Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
Who framed Roger Rabbit has aged great!
It really has. The animation and live action blend together so well. I rewatched it recently and I think I was more impressed watching it now than I was first time around.
The main actor, acting against nothing... the dude was a master.
Also, you should notice how often they disturb the scenery - knocking a light fixture makes the characters impact the scene, while the light shifting on the character makes the scene impact them. It's so effective...
One of the reasons the movie worked so well is that physical stand-ins for the toons were used for the actors to interact with. So for example when Eddie's pushing Roger under the sink water to hide him from the weasels, he's pushing down a piston and actually interacting with something, rather than miming the action like was done in earlier mixed real life/animated movies. Also why when a human is looking at a toon, they don't have a thousand yard or blank stare.
I watched a documentary about the making where Bob Hoskins was praised for being damn near perfect on sight lines every time. They had to do so many expensive retakes over other actors struggling with it.
Comment deleted by user
What fantastic practical effects! And the acting sells it.
I just saw the making-of and I gotta say I'm not sure that movie works with an actor less dedicated and professional than Bob Hoskins.
His work is absolutely incredible when you consider that he was talking to no one for the majority of the movie.
And I'm not even talking of all the special moves and manipulations he had to do, in character.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is still, to this day, acclaimed by many special effects artists as one the best. It still holds up to this day, honestly.
Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 have aged very well considering they are 30 plus years old imo.
Both emphasized animatronics and practical effects as much as CGI. CGI was used to fill in the gaps, not be the main course.
Much like the frog dna that filled in the gaps…
BINGO! DINO DNA!!!
Spared no expense
I have too much fun saying dinah-sawr when I get to my genetics and evolution unit. The kids don't seem to catch on...
Also, they didn’t try to over sell the effects. T2 they do quite a good silvery metal man, but never try to do a realistic-looking human. JP likewise, it’s a lot of shadows and shiny scaly monsters. And, as you say, kept to an absolute minimum
This was the key that made them age well.
When the T-Rex broke through the roof of the car onto the kids that was probably the most ridiculous thing they did, but it was brief and it was using the animatronic so it didn't ruin the illusion.
In the modern Jurassic Park movies EVERY scene with the dinosaurs is like that, every pose they make and action they take is way too over the top and choreographed. You can't help but think of them as puppets controlled by an animator.
I'm pretty sure it's happened in every one of the sequel trilogy, where a character jumps through the jaws of a big dino right before it dramatically chomps down. It's too much, less is more.
The acting is also awful in the modern JP movies. There're scenes where they're running around dodging dinosaurs, and the actors don't react AT ALL to the dinos.
Jurassic Park is the one that came immediately to mind for me. It had exactly the perfect mix of CGI and practical effects. And what CGI it does have holds up exceptionally well compared to other movies from around the same time and even years later.
T2 I mostly agree with, though the T-1000 liquid metal effects show their age somewhat. They don't look bad, they just look like '90s CGI in a way that JP's dinosaurs don't.
The scene where the T-1000 walks through the metal bars is legit impressive. I saw a youtube video of these guys trying to replicate it using modern software and couldn't even come close to making it look as good.
And the way he catches his gun on the bars is perfect. Makes you go 🧐 in exactly the right way to enhance the believability
I opened this thread saying "Jurassic Park better be the top comment in the fine wine category".
Jurassic Park is over 30 years?
*checks IMDB, cries*
Yeah, I always thought that movie was at least 65 million years old
65 million years in the making!
You forgot Jaws as that was an animatronic shark the whole time.
They wished it was the whole time.
There were so many issues with the shark, Spielberg was forced to find creative ways to imply the shark was present, which ended up making the movie so much better.
During the climactic scenes however, when they absolutely needed to show the shark, everything worked perfectly.
It was almost like the universe wanted the movie made the way it was.
It came out a masterpiece of cinematic horror.
The effects in the 90s are honestly more mindblowing than modern ones, It just looks more realistic in comparison.
The reverse melting wax body in Hellraiser is INSANE
Watch the Wizard of Oz, made in 1939. The approaching tornado effect in the beginning is realistic and terrifying.
Just the effect where it went from B&W to technicolor was amazing.
I heard the twister was actually nylon hosiery spinning.
Comment deleted by user
Still can’t understand how they did the scene in Terminator 2 when Arnold takes the skin off his metal arm. I miss effects like that… when I used to wonder how they did them.
It was a trick, he pulled rubber skin off of a fake arm!
Davy Jones in Pirates of the Carribean still looks fantastic
Yes! That is the very first thing I thought of. The lighting, and the way that they got the water on Davy Jones' "tentacles" is phenomenal. When I think of visual effects that still looks fantastic many years later, I think of Jurassic Park (OG), LOTR, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
Especially when he's playing the pipe organ, and holding his hat from floating away as his ship descends beneath the waves.
If I remember correctly, him being always wet made it easier to look realistic. And the tentacles make it harder for us to put him in uncanny valley territory. I think they also used real, non CGI, videos for parts around his eyes.
Most of the old movies with good CGI was made by people that knew the limits of CGI and was allowed film with that in mind.
The really clever part about his eyes is that yes, they did them (and his mouth) with makeup to look the part. But they didn't actually use them, the finished product you see in the film is 100% computer generated. But they used the footage for reference, so they were able to make the CG mouth and eyes look as realistic as possible, without having to actually blend real and CG imagery, which is very difficult.
That whole trilogy (yes TRILOGY) is a masterclass in CG, because director Gore Verbinski had experience in being a visual artist himself and knew exactly how to shoot the films in such a way that his artists got the best material possible to work with. He also knew the limitations of the technology, and when it would be best to use practical effects.
Yeah, for all that there are plot and pacing and character issues with the 3rd movie, the cinematography and VFX are still absolute top-class. The shot of the british dude walking down from the poop deck while his ship is being shot to smithereens? That shit is iconic for a reason.
Almost 20 years old and they look better than a lot of recent movies. The visual artists did an incredible job.
And you can’t even make the “oh, they threw him in shadows and poorly lit environments the whole time to make it easier.” They straight up put him on an island with 0 trees in broad daylight and he still looks insanely good.
Here is a great video that talks through why the CGI looks so good, thought it was really interesting about how the design of the character etc played into the strengths of the CGI technology of the time.
Thank you so much for linking that! I love that video and wanted to link it, but forgot what it was called. That youtube channel is super informative and interesting, but I kind of fell of watching it for some reason.
Afraid to get wet?
But Pirates was released in what, 2003? That was only like 5 years ago, right? Right?
…right? 😭
The special effects in Death Becomes Her (1992) have barely aged at all. I watched it a few months ago, and literally said out loud, "They should have won an Oscar for these effects."
They did, in fact, win an Oscar for those effects.
Yes, I'm glad you mentioned this movie!
Ernest, you pushed me down the stairs.
The morgue!? She'll be FURIOUS!
I rented that fucker at least 6 if not 7 times, great movie.
Jurassic Park is over 30 years old and still looks better than the sequels.
The Mummy Returns had some of the worst CGI I'd ever seen for the Scorpion King. And yet The Two Towers was released the following year with some of the best CGI for Smeagol.
the scorpion king aged fine, it was bad when it came out.
lol it can't get shittier if it's already shit, amarite?
I just remember this teeny tiny little Rock head stuck on this massive and clearly CGI scorpion, and it was so hilariously bad
Mummy Returns' CGI was aged like milk when it was 1 day into theater release, haha. Of course, that didn't stop me from watching the movie a hundred times ...
Looked like PlayStation 2 graphics
Reminded me of Goru from Mortal Kombat.
Same VFX house that did Jurassic Park and The Mummy (1999); ILM. The Scorpion King creature was an ongoing test during almost the entirety of the film itself. The rig development for the creature was an ongoing series of trial error attempts until shot delivery. Human facial rigs had not been done well to that detail and the technology simply wasn't ready. While it is hilarious to poke fun at the attempt, the failure of the Scorpion King creature was a stepping stone to better software and hardware tools for CG.
Lol my friends and I saw it in theaters and a few people had to step out of the theater they were laughing so hard. We started printing out pictures of the scorpion king and leaving them in each other's lockers and textbooks.
And he even did the eyebrow thing 😂
Brenden Frazier was interviewed about that and basically said they green-lit the sequel immediately after the first one, and everything got rushed. The first Mummy movie is probably one of my absolute favorites with decent CG.
Corridor Crew did an interview with a VFX member who worked on the Scorpion King model and he explained that The Rock had only came in for a couple of days for shoot and left. The VFX team couldn’t get enough references of The Rock to make the model as good as it can look and were on a tight deadline from the studio to get it finished.
He was wrestling a full-time schedule back then for WWE so that makes sense. Not a defence just that was all his schedule would allow because this was when the Attitude Era was going on with him as one of the main eventers.
I'm going to see the Mummy in theaters tomorrow. I can't wait to see the effects on the big screen again.
The really funny part is that it was the same VFX company that did Jurassic Park and The Mummy Returns. Just goes to show what budget, time, and direction variations will do to a movie.
Jurassic park is the prime example for sure. It looks perfect today.
They spared no expense!
But they also made great design choices. They kept the CGI "hidden" as much as possible or they helped it by obscuring it in shadow or rain.
From what I understand, Jurassic Park looks so good because they heavily used puppetry in the movie and CGI only as an enhancement or certain scenes. Hence why the raptors look better than the brontosaurus.