posted
I write for a print mag, Digital Media World. Over the last couple of months I've gotten extremely lucky with the articles I've been assigned; I've gotten to interview VFX supervisors from X-Men 2, Matrix Reloaded and now Hulk and Terminator 3.
While the content wasn't as interesting as I hoped, I got to talk to Pablo Helman for T3, who is an absolute VFX guru. For Hulk I got to talk to sequence supervisor Jamy Wheless - who was a lead Yoda animator for SWEPII.
The tech behind Hulk is pretty damn cool - and Ang Lee is apparently some kind of god - his interaction with the VFX guys is amazing, right up there with Peter Jackson. I can't post more until the movie's released, but suffice to say that Lee taught the VFX guys bucketloads about creating believable characters.
As for the movie....
Well.... it's the first of a franchise. So they have the obligatory backstory, and frankly that part of it bored the pants off me. However the creature itself is *superbly* well done, particularly if you understand the tech behind it. Obviously there's still some small "CG-i-ness" (say it out loud, and you'll get it), but we really are getting to the stage of believable CG characters. The thing I liked the most is the way that the character interacts with his environment. It's superb.
Just my .02 rubles, but you should see it in a cinema - it won't be anywhere near as impressive on the small screen.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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quote:Yet he produces an emotionally anesthetized tale that's short on plot and heavy on hushed brooding, the somber tone undermined by a silly-looking 800-pound computer-animated gorilla.
The story by Lee's producing partner James Schamus and the screenplay credited to Schamus, John Turman and Michael France has barely enough plot to sustain an hour-long TV pilot.
But these guys are not Oedipus or Hamlet. They're two-dimensional freaks in silly Technicolor tights or garish full-body mutations.
The story is over-padded, there could definitely be more to it, and it drags at times.
However I love the performances that Lee gets out of his actors. We're spoon-fed far too much from our TV and cinema, with emotions projected at us. We no longer have to work our minds to interpret. In real life, not everything is a huge drama, and Lee really taps into this much more life-like style of performance.
The story comes perilously close to sucking, however.
But if the reviewer thinks the animation looks silly, then he's a self-important egotist. While it probably won't get the credit that Gollum does, from a technical standpoint it is at least as good as that work - it's just that we're all entranced by Gollums multiple personality disorder, and his craven behaviour and huge eyes are much more conducive to an emotive performance than something that is in reality much more human-like - just bigger and greener. Unfortunately, the Hulk can only really emote rage, so you don't get to see just how special this animation is unless you really know what you're looking for.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
But they also made him into something completely ridiculous. How does a little radiation or whatever he gets exposed to make him suddenly gain six hundred pounds and turn green? And he flies now?
Posts: 1744 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I dunno about the whole radiation-makes-you-turn-big-and-green thing...it does seem pretty silly...but as for the flying thing, I don't think he's flying. He's just jumping really, really high. Seriously. I think that's how it was in the comics...haven't read 'em in years...
Someone back me up!
Posts: 1595 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Bruce Banner's dna was tampered with by his father when he was a child. The gamma radiation simply enhanced the mutation, allowing a dramatic physical metamorphosis when enraged, which is also a metaphorical psychological symbol. In other words...noone knows.
And last time I saw, he still can't fly. He just jumps a really, really, really long way.
Posts: 3658 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Seriously. I think that's how it was in the comics...haven't read 'em in years...
Someone back me up!
Ahem. . . in Hulk #3 (or so-- and I mean #3 as in back when Stan Lee was writing the book), Hulk leaps around Arizona, or some other deserty place.
He doesn't fly, as pointed out-- he leaps.
In case anyone is interested, the old Hulk was not an idiot. He may not have been able to write poetry, but his thought bubbles were pretty coherent. I know this, because my wife's grandmother has the aforementioned issue #3. I've read it. The plot is atrocious.
[ June 20, 2003, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: Scott R ]
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
It's pretty funny when you read some of the old Hulk comics. When the Hulk would have a mission in another state or something, they'd sometimes have the Hulk bounce hundreds of miles to whatever his destination was. Kind of interesting when you think about it. I mean, you can't really control where you land when you can't see your point of impact. As the Hulk you're bouncing a mile or two at a time, you know, and once you take off, you have no way of changing your course or speed. So, you have this vision of this line of smashed cars, squished houses, and flattened animals stretching from NYC (where most of the Marvel supes live) to wherever it is that the evil ass-kicking must take place. Heh.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Scott, they've had several iterations of Hulks. I haven't read it in years, but back when Peter David was writing it, for instance, they had the Hulk going through a phase where he had basically quit transforming. Banner's brain and mental capability in the Hulk's body.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Kind of interesting when you think about it. I mean, you can't really control where you land when you can't see your point of impact. As the Hulk you're bouncing a mile or two at a time, you know, and once you take off, you have no way of changing your course or speed.
i heard that in the movie when he leaps he sort of wavers in the air. An effect I assume they put in to be more true to someone leaping those kinds of distances.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
"But if the reviewer thinks the animation looks silly, then he's a self-important egotist."
Nope. Judging from the previews, he's merely honest. This rush to semi-realistic CG frankly ticks me off; I look at films like Matrix Reloaded or Reign of Fire or Phantom Menace, where the CG scenes stick out like sore thumbs, where they glisten wetly and pulse and flop like horrible cankers, and wonder what ever happened to people in makeup and little handmade models.
CG can AUGMENT a realistic-looking model, perhaps, but it has yet to ever create one.
posted
I disagree, Tom... I thought the CG in "Reloaded" was quite good... it was the Green Screen stuff that didn't work (Morpheus and the Agent on the semi looked awful in close up)
Jurassic Park Dinosaurs and Jar Jar looked just fine to me, especially for their times (Jar Jar is annoying as a character and making him a muppet or something wouldn't have helped a thing).
Final Fantasy had some weak spots, but I think that was mostly because they took such challenging shots... when they did stuff that CGI is good at (outside in daylight) it looked great. As an aside, when Maxim magazine had Aki Ross as the cover model for their "hot 100" that year, I totally missed it... spent about ten minutes wondering aloud who the familiar hottie was before my friend (whose magazine it was) couldn't take anymore and told me it was Aki.
Maybe I'm just gullible, visually, or something...
[ June 20, 2003, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: T. Analog Kid ]
Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
I'll admit that I'm EXTREMELY sensitive to computer animation, for some reason; even in movies that do it well, I generally get pulled out of the film to think, "Hm. That object was completely computer-generated." Oddly, movies that are ENTIRELY computer-generated, or SUPPOSED to look animated, don't produce that same feeling in me; I guess I turn down the suspension of belief for them, in the same way that I do for films full of hand-drawn animation.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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well, that sorta takes away the point of releasing a movie. it's like when a dance company choreographs and produces pieces that are really only going to be appreciated by other dancers.
it's still valid, it just sorta takes away the point of performance and i really hate seeing elitism thrust in to save oneself from feeling crappy after not reaching or entertaining anyone.
THAT SAID, i don't really think that is the case here, it just brought up a point that i discuss a lot with my dance teacher/friend/director. i, personally, have decided i don't really care about the reviews or the great technical feats or the hulk lollipops at 7-11! i am going to see this movie, and chances are i am going to be very entertained. i *really* like watching the hulk move. at first the idea of and then even the first visual of the cgi really bothered me, but then when they showed the hulk running and leaping so fast and with such power i got all bubbly and jittery in my seat! i mean, that is how the hulk SHOULD move! i had never thought of it, but i mean he's got all those muscles, he should use them for pete's sake! i'm a little worried to hear the story is supposedly so bad (or just badly delivered?) but i really like the color green and big fast awkward guys remind me of my brother i'll just bring lots of snacks.
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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I'm pretty much the same way. I noticed the CGI in TM:R immediately, and I couldn't get away from it. I still enjoyed the movie, however. I especially liked when they had the characters actually doing the fighting.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Tom, I suspect you have the same problem I do with a lot of CGI, namely that it often doesn't mesh visually with the rest of the movie. That is why it doesn't bother you so much when the whole movie is CGI.
In The Matrix: Reloaded, one of the parts I had the most problem with was the first time Nero did the "Superman thing" - the scene where he pauses in the air and turns before zooming off to the city. In that scene, Nero was horribly and obviously a CGI character, which is sad because there is absolutely no reason they couldn't have put a real Keanu Reeve in the scene, even if they had a CGI background.
I hated the parts of Spiderman where Peter runs across the roof because they looked to cartoony, obviously CGI.
Gollum, in my opinion, is the best CGI character incorporated into live action filming so far.
Final Fantasy - though a weak story - was beautiful. Even though the CGI humans were obviously not live action actors, it didn't matter because they had the same feel as the universe they inhabited.
Oddly, I think the human characters in Finding Nemo work better than the ones in Toy Story not because Pixar has gotten better at rendering humans, but because they have allowed the humans to look a little more cartoony, like the rest of the characters in the movie. In Toy Story, they tried to hard. Because they were close-but-not-quite human, they stood out more than characters that obviously belong in a cartoony world.
I hate the CGI in the Hulk preview, too, because he looks bouncy and stretchy like a rubber toy. He doesn't look like he is actually interacting with his environment. Perhaps I'll feel differently (but I doubt it) when I see the whole movie, but the preview looked terrible.
Also, I have to agree with porce. If you have to understand something special about the craft to appreciate it, the CGI fails, in my opinion. It has to simply be there. The very best CGI is the stuff that you didn't even know was manipulated. Look at "making of" videos for Contact, for instance and you'll be amazed to find out that some scenes were CGI because they simply don't look like it in the film. That's when the craft it at its best.
quote:In The Matrix: Reloaded, one of the parts I had the most problem with was the first time Nero did the "Superman thing" - the scene where he pauses in the air and turns before zooming off to the city. In that scene, Nero was horribly and obviously a CGI character, which is sad because there is absolutely no reason they couldn't have put a real Keanu Reeve in the scene, even if they had a CGI background.
I actually thought that scene in general was really cool. Maybe I'm just easily impressed; at any rate, it's certainly the most convincing human flying I've ever seen in a movie.
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posted
After seeing the movie I would describe it like one television episode dragged out into a movie. There is no way anyone could call the plot an entire story.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Well, I feel obligated to post that I saw Hulk on Saturday, and it was MUCH better than I was expecting. I even had less of a problem with the CGI in the movie than I did with it in the preview.
I though Ang Lee's direction was innovative and visually delightful.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Whoa, took me a while to get back to this thread:
TomD:
I was criticising his use of "silly". Perhaps people will find it unrealistic, but silly is a poor choice of words. How else to truly realise something like Hulk if you want to bring it to the big screen. Now I *do* know what I'm looking at. I run a school that teaches this stuff, and we're the best in the business. We're the only ones in this state who do a full time course that is just Maya from start to finish and is taught by industry professionals, not teachers.
So I know what I'm seeing when I see CG.
But I also agree with you. I think that in particular, Reign of Fire, Phantom Menace and Final Fantasy are all examples of poor use and OVER use of 3D. I criticised EPII roundly for it's total lack of story and over-reliance on special effects.
Even Matrix Reloaded had some horribly obvious scenes - and I know how that movie was put together terrifyingly well. I interviewed two of the main CG sups as well as chairing a conference where they were the main speakers - 3 hours of how they did it.
So yeah, I see the cracks.
But the only way to get to the state where we can create realistic characters is to actually try it! You surely don't think that stop-motion animation and miniatures came fully-formed from the brow of Stan Winston. They went through their evolutionary phase too. Look at Terminator 1 - the stop-motion stuff in there is terrible by today's standards, 3D is easily more convincing.
I looked at Hulk and saw yet another milestone on the road to creating a fully-realistic CG character. They've raised the bar yet again.
The problem is that you and I and everyone else interested in the industry can see it - but mostly because we're looking for it. Most people aren't. They just want to sit back and be entertained.
I had one of my 3D students complaining loudly about the statues that got smashed during the fight scene with the Mengovinian (sp?) - she was loudly decrying the fact that anyone with eyes should be able to tell that they were plaster-of-paris statues, not actually marble, just by the way they shattered, and that it ruined the entire scene for her.
Well you know what - no-one else I know has ever worked with marble as a sculpting medium - only she could see the problems inherent in that scene, and couldn't understand why no-one else could.
It's the same for us. We see it because the magician in this case is decidedly short of clothes - but it's not that way for everyone.
But for everyone who hates the preview - the real CGI is much better. You gotta realise that SFX heavy films don't finish until REALLY late. When I talked to the X-Men 2 visual supervisor he'd only just finished the movie the night before - it was being released only 3 weeks later. So often what you see in previews is *not* the final version.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Also I want to add something to something a couple of people mentioned.
I said this in my 2nd post:
quote:Unfortunately, the Hulk can only really emote rage, so you don't get to see just how special this animation is unless you really know what you're looking for.
Porce and KarlEd both took me to task for that, saying it's failed if you can't appreciate it.
I disagree, it depends on what you're trying to appreciate. The average movie-goer should be oblivious to the tech, and just watch the movie. What I was saying is that the animation is so incredible in some places that the average guy has no hope of understanding exactly what went into it.
They probably don't notice the complex layers of muscles flexing slightly in his neck as his head turns. Maybe they do, but only a VFX pro can understand how much work it took to make that happen. And there's no reason why anyone else but industry guys *should* know.
The layman should appreciate the film, perhaps as a piece of art.
The pro should realise the artistry it took to create the film.
or something like that. I'm way too tired.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
"The layman should appreciate the film, perhaps as a piece of art."
The way I see it, they should stick to using models and guys in green paint until they figure out a way to make CGI figures that don't move like gumdrops in zero gravity. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: The way I see it, they should stick to using models and guys in green paint until they figure out a way to make CGI figures that don't move like gumdrops in zero gravity.
I agree with you. I would have agree that this applied in the case of The Hulk, too on the basis of the preview. However, I thought the effects in the movie were much better. Hulk interacted with his environment much more convincingly in the film than I thought he did in the preview. This may be a case of last minute polishing that Troubadour was referring to.
Troub, while I will agree with you that inside knowledge can help one appreciate the craft behind a work of art on more levels than the obvious, I'll stand by my assertion that if such knowledge is required to appreciate something intended for a general audience, the work failed.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Okay, just saw the Hulk and I have to go with a definite two thumbs down. Problems include:
-The science used is so horrible yet is brought back into the story so many times that it completely distracts from the movie -The father character is just cheesy -The military is unbelievably stupid, surpassed only by that guy in the neckbrace who is even more ridiculous -The story was not deep in the least bit, despite what some reviewers seem to think -Hulk doesn't look real enough -The splitscreen style is very annoying
The middle action sequences were decent, but beyond that the film was pretty darn bad. And the CG may have been difficult to do, but in the end a movie is about its story, not how difficult it was to make. I had low expectations going in, but it didn't even manage to meet those.
Again, I point out that early stop-motion and minature work was terrible. And Lou Ferringo, great as he was, would simply not satisfy a modern audience. A craft needs time to develop. Stop-motion stuff has a history almost as old as cinema, yet even 15 years ago it was still unrealistic enough to drop us out of the suspension of disbelief.
CGI needs time and exposure to get to the levels where it is completely realistic. It would never get budget approval, or interest in taking it to it's extremes if it wasn't seeing mainstream release. So we have to wait through the early days of CG until it is up to scratch - and we can see that it really is getting better every time.
KarlEd
I can't agree with that. The work can.. er.. work... on two levels. Do you think the average movie-goer or theatre goer appreciates fully the time and effort put into the creation of the things they see? Of course not. They appreciate that it *is* a lot of work, but they have no idea what that work entails or how the individual roles of the people listed in the credits work. The same is true of CG. The audience knows it took a lot of work to bring it to the screen. But they have no idea how it's done, or how much work - or how special the subtle differences between Gollum and Hulk are - and nor should they.
It's a difference between a technical appreciation and an artistic one, and audiences can't be expected to fully appreciate the technical.
Icarus
Yeah, we don't use teachers. We're a vocational training institute. There's no point in hiring people who've never worked in the industry, because even *if* they know the software, they've never used it in real-world situation - and there's no substitute for that. All our lecturers are contractors who work in the industry, and are also good communicators who we put through a small amount of training to ensure they give consistent lessons based on our subject outlines that satisfies the three types of learners.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I didn't expect the movie to be much and I was right. Fortunately there wasn't much computer graphics as compared to Reloaded, which used too much and made the movie look like a Max Steele show. I must say that I did not like the nudity seen as my kids were watching the movie and it was in no way necessary (as is for most of the movies with nudity - only the porno movies really need the nudity). The story was weak, lacking in details and development. To sum it up - it was just a movie.
Posts: 58 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Wedge- if you have a problem with your kids seeing nudity then watch the movie first then take them. It is rated PG-13.
Posts: 1244 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I too had a problem with nudity in the movie... there wasn't enough nudity of Jennifer Connelly! I think she was wearing a turtle neck throughout the entire movie. Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Just a little bit to say about The Hulk....
I dunno why everyone's ripping on the CG. The movie wasn't about CG. In my opinion, The Hulk set out to be a faithful adaption of comic books to the big screen. I was impressed by the way they formatted the shots and the visuals to create a comic book type feel.
And if anyone has ever read comic books... They know that comics like The Incredible Hulk were made to be pure entertainment, and not have a huge, literary plot.
As for me, I was loath to go to The Hulk at first because I didn't think that the guy playing Bruce Banner was very hot, and I usually go to comic book/action movies for both the nostalgia of the comic book (Ahhh.. I remember that... Go Professor X!!) and the hotness of the main characters.. (Mmmmm.... Logan....)
It is my way.
I know you will be glad to find that after watching him for two hours, I decided that he had the most beautiful eyes. (squeals girlishly)
Maybe instead of going for the hotness, the hotness comes for me... Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Didn't want to start a new thread, but wanted to share my review of The Hulk from my blog:
I don't know quite what went wrong with this film. I really, really want to believe that the problem was that I didn't see it as it was meant to be seen--on a screen 500 miles high, in a theatre full of eight thousand people. I saw it on my little 19 inch TV, and I don't even remember whether I had my glasses on. Yeah. That must be it. Otherwise it would have rocked.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I loved all the ideas of this movie (Okay, all the ideas except the monster poodle. That was a bit of a stretch). I liked the editing, I liked they way they incorporated comic book frames into the scene composition, and I liked how they did the Hulk effects. But somehow, somewhere, something went wrong, and I found myself completely emotionally disconnected at every phase of the movie.
A big part of the problem may have been Nick Nolte, who here reprises his roll as a transient from "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," a movie which I never saw, but did read the MAD Magazine parody of, so I guess I could more accurately say he seems to reprise his roll from the MAD Magazine parody of "Down and out in Beverly Hills." Oh, heck yeah, I believe that thirty years ago he was the world's greatest scientist.
Part of the problem may have been the music. They really try to downplay the music here, maybe trying to get an M. Night sort of feel to the drama, but not quite hitting it. At some points the sound absolutely, positively works. For example, at one part, they make the interesting sound choice of, while a tank is exploding, playing down the sound of the explosion, while we instead hear the sound of Hulk brushing the dust off his hands. Stuff like that should be powerful, really rock. But while I was thinking, "wow, that was a neat sound choice," I wasn't actually feeling anything because of it.
Is this a sign I was overanalyzing the film? Or, more possibly, is it a sign that the movie was maybe overdirected, self-conscious to the point that the style gets in the way of enjoying the movie. Like an author who's so caught up in the "style" of his story that the style is all you notice, and the characters and plot all get swallowed up, a forest you can't see because of the words that, like the proverbial trees, just get in the way.
I hate to say that--especially about Ang Lee, who I think is as much of a genius as anybody who's in Hollywood can claim to be.
I just wish I could have seen it in a theatre. Because I really, really want to like this movie, even after having seen it.
----------------------------
To comment on some of the thoughts from this thread, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for all forms of CGI, and it was a concious decision that I made to do so. I even recall the moment I made it. It was while watching the film version of Spawn. I just kind of said to myself, "Wow, that looks really fake. Ah, well, I guess I'll just let it go."
I've been letting it go ever since, and enjoying a whole lot of movies.
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Seriously. I think that's how it was in the comics...haven't read 'em in years...![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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They know that comics like The Incredible Hulk were made to be pure entertainment, and not have a huge, literary plot. 
