeves were also peeved about the default nature of video interpolation, to which Reed Morano replied that she started a petition to fix the issue a number of years ago, to little avail.
Why did it fail? Possibly because none of these people are Tom Cruise. Because Tom Cruise has made a career of total commitment. Take him to a premiere and he'll spend hours on the red carpet, shaking every single hand until everyone's happy. Put him in a movie with helicopters in it and he'll teach himself to fly a helicopter to the level of a veteran stunt coordinator. Break his ankle on the side of a building, and he'll stagger out of frame on his ruined legs rather than blow a shot.
Now, it's worth noting that Tom Cruise is by no means the first film-maker to rail against motion smoothing. Back when he was still the Guardians of the Galaxy director, James Gunn tweeted that he, Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson and Matt Reeves were also peeved about the default nature of video interpolation, to which Reed Morano replied that she started a petition to fix the issue a number of years ago, to little avail.
Why did it fail? Possibly because none of these people are Tom Cruise. Because Tom Cruise has made a career of total commitment. Take him to a premiere and he'll spend hours on the red carpet, shaking every single hand until everyone's happy. Put him in a movie with helicopters in it and he'll teach himself to fly a helicopter to the level of a veteran stunt coordinator. Break his ankle on the side of a building, and he'll stagger out of frame on his ruined legs rather than blow a shot.
quality? Comcast is compressed to shit!
he's absolutely right. Movies look terrible when this is applied. I saw a bit of Braveheart on this and mistook it for some daytime TV junk. It completely ruins the lighting.
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"Because Tom Cruise has made a career of total commitment." To Scientology.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Put him in a movie with helicopters in it and he'll teach himself to fly a helicopter to the level of a veteran stunt coordinator. Break his ankle on the side of a building, and he'll stagger out of frame on his ruined legs rather than blow a shot.
... take him to a scientology meeting and... Oh nevermind.
Mind the frickin' laser...
This "motion smoothing" shit is the absolute worst. I would tolerate it at least slightly more if it ACTUALLY worked right. But it doesn't It'll work for 5 seconds, then turn off for 5, then on again for another 5. It creates a very jarring effect on the scenes. The software/hardware/whatever that is used to determine that one frame is related to another, so automatically splice in more frames CONSTANTLY fails.
Though, what I don't get, is that any TV I've seen in the past few years either doesn't have this "feature" enabled, or doesn't have it at all. I just purchased a brand new TV, a late 2018 model, and this feature doesn't exist. Other TVs I was looking at before this purchase didn't have it either. I think the feature died along with the 3D TV era. Which leads me to wonder why, now, of all times this complaint is showing up, since the feature is pretty much already dead?
Does anyone actually like blurry-ass action films? Some of them are so blurry they make me dizzy. I love the motion interpolation, I can actually see the movements that way.
Who gives a fuck
For once, I agree with Tom Cruise. May be the first thing he's said in 20 years that I agree with.
The Soap Opera setting is terrible. I turn it off immediately, even in hotel rooms. Cannot abide the weirdness of it.
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I have always been looking for a good explanation of what makes a soap opera video look the way it does, versus say a evening news broadcast, versus a movie theater film.
Is it the frame rate? Is it the white balance? Is it the sensor / shutter angle?
Since sensors are so versatile and you can correct for colors, etc in postprocessing (I guess), why don't they make soap operas look more "professional" by adjusting certain settings (what are those?) afterwards?
I always was hoping for someone to explain this to me well.
Motion interpolation isn't great. But when they say "soap opera effect" that tells me that they aren't against motion interpolation, they are against high frame rates in general. This is analogous analogous to saying that 640x480 is the *best* resolution, and going higher makes things worse. I notice the article doesn't even mention the term frame rate. So this isn't a technical discussion, this is an aesthetic one.
Decades of watching movies has trained us to accept 24fps as "cinematic" motion, but in reality it just looks bad. 24fps is just barely on the cusp of fluid motion, and it gives some of us headaches. That's part of why video games consider 24fps unacceptable, as well as VR, and IMAX. Some people will say that it "takes getting used to" but it really takes getting "un-used" to the bad quality they shoot in today.
Motion interpolation should die. But the fact that people love it is signaling these directors that shooting in 24fps sucks and they need to move on.
Have to agree. For all his batshit crazy Scientology, from the little I have read, he doesn't push it on anyone.
Further, as the article alluded to, he does almost all of, it not all, his own stunts. Rappelling down buildings, skydiving, driving cars, leaping here and there, he's the one doing it. Not a stunt double.
Also, on those rare occasions I have seen him in an interview, he seems like a nice person. Maybe it's the Scientology, but he doesn't come off as stuck up or demeaning.
Give the man his due. He is accomplished. More than most likely anyone who posts here.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's true. After decades, he's still committed to not coming out of the closet.
https://youtu.be/IKbLquqxBAQ
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well you only have to look at it for two seconds to see that it's new, it's novel, it clearly must be superior and Tom Cruise&c are just anal nerds who bitch about nerd shit.
I'm not defending 24fps cameras, but interpolation is not a higher framerate, any more than zooming in on a jpg gives it a higher resolution.
If we want to discuss changes to filming, that's more complicated. My understanding is that shutter speed is tied to the amount of light you capture (something critical in movies) so there's more involved than "dragging a slider".
Regardless, inserted blur-polation is just a Consumer Shiny and can eat a dick.
Perhaps broadcasts and streaming should contain in-band data to suggest to display devices optimal settings for the content. I don't want my day-time soaps to look like a Tom Cruise movie.
tone
Looks like the Scientologists sent one of their goons around and threatened Stuart, a well known author of Tom Cruise mockery. Still, it doesn't take much to read between the lines for the satire. For context, here's snippet from Stuart's other commentary on Tom:
"Some Tom Cruise films are so bad that normal people have to exclaim 'Jesus Christ' when they watch them - which is funny, because Tom Cruise actually is Jesus Christ, and any more talk like that and he'll zap your bum with his holy eye lasers. We're not kidding, Tom Cruise really is Jesus Christ. The similarities are there for all to see - Jesus had a beard and so did Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. Tom Cruise once had a high-speed motorbike shootout with a Scotsman in Mission Impossible II, and Jesus once did a similar thing on a donkey. Jesus hated the Jews and so does To ah, no - that's Mel Gibson we're thinking of. Anyway, Tom Cruise is Jesus Christ and you've got no choice but to accept it. It must be true because a Scientologist said so."
....because there are still new games being released that only support 30 fps, which boggles my mind. So I use smoothing to simulate 60 fps.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
I finally agree with Tom Cruise on something! Truly this has been a week of firsts.
I've started noticing lately that many things with any amount of motion tend to stutter randomly. This is especially bad in high motion shots or in long panning shots. For the panning shots, you might think it's actually judder from telecining, but this happens on everthing no matter the frame rate or broadcast source. I'm sure some of it is due to overcompression, but when compression fails due to lack of bits, you get pixelation effects and other fun artifacts. The picture doesn't just stall or look like it dropped back to half or less of the usual frame rate.
Anyway, this being enabled by default reminds me of the whole reason televisions are usually configured by default to *distort* 4:3 content on 16:9 displays. You see, these frame interpolation and motion smoothing things work great on scrolling news marquees, talking heads, and the like. So just like removing the "black bars" that "waste" part of the TV screen (distorting 4:3 pictures), the whole reason interpolation is enabled is to make things look "better" on the show room floor.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
The reason TV makers are doing interpolation is that 23 fps or 30fps (29.97 or what the fuck ever) just seems fucking choppy when people nowadays are used to 60fps minimum for most video games.
Then, we have most people taking video at 1080p (or releasing it at 1080p or less despite it being filmed in 4k). Also, we have horrible cable companies (even shitty Verizon with their shitty application of fiber and their shitty people) compressing the already shitty signal to even shittier levels or services like Netflix compressing in new weird ways. Add in shitty upscaling by TV manufacturers and you go from 'decent but not that awesome original video at low fps' > 'shitty cable company compression' > 'shitty streaming compression' > 'shitty upscaling to 4k at high fps'.
It's not just interpolation as the problem.. Corners are being cut in every step of the process; government is too slow to regulate; government is too inept to enforce; cable companies are shitty; filmmakers/producers aren't releasing source in high enough quality; broadcast is behind the times.. Basically, there's huge room for every step in the process EXCEPT TV manufacturers. We have 1080p and 4k TV's in damn near every household capable of displaying video much better than most of the 'original source' that gets released at step 1 of the whole process.
Another thing I wanna bitch about is how everything needs to be 'streamed' rather than downloaded. Fucking let the end user download the whole show or movie and it can be displayed with total perfection no matter what the bandwidth. Instead, we have interruptions in TV or movie night because the internet connection had a hiccup.
In other words.. I want 4k video - and we hardly have 720p being broadcast. Then, that 720p is compressed with noticeable artifacts into CRAPP-P. So Tom Cruise is totally nuts complaining about interpolation when he should be complaining about every step in the process except what TV manufacturers are trying to do to fix the problem. Interpolation might be 0.01% of the issue.
I'll admit I'm not Tom Cruise's biggest fan.. but it's hard not to like the guy for trying so damn hard at everything.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
He hasn't given up on you bro. He will be there when you are ready to come back.
He is a Scientologist, I'm not interested in anything he has to say. Ever. On any topic.
I thought both Mission to Mars and The Red Planet were both pretty enjoyable movies to watch.
Avatar was also fun to watch.
Tom Cruise is legitimately a very accomplished dude.
Meh, if Tom Cruise thinks TV Frame Interpolation is a bad thing- then I'm all for it. Put it in everything I say! Even cheeseburgers.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I'm not surprised to hear this and used to agree, but there was an apparently-obscure movie a few years ago that I had to have called to my attention, and now I'll pass that favor onto you: watch Edge of Tomorrow. For two hours, anyone can stop hating Tom Cruise. And you can always go back after the movie is over.
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The interpolation used to cause lots of artifacts with things moving in the scene. Now the algorithms handle that just fine. We wouldn't need video interpolation to smooth out jerky camera pans if the movie people provided better temporal resolution. Frame interpolation is also a godsend if the display frame rate and the source frame rate don't match. You know that they play every frame twice and speed up the movie by 4% on 50Hz displays, don't you. And it's even worse on 60Hz displays. Look up 2:3 pulldown: Frames are shown twice and three times alternatingly, causing significant judder. Last but not least, note that reality is quite smooth. If your movie is ruined by smooth motion, perhaps that's on you. 24fps is an aesthetic born from technical and economic limitations, much like historic film color processes that some movies emulate for a certain look (for example Aviator in the early scenes). Juddery motion will just look old-fashioned, not movie-like, to younger generations.
> His best work was stuff like "My Left Foot" that won him an Oscar.
WTF? Daniel Day Lewis, not Tom Cruise!
Wow. Yeah, Forget the sex trafficking and slavery stuff the "church" arranges. Forget the threats of violence and intimidation. Forget that he is a principle financial backer for these scum bags -as long as he does his own stunts and "seems nice" (in fucking interviews? what a moron) it's all A-OK.
I think we should stop with that 24 FPS nonsense. It is not good, it is an artefact caused by technical limitations. Some people say it make films more film-like, that there is some artistic value in it, etc... I call bullshit, it is not a conscious artistic choice, it is a technical limitation.
If some directors chose to make some part 24 FPS like others chose to do black and white, then sure, that's art, but choosing that frame rate just because that's how cameras and projectors are setup isn't.
The only argument that makes sense IMHO is one of cost. More FPS is expensive: larger file sizes, more rendering time, a need for more sensitive camera sensors, etc.. Budget that can be better spent elsewhere. There is also value in having a standard, and 24 FPS isn't that bad a choice.
Frame interpolation is a work around that technical limitation, it is far from perfect but some people enjoy it. That's why TV manufacturers put it in here, film snobs be damned. Directors should learn from it instead of calling it "the end of all good things": many people want smooth motion.
That being said, I am totally fine with 24 FPS, and I don't use interpolation, but just be honest and say it is preliminary a cost saving measure, with maybe a hint of nostalgia.
People are confusing high frame rates with the issue which is simply motion blur.
Decades ago, motion blur was added to video games to make them more realistic. Now we have studios filming motion in a way that reduces it to unnatural levels.
High frame rates are fine as long as motion blur is preserved. When every frame of motion is a crisp image it looks completely unnatural.
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Yeah, he just wants the camera angle to be right, so he doesn't look like a midget.
Old CRT's have built in analog frame interpolation.
You only needed 24FPS for smooth motion because the phosphors in the tube didn't respond instantly and blurred the frames together.
Now with faster update rates for screens, it makes 24FPS seem choppy, so TV manufacturers do the blurring digitally or no one is going to "upgrade" to a TV that gives them a headache when they watch a movie.
The better the screens get, the most processing they do to the image.
The last 10-15 years he cranks out endless derivative action films and sequels.
That's fine, that's your opinion. I think Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow, and Ghost Protocol are absolutely fantastic films. Now The Mummy on the other hand...
Meh, if Tom Cruise thinks TV Frame Interpolation is a bad thing- then I'm all for it. Put it in everything I say! Even cheeseburgers.
I believe that is called "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
It makes great movies look horrible
https://www.blurbusters.com/fa...
There is more to the motion blur problem than the slow transition times of LCD pixels. Newer monitors have much faster transition times and the problem is still there.
What I think is happening is that the CRT is producing a kind of impulse sampling of the moving image whereas the LCD is producing zero-order hold (square-step, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) output. The human visual centers appear to perceive the "strobed" image of the CRT as smooth motion, the "change-and-hold" image of the LCD as blurred, even at high frame rates and with rapid pixel response.
The reason I say "kind of impulse sampling" is that the CRT does not flash a sequence of static images the way a film movie projector does. Rather, the CRT conducts a continuous raster scan, with a short blanking during the retrace. Each line of the image gets strobed at the time the scan reaches it, but each line is strobed at a different time instead of the whole image all at once as with a film projector.
I believe it is that scanning that accounts for the "soap opera effect" of video content recorded on video tape instead of on film. This is already a long while ago that a local TV station had a show-and-tell of this new thing called HDTV at our Engineering campus. The Engineering profs were oohing and ahh-ing about what they thought were amazing images, but I was pointing out the image artifacts (easier to spot in HD!) to the broadcast engineer from the TV station, and finding a receptive audience, he went on at length to explain the difference between Homicide, Life on the Streets, shot on video tape and having the soap opera look, compared with Law and Order, which he explained was shot on 35 mm film and then scan-converted for TV broadcast.
So, even if the CRT scanned mode of projection differs from the flashed-image mode of film projection, apparently recording the image on film, which records a sequence of still pictures, has a better look than video tape, even when film is played back on a CRT.
The other problem is that most people viewing video think that HD on a widescreen LCD looks fantastic and don't know what us motion-blur worriers are complaining about. This population includes engineers developing TVs and computer monitors. The only people complaining, it seems are hard-core gamers along with people who have seen the Kay 5500 Sonograph http://jproc.ca/rrp/sonagraph_..., a scientific instrument used in speech science that used a DSP to drive a CRT (at VGA resolution!) that produced a truly remarkable visual effect of a "voice print" rolling past the screen with zero motion blur -- the later software spectrum analyzers producing un-synched scrolls to LCD monitors of much higher frame rate look terrible by comparison.
With respect to the awful motion blur of LCDs, which other posters here is telling me in not cured by video interpolation, there is an element of what Robert X Cringely described in Accidental Empires, when (back in the day), a techie gushed about the desktop publishing revolutions, showing off the font quality of LaTeX printed at 300 DPI on a LaserJet II, which Cringely looked at in dismay in comparison to what the publishing industry got from photo typesetting.
DPI and frame rate are important, but if the community is at all serious about further advances in video, especially VR, engineers are going to have to take the physiology of human vision and the motion blur problem into account.
"The unfortunate effect is that it makes most movies look like they were shot on high-speed video rather than film,"
That is easy to explain it's because they were shot on high-speed video rather than film.
The video of the two people talking wasn't actually convincing, because it sounds as if the film maker is trying to say that the retro-effect of 24FPS is good, and that all movies should be like that.
Instead, there should have been a slight demonstration of what goes wrong with interpolation, such as a quick show about how things get distorted, and how it can make things look a little off.
By your logic, every Catholic should be burned at the stake because they're a backer of the world's largest pedophile ring.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This is how video compression works. Store key frames and interpolate between them. The issue is just basically whether you interpolate 24 times a second, or 200, or whatever.
Sort of. Between key frames, there are P-frames and B-frames that actually tell you what pixel macroblocks changed and how much. That interpolation is based on hard recorded data, but lossy. Adding in more data than what's there will still give bad results.
Maybe you can convince my local Fox affiliate to stop broadcasting Line 21 closed captioning. I have no idea why they would even have that in there instead of just EIA-708, but if you view full frame, the top of the picture has a flickering black/white bar with CC data.
because it makes the lighting look too realistic. I want my lighting to be dramatic. I'm not sure the exact issue (I think you're right and it's framerate) but I've definately seen it in action and it ruins the lighting. Directors spend decades learning how to get lighting just right only to have it wrecked by a post process filter on an expensive TV...
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Maybe in the future, video will be encoded as moving & morphing polygons instead of frames. Most video compression kind of already does that, but in a brutish way. If a video/movie is encoded as moving/morphing polygons, then the movie director can control how and if interpolation is done, per their original raw content. "Frames" then die as default concept.
If a director wants emulate a frame-ish look, they can using "choppy" polygon changes; but otherwise the final frame rate could be entirely up to the viewer and/or the device (per technical limits).
Input cameras don't need frames either, in theory. Photons hit individual pixel-esque sensors and the time-stamp for a hit can be at a finer level (more precision) than the usual "frames". Perhaps the photon hits can be recreated as-recorded on the viewing device also. However, I suspect moving/morphing polygons provides better data compression for most content.
The point is our technology may be outgrowing frames.
Table-ized A.I.
Now get busy and declare war on bad acting.
Or would that be hitting too close to home?
All of 'The Hobbit' movies added whole scenes just to setup incredibly bad video game levels.
There are now a bunch of movies that put the characters 'into' video games: Edge of Tomorrow, Hunger Games, The Purge, the really dumb one, with the moving labyrinth walls. Not movies made from video games, rather movies made mostly to have video games made on top of the trademarks.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I laughed out loud when reading this: Break his ankle on the side of a building, and he'll stagger out of frame on his ruined legs rather than blow a shot.
We only burn witches, and the Catholic Church is clearly against witches.
Could I suggest being fed to the lions?
The phosphor in a CRT is not a glowing filament with a longish thermal time constant. A closer analogy would be a fluorescent bulb on a magnetic ballast, and those things flicker like crazy. A dude I know, who worked for a state agency promoting energy saving, would visit schools and give out these cardboard wheels you could spin to show how a compact fluorescent on an electronic ballast operating at a much higher frequency didn't do that.
The support for my hypothesis is comparing a retrace-synched scrolled image on what back in the day was a decent Sony Trinitron CRT 1) at 60 Hz refresh, 2) 120 Hz refresh and 3) 120 Hz but doubling each image to simulate the persistence of an LCD screen at 60 Hz. 120 Hz scrolls blur free, as does 60 Hz but with noticeable flicker on the Sony monitor, but the "double strobe" at 120 Hz simulating a 60 Hz image refresh is unmistakably blurred.
The Blurbusters agree with me in that they strobe an LED backlight of an LCD to suppress motion blur by simulating a CRT. Much of the discussion is how some really expensive displays intended for vision research do just that, and how this strobing the backlight can be done more cheaply by some hardware hacks. They are not talking about higher screen refresh rates, not about image interpolation, this is just plain getting rid of the sample-and-hold square-step effect.
All of 'The Hobbit' movies added whole scenes just to setup incredibly bad video game levels.
I follow a great channel on Youtube called Just Write. He focuses on different pop culture media (usually movies) from a writers' perspective, and posted a pretty good evaluation of what went wrong with the Hobbit movies (and their terrible terrible writing). The Hobbit movies are basically action movies, yet they contain the most tensionless and boring action sequences ever filmed. I liked his breakdown of the Mines of Moria escape from Fellowship of the Ring, a great sequence from Peter Jackson, with the Misty Mountains escape from the Hobbit.
Tensionless Action. Pretty good overall.
The issue is who should get control over what you decide to watch. Like the old flash websites which locked you into 800x600 resolution and annoying low-contrast fonts, the movie industry wants complete control over the appearance of movies in your home on your TV. I hate motion interpolation, but it really should be up to the viewer to decide whether they want it on or off.
The movie studio's control over their product should end the moment you fork over your payment. Just like it's not the printer manufacturer's business whether you decide to use their OEM ink or third party ink. And cellular carriers should not be installing apps you can't uninstall from phones they're selling you. Or Apple bricking phones which were repaired with non-Apple screens. Once they sell it, it's yours not theirs, and they have no business sticking their nose in how you use it (aside from restricting distribution for copyrighted works).
Any product giving the manufacturer post-sale control of this sort should come with a money-back guarantee for as long as that control exists. The user is entitled to a full, unrestricted refund if they decide at any time that they don't like the control the manufacturer is exerting post-sale. That should keep such modifications limited to ones which indisputably benefit the buyer (security updates and bug fixes).
Those 'tensionless and boring action sequences' were just in movie ads for the video game. Basically game cutscenes. By that standard, they were pretty average.
They've already got your movie ticket money, now they want your (or your kid's) game money. Not going to age well, game 'eye candy' never does.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I hate when I see juddering every time there is a pan, or now that our TVs are bigger, many types of motion. Yes motion blur exists, but that doesn't stop the abrupt shifts between frames instead of smooth actions. After watching with it turned on for a week, it was impossible to go back.
It's fine if Tom Cruise doesn't like it but it's an option, you can turn it on or off. Being able to adjust things to your preferences is good.
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It's laughable that they would suggest interpolation was originally added to TVs for sports! Complete bullshit. Sports always used, and still does, the higher framerate of interlacing to get the needed smoothness.
I long, long ago transitioned to the smoothness for movies. I'll keep my interpolation for as long the source framerate stays low, thank you very much!
The interpolation may not be perfect, but it's far better than none at all. I get annoyed at You Tube rubbish these days because my desktop player/browser doesn't have interpolation.
I absolutely *hate* motion interpolation. HATE HATE HATE it. I can't even watch TV at someone else's house if they have that crap on. Perhaps it my brain has spent too many years looking at 24FPS, but when that "feature" is on, everything looks like hand-held, cheap, plastic video to me. What is funny is how many people can't even tell the difference!! The few times I pointed it out to people and had them turn it off, they couldn't have cared less (but at least it made it tolerable for the people who hate it). Ironically, I know of almost nobody that likes it- most people are either completely indifferent, or hate it.
I *hated* watching the Hobbit in the theater for the same reason- the high frame rate. And it was touted as a feature! The 3D was excellent, and the HFR ruined it.
I just hope I never EVER get stuck with a TV or content in which I can't turn it off. And yes, I know it is adjustable... and yes, I have tried it "on" but at a really weak setting. Still hate it. Perhaps it is good for sports or something, but I don't watch sports.
If you want a good Sci-Fi movie that was made in the last 20 years, Tom Cruise was probably in it.
I must have missed him in Interstellar and The Martian. Or Gravity. Was he in the new Bladerunner too? Do the Marvel movies count?
I enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow, but there are tons of great SciFi movies that didn't have Tom Cruise.
His best work was stuff like "My Left Foot" that won him an Oscar.
Yeah, Tom Cruise's impersonation of Daniel Day-Lewis in that movie was uncanny.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Props to Tom Cruise for his public service and to Xenu for inspiring such a man to fight for us all.
Wow. Yeah, Forget the sex trafficking and slavery stuff the "church" arranges. Forget the threats of violence and intimidation. Forget that he is a principle financial backer for these scum bags -as long as he does his own stunts and "seems nice" (in fucking interviews? what a moron) it's all A-OK.
Which of the many religions are you talking about? I genuinely can't tell.
They've already got your movie ticket money, now they want your (or your kid's) game money. Not going to age well, game 'eye candy' never does.
Knowing Peter Jackson, when he was filming those he was NOT thinking about video games. I know we liked to suspect that since they were video-game-like, it had to be intentional, but that really was the last thing on his mind. Getting something you could show on screen at all was not a given. The production was incredibly rushed, and there were days when the actors couldn't do much of anything because Jackson was rewriting the script on set, so the crew had them just fight randomly on green screens in the hope that some of that footage would be usable when the screenplay could finally be blocked out.
If the action scenes look basic and lazy, it's because there was not much thought put into them, which is why so much of it is a montage of 3-shot sequences: 1) See a problem, 2) Reaction/devise solution, 3) Execute a solution. Those sequences could have been assembled in any order, because nothing depended on anything that came before it.
The tipping ice sword fight and cartoon physics 'falling away' from the goblins were clearly previews of intended game mechanics.
Of course they were all done with CGI. I'm still saying game 'cut scene' as cross advertising.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The tipping ice sword fight and cartoon physics 'falling away' from the goblins were clearly previews of intended game mechanics.
I think it's more of an indication that the effects guys had like.. five minutes to block out a scene, and animation never had much of a chance to even start. With each of the three movies, the previous movie ended a bit later in the schedule, so the next movie's production schedule was even more compressed. The further along the pipeline, the worse the crunch, and they already had a hard, unmoving date to reach. The couldn't just miss their December target and release the movie in January. You can see the effects get worse with each subsequent movie. Look at the eagles from the first movie and compare them to the third. The third's eagles are... noticeably worse. And neither of their eagles looked anywhere as good as those from the Return of the King, 11 years earlier. How can the special effects look WORSE, even though they have much better lighting, shading, texturing tools? They can look worse if you have no polish time at all.
I mean, I can't say that some producer wasn't thinking about video games, but I can speak with surety that the crew and director weren't really thinking about it. They had far costlier affairs to consider at the time, trying to make sure their spinning plates did not cause a 3/4 billion dollar budget to totally crash, which it almost did (IMO, they were unsuccessful..)
Willing to bet all those 'cutscene scenes' were done in post.
The worst ('falling away' from the goblins) was in the first movie. I still think in movie 'game ad'.
Bet the producer had 'final cut'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'