If you want good movies....start with the writer and trust him.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Quite interesting; this shows that the question isn't so simple. Like Nerwen said, it isn't just "computers", special effects had been here even earlier and there were movies lacking depth that were built only on them. I completely agree with the notion that the movie - especially adaptation (which is the thing of essential importance for us, Tolkien fans) - should "start with a word", and I agree that this aspect is often somewhat lacking nowadays, and the CGI really can be blamed, at least partially. But then there are (or were, in the past) also some "pure action" movies with little to no special effects. They may not have good acting, plot, or anything, they just consist of action scenes - which do not have to be "special" in any way.

But I would like to bring out one more point. Theatre differs from book by acting (and sound, but let's leave it out for now, even though it's important, it isn't relevant for this discussion). Movie differs from book by acting and visual aspect (well, theatre as well, but of course movie much more so, I'm sure you agree). So when you are making a movie, you should be aware that the visual aspect is of equal importance (personal opinion - feel free to argue if you disagree) to the acting and story part. After all, it's a movie, not a radio play.

Even before the outbreak of mass CGI use, you could have a movie whose plot was the intelligence of a shoe and the acting of similar quality, but had amazing special effects (I am thinking e.g. Predator - one of my favourite movies in fact, and even there the special effects were present in very few scenes, but maybe that was what made them memorable. It just worked well with the looks and the atmosphere, I guess). The looks and atmosphere is an important aspect - one of film's devices is that it can look beautiful. (For me, the abovementioned example is the case - in Predator you have the jungle with everything that belongs to it, the lighting, the monster playing the invisibility tricks, really nice composition and use of colors.)

I think nowadays many filmmakers forget that the visual image can simply look good, and that doesn't have to mean using gazillion of special effects. To go back to the "less action" movies, recalling e.g. Tarkovsky's films - I think that has exactly the good use of the visual aspect. You can have long, purely visual scenes, but they are beautiful and you can just watch the image of a man sitting in the rain for five minutes and enjoy it the same way as if you were in a gallery. (Of course, you have the philosophical dimension there as well.)

You can use the CGI to create the beautiful scenes, of course. Or, to add something to a natural landscape to make it even more remarkable. Personally, truth be told, I don't like many of the CGIzed LotR scenes. They are sometimes a bit too much. But LotR certainly has many scenes which have the potential of using the beauty of what you see on the screen. Probably the best thing, or at least the one coming to my mind immediately, is lighting the beacons of Gondor. I guess that one is CGIzed, but it is (of course with the music and all) one of the best visual scenes, especially on the big screen it really sends chills down my spine. The opposite can be for instance the infamous Mr. Spotlight looking for Frodo in Mordor. I haven't seen something so sick in ages. Of course, slow motion falling Frodo does not really add to it.

Just a brief remark about the action movies, though. I would actually even go further to say that there are - however I am not a fan of e.g. some Sylvester Stallone breaking necks to random people every two minutes - ways in which the CGI had ruined even the action movies (or the action in the movies, as it is).

I am not an expert on action movies, but I know a couple of "old" action movies with little to no special effects, and they are fine to watch as a sort of "relaxation brainwasher" (I recall it really helped me at the end of my first year at the University when after a week of lying buried in the books I had decided to have a pause for a couple of hours and watch something where I don't need to think at all). But the movies are getting more and more of ridiculous action (made by special effects). Nowadays, even in "normal" - non-fantasy, non-SF movie, even if it is only about cops and robbers, you have to have the main character running up walls and making Matrix-style moves, even though it defies the laws of nature. I don't want to say that Matrix itself is responsible, but... well, maybe it actually is. The filmmakers, I think, nowadays use the CGI not because they can (like in LotR, you can show ten thousand Orcs in one shot - great! Why not), but because they feel obliged to by the current standards.

It is again the visual aspect: Since Star Wars has been mentioned, let me use it as example. Even if I focus on the newer trilogy, if you watch Star Wars Episode I, the final fight with Darth Maul is amazing - the person is a dancer and it is great to watch, just like you may be watching a dancing performance. The CGI are used only to provide the SF-looking environment, to have the iconic glowing sabers (a good example, in my opinion, of the abovementioned "visual" use of special effects), and a few Jedi jumps just to make the poor guys cope with the physically more capable villain. This is a good use of special effects. In comparison, in Episode II you have the Jedi doing lots of Matrix-style moves when falling off buildings and during fights rather unnecessarily, and in Episode III, the final epic battle is practically unwatchable, because it is long, but the moves are uninteresting, and you cannot (or at least I cannot) absorb the moves that fast to pay attention to what the people are actually doing. Simply: boring.

I think optimally (and now not thinking about my personal preferences, but about something that could satisfy even the "mass consumption"), you can have a movie where the depth/action/special effects are balanced. If one wants to use all three of those, that is a good achievement. However, I think very often there is the failure of focusing on one (and that is usually special effects nowadays, yes) too much in expense of the others.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Not at all. I’ve read such articles. And even earlier articles that said that computer games had been “ruined” by any graphics at all. The height of computer games was the Zork trilogy, text only games.

Last remark - regarding the computer games. Recently, I had stumbled upon a discussion where people were complaining that nowaday's computer games are getting worse, because they "try to look like movies". I just thought it might be interesting food for thought in relation to what has been said here...

P.S. I think I am past apologising for long posts. I hope all of you know me by now and will excuse, or skip it if you find my posts too long

[Lalwendë]

Jackson's films are technologically quaint in comparison to much of the mainstream cinema output at the moment. Much of what you see is achieved by camera tricks, and they make the effort to construct those detailed costumes, weapons and sets that you see on screen. Where CGI and other SFX are used, they are done to craft what cannot be crafted by human hands, e.g. the green screen is used to create Gollum (and green screen is very old hat now).

I'd quite like to have seen a 1970s live action Lord of the Rings as it would be exactly like vintage Doctor Who, complete with terrible rubber masks and wobbly sets. But then I like that kind of thing (hey, I still like Blake's Seven, the wobbliest sci fi show of all time!), and I find it very easy to lose myself in an SF film even if it is old and the sets are appalling. This is probably because I am old

Just a couple of corrections and rants now...

John Carter might not have been the mass market success that Disney hoped, crossing over into the non-SF market, but it was lapped up by geeks. I'd have gone to see it myself if going to the cinema was not a virtual impossibility with family commitments to attend to.

Sneery British film reviewers amuse me with their ignorance. There are lots of films out there which are wonderful, and it is their problem if they cannot deal with advances in technology (and SFX are not even an issue in the majority of film making even today). Having a kid I am now learning to love Pixar and experiencing a renewed love of animation and so much of it is utterly beautiful (and animation is one of the UK's cultural strengths - our work is admired around the world). Whether that's the small screen delight of Abney & Teal or Daft Punk's Interstella 5555 or the textures of How To Train Your Dragon. It's lovely.

There are also many amazing stories you simply could not tell without SFX or animation, such as District 9, Watchmen and Spirited Away. Allan Massie does not know what he is missing - or perhaps he is content that way, bringing up the example of Downton Abbey, the second series of which had the most appalling and preposterous script I have seen since Crossroads was thankfully axed in 1988. At least Downton Abbey is not troubled by noisy aliens (it would be improved with zombies).

And to be brutal, cinema needed a ruddy good shake-up. The box office had become dominated by directors' 'me generation' navel-gazing about relationships, divorce and death. Tedious soap opera epics. Usually with Anne Bancroft and Meryl Streep crying or something. Cinemas were closing all over the UK because nobody could be bothered going out to see this stuff. Then it changed at the end of the 1990s with the 'CGI fest' (usually a sneery term used by old fashioned film reviewers for putting down SF or geek friendly films). These reviewers should toss the chip off their shoulders and go and see some SF blockbusters and if they don't like them, I could recommend any number of marvellous British and European films where the closest thing to SFX is the make up on Brenda Blethyn's face.

So many cinemas closed in the 80s and 90s due to the terrible stuff on offer, that we now have a very limited range of cinemas. For most, it's the multiplex. But there are indie screens in towns where there is a market for less mainstream films. We've got one about 15 mins from our house, tonight they are showing: Shadow Dancer; Tabu; Berberian Sound Studio; The Imposter; Lawless; anna Karenina and Homeward Bound. If you build it, they will come...

And anyway, it's not SFX that ruins films these days, it's terrible storytelling. And it also ruins much modern literary fiction. And TV. I can guarantee that this is what will have me walking away, and it's why Transformers and My Own Private Idaho both feature amongst my list of films I Do Not Like.

EDIT - and I've just enjoyed one example of something where the script is everything - the new series of The Thick Of it, and one of this Allan Massie character's "comic book stuff" films, namely The Hunger Games. Both were wonderful, and if he really does like: "Downton Abbey, because it has a literate script" then he is a fool, frankly (not least because the last series of Downton Abbey appeared to be written by a Y11 crammer who had to stuff as many random facts about WWI into his GCSE essay as possible to get maximum marks, and blow whether it's at all relevant).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Don't let Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh or Philippa Boyens write them.