Realism and Hollywood
Computers have had profound impact on many areas of our lives, and one of those is in the special effects departments of Hollywood. But is that really a change for the better?
Hollywood script writers seem devoid of new ideas lately and remakes are the order of the day. Some of those remakes bring new life to a film, or make it more accessible to new audiences, such as Martin Scorcese's "Departed", a gritty remake of the mandarin Chinese film "Infernal Affairs". Other remakes have less to commend them, such as the remake of "Assault of Precinct 13" which was a shallow variation on a chilling original. But the sort of remakes which annoy me most are those where the motive for remaking it is to introduce more special effects and make the stunts "more realistic".
Have you seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Total Recall"? Its a great piece of modern sci-fi, dating back to 1990, less than 20 years old, but Columbia Pictures is negotiating rights so they can film a remake of it saying "advancements in technology and state-of-the-art visual effects can help tell the Recall story in a fresh way". Other remakes in the offing include a remake of that breathtaking classic "Forbidden Planet" which is inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest"; a remake of "Fantastic Voyage", which is the story of a submarine shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the blood stream; and a remake of John Carpenter's 1982 film, "The Thing", itself a remake of the 1951 Christian Nyby version. And the list goes on. Surely there are other things Hollywood could turn into film which just cry out for modern CGI, such as Arthur C Clarke's fantastically original "Rendezvous with Rama" or Larry Niven's visionary "Ringworld".
The CGI effect isn't limited to sci-fi though. So many films these days are a special effects glutfest, with heroes doing increasingly impossible things, and even TV ads are heavily dependent upon CGI effects. I don't know about you, but there was a time when I used to watch films and some parts would leave me saying "Wow, how on earth did they do that?" Nowadays, that sense of amazement is gone. I assume everything is done inside the walls of a computer and anything is possible if you have enough gigabytes of memory. The stunts may be more "realistic" but they've become less real and some of that wow factor is gone forever.
19th March 2009
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.