TRANSFORMERS (2007)

[Heineken Skywalker]

Jul 30, 2008 10:39:13 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

All that said, I can't really forgive the film for perhaps one of the gravest infractions of all: the utterly atrocious CGI used in here.

Atrocious CGI? It's interesting that you found fault with the one thing that, almost unanimously, everyone else found was the greatest thing about the movie. Even people who hated the movie admitted that they thought the effects were brilliantly done.
Even the best CGI can sometimes look a little questionable when it comes to animating things from life like humans and animals, because we know how they actually look and move, but dinosaurs, aliens and yes, giant robots, are a bit easier to pull off because there's nothing in the real world to compare them to.
And like Q said, you consistently give a pass to the effects in no budget Sci-Fi Channel offerings. Your opinion is confusing to say the least.
I thought the flick itself was a 7/10, but the effects were a solid 10/10.

[slayrrr666]

Seems like you and Q don't really read my reviews. I've bashed those films because the CGI is atrocious, I just don't use it as the be-all, end-all fault with the films to justify not watching them anymore. It's simply a flaw, like with this one. Yes, it's a fault but it's not enough for me to really thing badly of the film. Like I said, the positives in this were more than enough to off-set the problem I had with the CGI.

And besides, aren't we forgetting the original purpose of CGI: to be able to realistically portray something that can't be done in practical terms in a manner so that we're not aware of the fact that it's done through computer-generated images? I thought that was the purpose of it to begin with.

[ZapRowsdower]

That's impossible. No matter how realistic the CGI, we know it's CGI because there's no practical way to do it without the CGI.

This must also mean you find fault with Jurassic Park, because I know they're not really dealing with that T-Rex.

This isn't I Am Legend, where they got too cheap to hire real actors to play the vamp-zombies. THAT was horrible overusage of CGI.

In THIS film, they had to show us giant robots that can transform into vehicles and back. How, pray tell, can they accomplish this without CGI?

I'm with you on the fact that Hollywood relies on it too much, but CGI was a necessity in this film, and NOT its weakness (in fact, it's probably its greatest strength).

[Quorthon]

Jul 31, 2008 10:06:32 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

Seems like you and Q don't really read my reviews. I've bashed those films because the CGI is atrocious, I just don't use it as the be-all, end-all fault with the films to justify not watching them anymore. It's simply a flaw, like with this one. Yes, it's a fault but it's not enough for me to really thing badly of the film. Like I said, the positives in this were more than enough to off-set the problem I had with the CGI.

And besides, aren't we forgetting the original purpose of CGI: to be able to realistically portray something that can't be done in practical terms in a manner so that we're not aware of the fact that it's done through computer-generated images? I thought that was the purpose of it to begin with.

Oh, I read your reviews, it's just tough sometimes because I like to avoid spoilers, but you're often extremely forgiving of the special effects they showcase. I watched Tin Man and cringed at the cheap CG work in the mini-series. This was supposed to be a big-deal, high-budget Sci-Fi channel production and it still had CG effects that were rivalled in cutscenes on original Playstation games. (To be fair, I cringed at a lot of other stuff that they did with Tin Man.)

The CG in Transformers is top-notch. It's one of the few films to come out of Hollywood lately where it actually looked real and the CG vehicles could actually be mistaken for the real ones. It was some of the most seamless compositing I'd seen in a while. Real props were used for Frenzy at times. In fact, Frenzy is the only time the CG looks like CG because he's so over-animated in that desperate attempt to make the character live up to his name. I wish they'd have just gone with Rumble. He was cooler anyway.

"Nobody calls Soundwave uncrasimatic!!"

[Heineken Skywalker]

Jul 31, 2008 10:06:32 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

And besides, aren't we forgetting the original purpose of CGI: to be able to realistically portray something that can't be done in practical terms in a manner so that we're not aware of the fact that it's done through computer-generated images?

And I thought they accomplished that in spades in this movie.
Do you think the Transformers would've looked more realistic if they had been stop-motion animation or traditional animation or actors in costumes?
And there is a difference between giving a pass to weak CGI so as to not let it ruin the entire movie for you and calling the CGI "atrocious".
The CGI in this film never pulled me out of the movie for being too unrealistic. The constant switch from CGI to live action props was seamless to my eyes.

[slayrrr666]

I'll take these one-by-one then:

Zap-I've got other issues with Jurassic Park, as the CGI is the only film I can say it's actually semi-good. The raptors in general are the main reason, and the T-Rex attack at the paddock is still a little iffy for me, but otherwise it's one of the few things about it I like. Like I said, there's other issues I have with it but the CGI isn't one of them.

Q-I never saw Tin Man all the way through, but what I saw was just plain terrible as well. Never thought of giving it a second thought. And the spoiler thing I've gotten better at but it's just the style in which I write, as to me that's not really spoilers at all. But we've been over this a million times before and I don't feel like doing it again to keep the thread on track.

In total-Sorry, I need to be able to tell that what's happening on-screen can be either done in real life without the use of computers or that the image, wether it's possible or not, needs to be able to fool my eyes into being realistic. This failed to do that, since the whole way through it was obvious to me that I was watching a computer-generated image for the robots. It may be impossible to do it any other way, but then why make the film if that's the case? It was still a good film, it just happened to feature some really bad CGI.

[Heineken Skywalker]

Aug 1, 2008 10:13:21 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

This failed to do that, since the whole way through it was obvious to me that I was watching a computer-generated image for the robots. It may be impossible to do it any other way, but then why make the film if that's the case?

I can tell that the gorilla in 1933's KING KONG isn't a real ape and is in fact a little puppet that they animated frame-by-frame. They probably shouldn't have made that movie. If they can't completely fool me, why make the film?

I can tell that Lon Chaney Jr. isn't really turning into THE WOLFMAN. There's definitely some kind of time-lapse trick photography going on there. If they can't completely fool me, why make the film?

I can tell JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS aren't really battling an army of skeletons. If they can't completely fool me, why make the film?

I can tell that GODZILLA is really a guy in a rubber suit smashing up a model of Tokyo. If they can't completely fool me, why make the film?

I can tell that those X-Wing Fighters and Tie Fighters in STAR WARS are just little models. If they can't completely fool me, why make the film?

I can sometimes tell that Christopher Reeve is being held up by wires in front of a blue screen in SUPERMAN. Again, they didn't completely fool me, why make that film?

See the pattern? It's called progress in the area of special effects and suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. They may all look kind of questionable by today's standards, but no one was calling them atrocious effects then.

[slayrrr666]

No, actually I miswrote that. It's my fault. I meant to say this:

I know the special effects are going to be flawed, since there's no way around it appearing fake because of the way to make them appear on screen, but this just made it really obvious that I was seeing them through CGI. Rather than trying to at least hide it, there never really was a big scene that made me a little bit iffy about how they were accomplished.

All of this, though, doesn't stop the fact that I enjoyed the film immensely. It's just a flaw, one that I can completely forgive because the good parts here are so good that I can forgive this.

[Bartwald]

Let's leave it at that, guys. I can see what slayrrr is trying to say here - he didn't like the effects and that's his right, I'd say. Myself, from a technical point of view, I liked these effects a lot BUT I must admit that after some time I got a bit bored with them, too, probably for the same reason slayrrr didn't like them - they just took away the "human factor" of the story, and it all started becoming a bit too artificial when the movie focused almost entirely on the effects.

[Quorthon]

Aug 2, 2008 12:08:24 GMT -5 Bartwald said:

Let's leave it at that, guys. I can see what slayrrr is trying to say here - he didn't like the effects and that's his right, I'd say. Myself, from a technical point of view, I liked these effects a lot BUT I must admit that after some time I got a bit bored with them, too, probably for the same reason slayrrr didn't like them - they just took away the "human factor" of the story, and it all started becoming a bit too artificial when the movie focused almost entirely on the effects.

The problem with Transformers is that it should never be too heavily focused on the stupid humans anyway because the characters that are important are the special effects--the Transformers themselves.

The problem, which I believe I originally stated in my review, was that there was a near total lack of character development to the Transformers themselves. The Decepticons, especially. This is not a story or franchise focused on the dramas of stupid little humans. It's a story about two warring factions of alien machines. Had they actually made the effort to explore the complicated relationship between Starscream and Megatron, for instance, it would've been much more interesting. But, sad as it may be to say it, only George Lucas appears to have the balls to have totally non-human characters interacting with each other on film.



Also, Slayrrr--about you're problem with Jurassic Park's effects--which, in my view, have really never been topped (JP3 on the other hand, defaulted to too much use of CG). The thing is, they built Raptors, they built a Triceratops, they built the Dilophosaurus, and yes, they even built an enormous 20-foot tall T-Rex. The transition from model to animatronic to characters in suits to CG is pretty damn seamless. You can't tell which is a CG T-Rex and which is the robot perhaps filmed with a green/blue screen behind it to hide the cables.

[slayrrr666]

Aug 3, 2008 0:48:37 GMT -5 Quorthon said:

Also, Slayrrr--about you're problem with Jurassic Park's effects--which, in my view, have really never been topped (JP3 on the other hand, defaulted to too much use of CG). The thing is, they built Raptors, they built a Triceratops, they built the Dilophosaurus, and yes, they even built an enormous 20-foot tall T-Rex. The transition from model to animatronic to characters in suits to CG is pretty damn seamless. You can't tell which is a CG T-Rex and which is the robot perhaps filmed with a green/blue screen behind it to hide the cables.

I never said the problem with JP was the special effects. Like you, I hold this film to be one of the shining examples of when to properly use CGI in a film. Only The Abyss and T2 are the other films to be able to do that. My problem with JP lies elsewhere, but because we're mods and it's our duty to make sure threads stay devoted to the topic on hand, it's not the place for me to get into it.

[Heineken Skywalker]

Aug 2, 2008 12:08:24 GMT -5 Bartwald said:

Let's leave it at that, guys. I can see what slayrrr is trying to say here - he didn't like the effects and that's his right, I'd say.

Eh, that was my last post on this particular topic anyway.

[ZapRowsdower]

Yes, I say the witch has burned long enough. ;D