Pretend you never saw Matrix Reloaded, and watch its trailer. The movie looks fucking cool!
The so-called Burly Brawl would have worked so much better if it had intercut between CG and real movement just like the trailer does. But the flying camera made it seem too obviously unreal. Plus, the trailer has that cool "Supermoves" song.
The Matrix Revolutions also has the same effect, to a lesser extent. The trailers are incredible. The way the full scenes were edited in the movie, however, shatter them.
Adolescent male's fear of sentiment? I could have sworn the movies were packed full of sentiment, to the point of people bitching about the "homoerotic" glances Sam and Frodo give each other through the whole trilogy.
In fact, it took six years of development on a piece of crowd-simulation software called Massive. The Post article author is just flamebaiting. Remember all those articles we read on Slashdot about how WETA had doubled their computer farm for the final film? That's a shitload of artists working on it.
Nobody "forgot" to use magic. Magic in the books was always a subtle effect spawned more from will power than fireballs.
The greatness of Gandalf in the books is that he's an agent of intervention and guidance. It helps that he happens to have one of the three rings, which pursuades people to do his will.
Actually, since you mention it, I'm surprised this is the first I've heard of this kind of criticism, because you'd expect more. Most people who have seen the movies accept Gandalf's level of power without question, despite decades of accepting that wizards are supposed to cast lightning bolts and turn their enemies into sheep. Interesting...perhaps a credit to Ian McKellen really strengthening the role without resorting to such tact.
Not only that, but a large percentage of major characters are played by actors over 50. The trilogy really feels grounded with such experienced actors of both film and stage, experience you don't usually come across in Hollywood films because they're obsessed with what is "hot" and "new."
And yet they still won the battle. The point was to break down the line of spearman and just tear through the ranks. As you no doubt remember, they didn't expect to win anyway, so they just charged in and took down as many as they could.
Then they charged at the oliphaunts because they had no other choice. They had to take them down or else get trampled. What would you do? I'd charge them and try to bring them down with arrows or do what Eowyn did and slice at the legs.
Call me a purist, but I still believe that CG should be used to enhance real scenes, not create them from scratch (unless it's a space movie or something similar)...
Why?
You sound like Speilberg, who announces to applause that he will never switch to the superior format of digital filming. Meanwhile, nobody really knows why.
When Gimli said those things, the audience laughed. When Legolas "snowboarded" down the stairs on his shield, the audience cheered.
It was fun. It's a movie, remember? The only movie that topped the fun of The Two Towers for me was Return of the King. Seeing Legolas drop an oliphaunt, and Gimli's resulting comment, made that moment memorable for every member of the audience who were with me that night. It was a great movie with fun character moments to offset the dreary doom. You cheered when your heroes showed up.
You know, Tolkien did have whimsical comedic moments in the books, some that made it into the movies and some that didn't.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Agreed. But still, when I watch The Two Towers and see those ground-level side shots of the approaching orc army and realize absolutely nothing in that shot is real except the ground they're walking on, I can't help but be impressed. They look real to me. Even the orcs climbing the ladders were CG. In fact, those ground-level side shots actually started as Massive visual tests! Peter Jackson decided to use them in the movie.
You have to keep in mind that seeing 100,000 enemies battling just won't look real no matter what you do, because you've never really seen 100,000 battling orcs up close like that. You must remember that a large number of things in real life also look "unreal" when you actually see them, and I don't doubt that the reason is the same. You just don't see it everyday!
You're never not going to be able to tell the difference, because a 500 year old creature shrivelled from an evil ring is just something you don't see in real life, so it's easy to spot as CG. Also, Balrogs, massive Dwarven cities, and more. You know they can't exist.
However, I bet there are tons of shots in the LOTR movies you didn't even know weren't CG, so you're complaining without realizing you've already been had. For instance, the characters running across the bridge in Moria weren't real. Or the rotating shot of the ruins that the fellowship walks by. Several shots of the ring itself. And there are a lot of uses of Massive that people didn't necessarily realize, such as an overhead shot of Helm's Deep right before Aragorn speaks to Theoden about calling for aid, in which the entire lower level of the set is computer-generated, complete with human populace. Not to mention all the lighting, weather change, and backdrops of almost every shot, which were done with computers.
Really the biggest eyesore is CG people. I have yet to see something that really amazes me as it looks like a real person. To be honest, I found the closest being FF:Spirits Within. Crappy movie, but you have to admit the graphics were outstanding.
You've got to be joking. The most realistic CG human face I've ever seen is the slow-motion punch in Matrix Revolutions. None of that was real. Also, a lot of the cloned Smiths in Matrix Reloaded were stunt people with CG Smith faces pasted on them. You probably never noticed.
I despise michael and his neverending interjections of opinion in his postings like everyone else does, but even I saw that he was being sarcastic.
Still, I don't know why CmdrTaco lets him post things like that, sarcastic or not, because it only serves to disrupt the comments after the article as we discuss what he meant.
I noticed a visual improvement in Gollum, and I've sinced learned that they tweaked his skin and joints since the last movie. For instance, when he wakes up, you can see his lips sticking together when he opens them, like real lips would. His facial animation is also much more realistic and natural. My favorite shot is when he and the two hobbits are hiding and peering over at Minas Morgul.
Also, I noticed a shot of a Warg that looked much, much better than those of The Two Towers (even in the audio commentary, Peter Jackson points out that they don't sit well in the shot, because they were rushed CG at the last moment...seems a lot of vital CG was rushed in that movie).
I know most people despise special releases of movies as per Lucas, but in this case, I really am hoping for a special box set release in maybe 2005 (or perhaps when The Hobbit gets made into film), so that Peter Jackson has the opportunity to go back and perfect all the old effects shots that don't quite work. As cool as the Ent battle was, it looks a little off. Also, a few shots of Gollum come to mind (like his closeup during Sam's speech in Osgiliath...he looks horrible...and over all, he could use a little more mass and weight, a little too bouncy). And he has mentioned in the past that he'd like to go back and put the final rendition of Gollum into Fellowship of the Ring.
Imagine if all the old effects shots were re-rendered using the latest technology, so that Gollum, Ents, Wargs, and even Balrogs looked even more realistic than they already did. Particularly the Ents, which I thought could have been more "treeish." They seemed just a little too plastic. Some cleanup could be done on the water effects and the destruction of Isengard. And maybe Galadriel's transformation in the first film could be redone into something better (mostly so that you can hear what the hell she's saying and understand what is going on...the over-the-top vocal effect drowns it all out).
So, I really do hope for a "Super Special Extended Edition" for these movies someday, maybe even in super-high-resolution format like the recent T2 DVD offers. I'd gladly shell out.
In other words, he makes a dig at America for appreciating a good action shot. How "insightful."
You're damn right I enjoy noticable special effects. A lot of revolutionary movies in our history were noticable special effects. King Kong, anyone? That wasn't even American.
Scenes that Peter Jackson filmed on set or using a miniature, like Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, and even Hobbiton, would all be blue-screened, plastic crap. For instance, instead of building two versions of Bag-End to make the actors scale right, Lucas would just film absolutely everything with blue-screens and scale the scenery when he put it all together. Meanwhile, nobody looks like they're really on Coruscant, but our heroes look like they're really in Gondor or Mordor or Bag-End.
Gollum would probably also be funny and cute (not in the creepy way he already is) and would do flips while yelling like Tarzan before jumping into the Forbidden Pool!
For Lucas to say that is the most blatant sign of how out-of-touch he is about his visual effects that I've ever seen.
I agree that ROTK has surpassed the Matrix movies, but Revolutions should have at least gotten a nod.
Gollum may be the most well-done CG-character, the most realistic CG human face goes to Matrix Revolutions. Why? Well, you remember when, in the crater, Neo punches Smith in the face in slow-motion, and you see the effects of the punch in Smith's face, his skin rippling, etc?
Nothing in that shot was real. It was all CG.
Also, you have to at least give a nod to the siege of Zion sequence. It was pretty intense in the moment. Over all, Revolutions should have been given a chance. There was a lot of great CG, from the Sentinel siege, to the shot I described, to the explosion of the street when Smith slams Neo into it, and so on.
Again, you ignore the real people who are deprived of money when you don't pay for their music.
What does the length of copyright law have to do with downloading current music? They've actually been pushing release dates forward because they keep getting downloaded online.
In fact, the court said that one of the arguments the RIAA used 'borders upon the silly.'
The court also said the following:
The appeals judges said they sympathized with the recording industry, noting that "stakes are large." But the judges said it was not the role of courts to rewrite the 1998 copyright law, "no matter how damaging that development has been to the music industry or threatens being to the motion picture and software industries."
In other words, this was a technical ruling.
The difference with Slashdot between other media outlets is that Slashdot doesn't dare mention the damage to the music industry. It's all a "culture movement," or something.
I used to disagree with the RIAA's tactics, but when I think about this situation, I really do have to wonder. There are people illegally trading music files. The RIAA wanted to get their names in order to prosecute them individually (which is what Slashdotters used to say they should do back when they were suing Napster). What was wrong with the RIAA going after people infringing on their copyrights again? What do I lose from them doing that? Nobody has ever offered an actual, cohesive argument. It seems like no matter what they do, Slashdotters are against them preventing piracy of their works.
I notice people here seem to be against software piracy. Movie piracy is about 50/50. Music piracy is maybe 90/10. Why? Convenience? I don't get it. It's wrong no matter the files being traded. You didn't pay to get the music. Nobody seems to care that some human beings paid for a studio and recorded the music for a record label that distributed it for them. Instead, it's, "Down with RIAA!"
Slashdot Mirror
Pretend you never saw Matrix Reloaded, and watch its trailer. The movie looks fucking cool!
The so-called Burly Brawl would have worked so much better if it had intercut between CG and real movement just like the trailer does. But the flying camera made it seem too obviously unreal. Plus, the trailer has that cool "Supermoves" song.
The Matrix Revolutions also has the same effect, to a lesser extent. The trailers are incredible. The way the full scenes were edited in the movie, however, shatter them.
Adolescent male's fear of sentiment? I could have sworn the movies were packed full of sentiment, to the point of people bitching about the "homoerotic" glances Sam and Frodo give each other through the whole trilogy.
In fact, it took six years of development on a piece of crowd-simulation software called Massive. The Post article author is just flamebaiting. Remember all those articles we read on Slashdot about how WETA had doubled their computer farm for the final film? That's a shitload of artists working on it.
Nobody "forgot" to use magic. Magic in the books was always a subtle effect spawned more from will power than fireballs.
The greatness of Gandalf in the books is that he's an agent of intervention and guidance. It helps that he happens to have one of the three rings, which pursuades people to do his will.
Actually, since you mention it, I'm surprised this is the first I've heard of this kind of criticism, because you'd expect more. Most people who have seen the movies accept Gandalf's level of power without question, despite decades of accepting that wizards are supposed to cast lightning bolts and turn their enemies into sheep. Interesting...perhaps a credit to Ian McKellen really strengthening the role without resorting to such tact.
Not only that, but a large percentage of major characters are played by actors over 50. The trilogy really feels grounded with such experienced actors of both film and stage, experience you don't usually come across in Hollywood films because they're obsessed with what is "hot" and "new."
I don't see any reason why Gandalf's cavalry charge would have worked out as anything but a similar disaster.
Because it was Gandalf leading a cavalry charge. You're forgetting the magical/fantasy element involved in this.
And yet they still won the battle. The point was to break down the line of spearman and just tear through the ranks. As you no doubt remember, they didn't expect to win anyway, so they just charged in and took down as many as they could.
Then they charged at the oliphaunts because they had no other choice. They had to take them down or else get trampled. What would you do? I'd charge them and try to bring them down with arrows or do what Eowyn did and slice at the legs.
Call me a purist, but I still believe that CG should be used to enhance real scenes, not create them from scratch (unless it's a space movie or something similar)...
Why?
You sound like Speilberg, who announces to applause that he will never switch to the superior format of digital filming. Meanwhile, nobody really knows why.
Man, if you hate goofy, comical dwarves, stay far away from the The Hobbit, the prequel to the LOTR books.
In the book, there is a part where Legolas runs across a rope as if it's normal ground. Extreme tightroping, I suppose.
When Gimli said those things, the audience laughed. When Legolas "snowboarded" down the stairs on his shield, the audience cheered.
It was fun. It's a movie, remember? The only movie that topped the fun of The Two Towers for me was Return of the King. Seeing Legolas drop an oliphaunt, and Gimli's resulting comment, made that moment memorable for every member of the audience who were with me that night. It was a great movie with fun character moments to offset the dreary doom. You cheered when your heroes showed up.
You know, Tolkien did have whimsical comedic moments in the books, some that made it into the movies and some that didn't.
Agreed. But still, when I watch The Two Towers and see those ground-level side shots of the approaching orc army and realize absolutely nothing in that shot is real except the ground they're walking on, I can't help but be impressed. They look real to me. Even the orcs climbing the ladders were CG. In fact, those ground-level side shots actually started as Massive visual tests! Peter Jackson decided to use them in the movie.
You have to keep in mind that seeing 100,000 enemies battling just won't look real no matter what you do, because you've never really seen 100,000 battling orcs up close like that. You must remember that a large number of things in real life also look "unreal" when you actually see them, and I don't doubt that the reason is the same. You just don't see it everyday!
You're never not going to be able to tell the difference, because a 500 year old creature shrivelled from an evil ring is just something you don't see in real life, so it's easy to spot as CG. Also, Balrogs, massive Dwarven cities, and more. You know they can't exist.
However, I bet there are tons of shots in the LOTR movies you didn't even know weren't CG, so you're complaining without realizing you've already been had. For instance, the characters running across the bridge in Moria weren't real. Or the rotating shot of the ruins that the fellowship walks by. Several shots of the ring itself. And there are a lot of uses of Massive that people didn't necessarily realize, such as an overhead shot of Helm's Deep right before Aragorn speaks to Theoden about calling for aid, in which the entire lower level of the set is computer-generated, complete with human populace. Not to mention all the lighting, weather change, and backdrops of almost every shot, which were done with computers.
Really the biggest eyesore is CG people. I have yet to see something that really amazes me as it looks like a real person. To be honest, I found the closest being FF:Spirits Within. Crappy movie, but you have to admit the graphics were outstanding.
You've got to be joking. The most realistic CG human face I've ever seen is the slow-motion punch in Matrix Revolutions. None of that was real. Also, a lot of the cloned Smiths in Matrix Reloaded were stunt people with CG Smith faces pasted on them. You probably never noticed.
I despise michael and his neverending interjections of opinion in his postings like everyone else does, but even I saw that he was being sarcastic.
Still, I don't know why CmdrTaco lets him post things like that, sarcastic or not, because it only serves to disrupt the comments after the article as we discuss what he meant.
"The audience" cheered at both the showings I went to, as well as in all the early camrips.
I doubt anybody actually groaned at yours.
I noticed a visual improvement in Gollum, and I've sinced learned that they tweaked his skin and joints since the last movie. For instance, when he wakes up, you can see his lips sticking together when he opens them, like real lips would. His facial animation is also much more realistic and natural. My favorite shot is when he and the two hobbits are hiding and peering over at Minas Morgul.
Also, I noticed a shot of a Warg that looked much, much better than those of The Two Towers (even in the audio commentary, Peter Jackson points out that they don't sit well in the shot, because they were rushed CG at the last moment...seems a lot of vital CG was rushed in that movie).
I know most people despise special releases of movies as per Lucas, but in this case, I really am hoping for a special box set release in maybe 2005 (or perhaps when The Hobbit gets made into film), so that Peter Jackson has the opportunity to go back and perfect all the old effects shots that don't quite work. As cool as the Ent battle was, it looks a little off. Also, a few shots of Gollum come to mind (like his closeup during Sam's speech in Osgiliath...he looks horrible...and over all, he could use a little more mass and weight, a little too bouncy). And he has mentioned in the past that he'd like to go back and put the final rendition of Gollum into Fellowship of the Ring.
Imagine if all the old effects shots were re-rendered using the latest technology, so that Gollum, Ents, Wargs, and even Balrogs looked even more realistic than they already did. Particularly the Ents, which I thought could have been more "treeish." They seemed just a little too plastic. Some cleanup could be done on the water effects and the destruction of Isengard. And maybe Galadriel's transformation in the first film could be redone into something better (mostly so that you can hear what the hell she's saying and understand what is going on...the over-the-top vocal effect drowns it all out).
So, I really do hope for a "Super Special Extended Edition" for these movies someday, maybe even in super-high-resolution format like the recent T2 DVD offers. I'd gladly shell out.
In other words, he makes a dig at America for appreciating a good action shot. How "insightful."
You're damn right I enjoy noticable special effects. A lot of revolutionary movies in our history were noticable special effects. King Kong, anyone? That wasn't even American.
Scenes that Peter Jackson filmed on set or using a miniature, like Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, and even Hobbiton, would all be blue-screened, plastic crap. For instance, instead of building two versions of Bag-End to make the actors scale right, Lucas would just film absolutely everything with blue-screens and scale the scenery when he put it all together. Meanwhile, nobody looks like they're really on Coruscant, but our heroes look like they're really in Gondor or Mordor or Bag-End.
Gollum would probably also be funny and cute (not in the creepy way he already is) and would do flips while yelling like Tarzan before jumping into the Forbidden Pool!
For Lucas to say that is the most blatant sign of how out-of-touch he is about his visual effects that I've ever seen.
I agree that ROTK has surpassed the Matrix movies, but Revolutions should have at least gotten a nod.
Gollum may be the most well-done CG-character, the most realistic CG human face goes to Matrix Revolutions. Why? Well, you remember when, in the crater, Neo punches Smith in the face in slow-motion, and you see the effects of the punch in Smith's face, his skin rippling, etc?
Nothing in that shot was real. It was all CG.
Also, you have to at least give a nod to the siege of Zion sequence. It was pretty intense in the moment. Over all, Revolutions should have been given a chance. There was a lot of great CG, from the Sentinel siege, to the shot I described, to the explosion of the street when Smith slams Neo into it, and so on.
Still, ROTK should and will win.
YHBT. Congratulations.
Read my journal for more examples of my intentions to bait pedantic people like you with intentional typos.
Any remotely modern GUI wouldn't require an arcane manual text edit of some config file.
Again, you ignore the real people who are deprived of money when you don't pay for their music.
What does the length of copyright law have to do with downloading current music? They've actually been pushing release dates forward because they keep getting downloaded online.
Such as:
RTFM!
LOL!
IANAL
ROFLMAO
YHBT
FP!
BRB
Extra test for the lame lameness filter.
In fact, the court said that one of the arguments the RIAA used 'borders upon the silly.'
The court also said the following:
The appeals judges said they sympathized with the recording industry, noting that "stakes are large." But the judges said it was not the role of courts to rewrite the 1998 copyright law, "no matter how damaging that development has been to the music industry or threatens being to the motion picture and software industries."
In other words, this was a technical ruling.
The difference with Slashdot between other media outlets is that Slashdot doesn't dare mention the damage to the music industry. It's all a "culture movement," or something.
I used to disagree with the RIAA's tactics, but when I think about this situation, I really do have to wonder. There are people illegally trading music files. The RIAA wanted to get their names in order to prosecute them individually (which is what Slashdotters used to say they should do back when they were suing Napster). What was wrong with the RIAA going after people infringing on their copyrights again? What do I lose from them doing that? Nobody has ever offered an actual, cohesive argument. It seems like no matter what they do, Slashdotters are against them preventing piracy of their works.
I notice people here seem to be against software piracy. Movie piracy is about 50/50. Music piracy is maybe 90/10. Why? Convenience? I don't get it. It's wrong no matter the files being traded. You didn't pay to get the music. Nobody seems to care that some human beings paid for a studio and recorded the music for a record label that distributed it for them. Instead, it's, "Down with RIAA!"
I just don't get the revolution, I guess.
You do realize this patch phones home, don't you? Slashdot just advertised a piece of spyware. It phones home to validate every URL. Read the website.