"Rise of the Apes" - Planet of the Apes prequel

[Neil]

As far as CGI goes, it was pretty damn good. But you could still tell it was CGI, of course. Sometimes it was nigh on perfect though. Bit like Gollum in LOTR. Every now and then, your brain stopped complaining and accepted what it was seeing as genuine!

[JDFP]

Arg! CG Apes blow! This trend of remakes and going nuts with CG creatures is getting tiresome. It seems like most everyone is trying to make a dollar nowadays...almost no one seems to care about quality or originality anymore. I can't believe people can suspend their disbelief with those apes on the screen. I saw clips on talk shows and stuff and I must say, the apes look terrible. CGI is a cancer and it will never stop growing. Makeup will only be reserved for zombie and slasher movies down the road, and will be completely eliminated from main stream films. Thank you, thank you.... It's good to know I'm not the only person who feels the way I do about CGI or just the overall fakeness of it all. Then again, big budget blow-em'-up things just don't do much for me anyway - I prefer a good independent film that focuses on characters as opposed to anything else. I'm in a minority - but at least I'm not alone. Overall, I'd still rank "Rise" as 2.5/5. It wasn't a terrible film - but it wasn't anything special to write home about. As remakes go though, it was probably a bit better than average for remakes - but that's not saying a whole heck of a lot though as most remakes are pure crap (RZ's excellent "Halloween" - here we go again! - not withstanding). CGI is just pure crap in my opinion. j.p.

[bassman]

Oh puh-lease. CGI is just like any other filmmaking tool. It takes time and experimentation to make it better. Just like make up, stop motion, and miniatures, it's only getting better.....just as those other tools took many years to improve. Complaining about CGI these days is just pissing into the wind. I admit that as a huge apes fan I hated the idea of this film using CG apes when I first heard it, but it's past time to get over it and hope for the best rather than bitch about something that's never going to change. Rise is an obvious step in the right direction.

[Neil]

Oh puh-lease. CGI is just like any other filmmaking tool. It takes time and experimentation to make it better. Just like make up, stop motion, and miniatures, it's only getting better.....just as those other tools took many years to improve. Complaining about CGI these days is just pissing into the wind. I admit that as a huge apes fan I hated the idea of this film using CG apes when I first heard it, but it's past time to get over it and hope for the best rather than bitch about something that's never going to change. Rise is an obvious step the right direction. I hear what you're saying but CGI is a little different. It's an easy tool to use, but a hard one to get 100% right. Also, unless it's 100%, IMHO your brain is just screaming, fake! fake! fake! It knows at times that what it's seeing is a total trick. A total non-reality. Models can be different as you brain knows it's an illusion, but knows it's still reality at least. Am I suggesting we shouldn't use CGI? Of course not. Am I suggestion the future isn't CGI? Again, nope... But unless it's absolutely perfect, there is the danger of your brain ringing louder alarm bells than possibly using other methods...

[bassman]

Also, unless it's 100%, IMHO your brain is just screaming, fake! fake! fake! It knows at times that what it's seeing is a total trick. A total non-reality. Models can be different as you brain knows it's an illusion, but knows it's still reality at least. Fair enough, but the fact still stands that it's constantly being improved. One of the biggest leaps with CG characters has been the incorporation of living actors to give it a real performance. Just looking at Gollum in LOTR, to Avatar, and now with Rise, it's vastly improved in only a few years. Top-notch effects with stop motion, miniatures, and make up weren't the beginning. Without the bad stop motion in King Kong, we wouldn't have the stellar work of Henry Selick or Nick Park. Without the poorer makeup effects throughout the early years and up to Dick Smith, we wouldn't have the genious works from Tom Savini and Rick Baker. Although you're right that they were "real", they were still poor in their beginning stages. The audience immidiately saying "that looks awful", but that's because it's always a work in progress. People don't immediatly shut down the original King Kong as a horrible film because it's stop motion work was poor. While some shots in Rise left a bit to be desired, most of them were impeccable. A definite improvement over recent motion capture creations.

[Neil]

While some shots in Rise left a bit to be desired, most of them were impeccable. A definite improvement over recent motion capture creations. Definately! At times it certainly got close enough to that '100%' for my brain to accept what I was seeing as genuine!

[SymphonicX]

. It's an easy tool to use

[Neil]

LOL! OK... It's a "easier" tool to use?

[SymphonicX]

LOL! OK... It's a "easier" tool to use? cheaper...that's all I'd attribute to it...! Let's take an example of a big practical set....Titanic...? Took two years to build....take the same scenes, but do them as CGI...(this is just an guess) - first phase modelling, texturing, lighting, animating, motion tracking, compositing, extra composite effects (smoke, explosions, gunfire whatever), motion track those, render = 30 days per frame in a big render farm....it'd take about two years. you'd also probably have about the same amount of set designers as you would CGI artists... Personally I think it's basically exactly the same....just easier in the sense people don't have to move about physically as much, but I bet the workload is still a 12 hour day, every day of the week, for two years. Just a guess - but rendering and completing big CGI scenes can take months upon months - with some designers sitting around and working on like 2 frames of video for the whole project for months...then having Ridley Scott or James Cameron come in, and change the fuckin lot in one go.... nightmare either way if you ask me! but after only being on C4D for a few months (and giving it up to move onto SGO Mistika Stereo 3D tools) I can safely say that's a program that I will never, ever master. Those out there who can create such amazingly realistic scenes from nothing have my utmost respect as designers....its a shame it's considered a cop out because those guys are truly talented and clever people who'd bamboozle the lot of us just talking about alpha mattes and keyframes. I can operate C4D - but if you want me to design you an environment like what we see in Tron Legacy, I'd fall right the fuck over with lack of talent.

[Tricky]

I guess with CGI they don't end up with a huge hanger full of props and bits of film set to dispose of after the cameras stop rolling as well, I imagine that was a bit of a headache in the past and a huge waste of physical resources, especially in films that flopped seen as fans wouldnt be climbing over each other to buy up all that stuff!

[AcesandEights]

I guess with CGI they don't end up with a huge hanger full of props and bits of film set to dispose of after the cameras stop rolling as well, I imagine that was a bit of a headache in the past and a huge waste of physical resources, especially in films that flopped seen as fans wouldnt be climbing over each other to buy up all that stuff! That's right...CGI is "green", all the more reason for the reactionaries to hate it

[Danny]

i think the cgi raging is hands down the most gauche, needlessly lauded 'fault' with films. ten years ago when the phantom menace was out and it was all green screen? yeah, then i get it. this aint that. this was serkis in a rig acting out something that would have a cgi overlay over the rig, can anyone here whip up a realistic looking ape suit with full facial articulation with such minute ticks as Caesar had in this? no, of course you can't. nobody can, thats why it was made. cgi is a tool, its as good as the person using it, getting full on child not getting his sweets devastated over the fact that its used- regardless of even seeing the final content or not is asinine. its not the turn of the century anymore, getting mad about cgi? do you still get mad about starbucks and reality tv as well?

[krisvds]

Yeah. It's more about performance, direction and story than anything else. In the right hands CGI is a great tool. Fincher's Zodiac uses it so sparingly that most people didn't even notice it. Plus: it was used on recreating architecture thus making it less noticeable than the dreaded 'dead eye' syndrome on living breathing characters. As far as those are concerned Rise was a damn fine film, especially thanks to Serkis. Also without CGI the LOTR trilogy wouldn't have been possible and those films contain scenes that rival anything Harryhausen ever achieved in the same genre. Shelob's lair and the Mines of Moria spring to mind. Never mind the CGI was noticeable, those scenes, that troll and that spider had 'soul.' Same with Gollum. On the other hand; nothing is as irritating as CGI done bad. It seems to pop up in the most atrocious films made by hacks whose audiences are more into explosions than anything else. I hate it especially when it's being used in horrorfilms. It's one of the greatest flaws in GAR's recent undead films. I hated the CGI-gore.

[fulci fan]

Fact- The effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey blow away any CGI fx today. Fact- CGI isn't real. So it will never look as real as practical effects. Fact- CGI has not improved since the first Jurassic Park To me, this is more convincing than an ape made of 1's and 0's

[wayzim]

Fact- The effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey blow away any CGI fx today. Fact- CGI isn't real. So it will never look as real as practical effects. Fact- CGI has not improved since the first Jurassic Park To me, this is more convincing than an ape made of 1's and 0's The truth is FXs will always be as good as the time they were born in, so the stop animation in the original King Kong was great (Sorry, Bass ) and you can see the technique improve all through Willis O'Brian's ape trilogy ( Kong, Son of Kong, Mighty Joe Young ) With the latter, the emotional range in Joe's face was pretty wide, but there was that pesky scale problem in which our favorite ape kept changing size throughout the picture. In Ray Harryhausen's best film, Jason and the Argonauts (though his model work was more intricate in later films )the interaction between the creatures and the actors produced some scenes where you couldn't tell where the stop motion ended and the live acting began( especially one where Patrick Troughton as the blind Seer had his cloak snatched away by a Harpy ) Ray did it again in Valley of Gwangi when the little kid gets grabbed off a mule by a Pteradactyl. (as an aside, I did get to meet my hero, Mr. Harryhausen, shortly before he died, an amazingly cool and very giving guy. ) Jurassic Park, many of the dinos suffered from too much detailing which resulted in a hyper realism, but the watering hole scenes about midway through was freakin incredible ( I thought it was right out of a wildlife documentary ) As to the Ape question, with the exception of some quick cut animatronics ( like baby gorilla in the movie ' Buddy ' ) or some of the same with elaborate makeup and ape suits ( Greystoke, but only in the jungle scenes )fantasy ape rarely holds up against real ape. At this point it either can't be done, or there's that problem as with Jurassic Park where excess throws you out of the moment. Rise also had that slight glitch, which didn't spoil the film for me. If I wanted that kind of reality, I'd be watching Nature not Fantasy. Wayne Z