Topic: Who misses animatronics, props and effects?

I was recently watching the tv and saw there was a Dreamworks How to Train your Dragon Live, and I thought the props looked pretty sweet.
I really miss this, IMO CGI looks bad most of the time, I wasn't that impressed with Avatar after hearing so much praise about it. I think CGI has it's place but not to use it or every little thing. I am still wowed by Jurassic Park. Does anyone else feel the same? We lost the movie magic? Or is CGI the way to go for all effects. Discuss.

I think we're at the point now where CGI is good enough to be entirely believable, if done well. That's only really come about in the last 5 or so years in my opinion though. "The Avengers", for example, was absolutely incredible - I was blown away by how good it looked.

However, animatronics can also be fantastic - again, if done well.

I don't necessarily miss animatronics - for me, if the end result is seamless then I don't really care how it's done. CGI can obviously be used to make absolutely anything, which is a huge advantage, but really I'm just happy if you show me a film where I can't tell what's CGI/animatronics and what's not (well, apart from knowing that dinosaurs are, in fact, extinct!)

When Thor climbed up the mountain (don't remember if this was the scene) looked kind of weird. Kinda looked like he was crawling up there like Spiderman lol. Though what I was trying to say was, CGI should be more of a way to compliment the effects, instead of being the main attraction.

CGI is good only when it's done right. Even then, animatronics is more real looking to me, and has weight and things (since it's a real object and not something virtual). Unfortunately the trend now is to put CGI in everything even if you could do the same effect without it. Wouldn't be surprised if they do that just to show people that they can do CGI. I don't like that but there's nothing I can do about it. CGI is here to stay, for better or for worse.

Jurassic Park still looks great after all these years. No other dinosaur movie since then has looked as good as the ones in JP (I mean the dinosaur models). Terra Nova was awful even with it's giant budget and the guns were recoloured Nerf guns

Yes, I agree. CGI should be used sparingly. It should be used to complement the scene, not overpower it.

Special effects are secondary - the scripts and actors (and the music) should be focal when making movies. Movies these days focus 99% on CGI graphics and 1% story .... which makes for a lot of Hollywood garbage.

My favorite movie of all time is probably Ghostbusters. Granted, special effects weren't as advanced in 1984 as they are now, but this movie did a great job with the limited technology of the time to bring us some great visuals! Check them out!

Louis Tulley - red eyes

Slimer

Librarian apparition

"Nobody steps on a church in my town!"

I'm an 80s/90s person on everything that includes movies, TV, video games, everything

More than props and animatronics, I miss the magic of hand drawn animation. Don't get me wrong, all the Pixar and Dreamworks CGI cartoons look great, but there's not a single one of them that can compete with the pure magic of hand drawn animation (at least Japanese anime studios, like Ghibli, still know that the magic of hand drawn animation can't be beat).

It could be worse than CGI, though. CGI is still better than the utter laziness of Flash animation, which plagues this era of television cartoons.

Agreed, Flash is almost always horribad and is for lazy, uncreative hacks (insert Newgrounds joke here).

I agree completely. I also love it sometimes when movies are obviously made on a set, I'm not sure why.

CGI can be good but don't forget Jurassic Park is a mix of CGI and animatronics, most of the more impressive parts weren't CGI at all, the best part of the movie was they tricked you and it wasn't super obvious. I didn't mind Avatar, I thought much of the CGI was quite good. I think realism is almost there in the best of the best CGI but in a lot of cases the animation seems to forget about physics. I haven't seen the latest Spiderman partly because the CGI looked horrible in the commercials but I found it was also really bad in the earlier Spiderman series. CGI is useful for superhero movies but I prefer it when they are based on reality and when they take place on Earth they follow the physics we have here. Yes Superhero's are otherworldly but given their powers some things are just completely impossible.

Actors still seem disconnected a lot of the time when dealing with CGI characters or backgrounds. You can almost see in their faces that they are walking around in front of a green screen. And their eyes often look glazed over when they are supposedly looking at a CGI character.

Anyone raised with mostly CGI is probably quite use to CGI explosions and such but in real life bits of metal don't really spin around twenty times in the air and then slow down to emphasize the 3D effect as they get close to the screen. This is all just technical wankery =p

young-casual man gives u a thumbs up

^I think I went to school with that guy.

OT, Not I. I very much dislike old style effects, and feel we've come a very long way into making effects actually believable to any degree. That's not something I'd want to give up any time soon. I still enjoy old movies, but rarely because of the effects, and usually I just find myself laughing at said effects, when I'm not irritated by them.

I agree. Animatronics looked good in some older movies, but not too many in my opinion.I haven't seen too many recent movies where I would rather have old special effects instead of CG. Where they really shine nowadays are plays like the one in the first post, or attractions like the rides at Disneyland.

CGI is the worst. I don't know who in their mind would find it believable it looks like your just mixing in cartoons with real people. Also they just use CGI now for anything even if it's something that could have been done in RL.

Speaking of Ghosbusters, now I know why this looked so familiar.

Yup. I'd like a Gremlins 3 to end the series as a trilogy. Plus I'm not a fan of CGI. It can be nice, bu most of the time it's not.

One of the biggest problems in my beloved horror genre has been a trend to move away from practical effects in favor of CGI. No CGI, no matter how good, can ever match the excellence of practical effects in the hands of someone like Tom Savini or Greg Nicotero.

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Definitely agree with this. I grew up with classical animated movies and the detail they put into these things, especially the backgrounds, look amazing. I know that CGI isn't easy to pull off, but I think drawing everything by hand takes a lot more time and energy to complete. There's over 2000 images moving in a typical animated movie! Ever seen the movies Watership Down and The Plague Dogs? Both are done by the same studio and their background work is truly amazing.

I like some CGI animated movies, but most lack the soul of a good classical animated movie.