Why? CGI. Computer-Generated Idiocy.
Not only have I come to loathe it, I am, frankly, baffled by it. Why in the world does it hold such appeal, both for filmgoers and for filmmakers? It is enormously expensive for directors to use, yet they persist in it as though it were the one thing that can guarantee their movie's quality or its success at the box office.
I know filmmaking is a business, but I like to pretend it's not. I like to pretend it's about creating an aesthetic experience. So I won't pursue any economic argument against CGI, and will limit myself to the following question: Does the use of CGI make for a better moviegoing experience?
One of the things you often hear said on this subject is, "With computers, you can create any reality you want. You can do ANYTHING." Which, to my mind, is one half of the argument against it. Movies, of course, have always been about fantasy, about creating new worlds or portraying unlikely scenarios in this one. Yet in order for all of that to succeed, real limits -- laws of physics, basic reflections of reality -- have to obtain. Otherwise, the spell is broken.
And lately Hollywood seems intent on breaking its own spell. Remember the thrill of seeing those magnificent set pieces in old historical epics with their casts of thousands? Compare that experience to the battle scenes in "Troy" or the "Lord of the Rings" series. Ho-hum. Your brain knows what you're seeing. Otherwise how could TLS and I have known, given the fraction-of-a-second takes we were offered in the Indiana Jones preview, that we were seeing computer work instead of the real deal? (I'm still not sure what I even saw in that preview, but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that it was CGI). I think that in the not-too-distant future, people will look back on this age of digital special effects with the same campy nostalgia that we look back now on 1950s monster movies and those old Sinbad the Sailor flicks with their claymation horrors.
The problem with CGI, just like with claymation, is that it leaves its fingerprints all over the screen. When an actual stunt man used to jump off a building, your mind registered, "There goes that actor, or somebody dressed just like him, jumping off a building." With CGI, a part of your brain stops the flow of the story and says, "They did a nice job with the special effects here." But "a nice job" is never a good enough job, because it inevitably leaves out little details, whether it's the wind in the hair or the play of light on the leather jacket, enough to cue you in on the nature of the effects.
So what, then, is the point of CGI? Oh, that's right. With CGI you can do ANYTHING.
All right. So now not only does the character jump off the building, but he lands on his feet, unhurt. At this point, not one but two things have gone awry in the viewer's mind: Not only were the little details wrong (wind in the hair, play of light) but so is the whole upshot of the scene ("That could never happen."). Thus CGI does itself a *double* disservice: It offers up outlandish scenarios, then calls attention to their outlandishness by getting the details wrong.
You may be thinking, "Yes, but digital effects are getting better and better all the time, and once they're perfected, they won't get the little details wrong anymore." To that, I say, "Fine. Then go off and perfect them somewhere, but until they're ready, stop ruining my moviegoing experience with them."
Yet getting the details wrong is only half the problem. An over-reliance on digital effects is eroding filmmakers' narrative judgment as well.
In the old days, we had outlandish scenarios, but filmmakers allowed us to suspend our disbelief by cutting away, by leaving something to the imagination. To stick with Indiana Jones for an example, in "The Last Crusade," when we see the tank go over the cliff with Indy presumably still on it, the filmmakers cut away at the last second and then, from afar, we see the tank fall into the canyon. If that scene had been shot today instead of 19 years ago, I'm pretty sure we'd have stayed with Indy all the way over the precipice, blurry CGI backgrounds and all, to try to milk every last thrill out of the scene. From a narrative point of view, it would have accomplished nothing: It would have just explained exactly how Indy survived the incident, rather than allowing for the (however unlikely) possibility that our hero had died. As hokey as the scene was in the 1987 original, at least the That-Could-Never-Happen reaction was not quite so immediate. Why not? Because it's left up to you, the viewer, to construct the details of how Jones might have survived the fall after you see him come struggling up the cliffside roots ("Well, maybe he jumped off just before the tank went over the edge and caught that root; or maybe . . . ."). In the world of digital effects, such considerations -- essential to effective storytelling -- are made obsolete: "This, viewer, is exactly how it happened; except of course it could never happen that way, as you can see by the fact that the visual details of this scene are out of whack with what you know to be reality."
Thus, CGI fails in its basic promise, that which supposedly justifies its existence: instead of offering us ever more fertile narrative possibilities, digital effects rob us of them.
Please, directors. Rent a couple of helicopters. Hire a thousand extras. Blow up car or two. Feel free to treat me like I'm willfully gullible, just not like I'm stupid.
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UPDATE I:
A quick amendment to this post. Yesterday at Cannes, Spielberg was holding court with journalists and made a couple of relevant comments (from Andrew O'Heir on Salon):
The secret of the Jones movies, he said, was to "shoot a compact and economically told story ... and do it with real stunts and real people. We don't say we'll go and make the most amazing chase scene ever. We ask what the story demands and how we can make that funny and exciting."
Fair enough, and even in its inflated and creaky fourth incarnation, the Indy series retains a certain unassuming quality, at least compared to Hollywood's recent monstrous productions. Ford is rarely called upon to run more than a few steps, but he's a capable and athletic 65-year-old star who performs his own stunts. Until the film's ludicrous conclusion, which involves a big spinning hoobledy-whatsit full of supernatural thingummies (I think that's officially not a spoiler), there are relatively few digital effects. As Spielberg put it: "There's no inspiration when the director and actors walk onto the set and it's nothing but a blue screen. I wanted to be in all these wonderful booby-trap sets, which are built nearly to the scale you see on-screen, and get my ideas for great shots from the sets themselves."
So perhaps there's hope after all. Yet if it's true, one really has to shake one's head in disgust to think that whoever produced the film's trailer saw fit to include the "relatively few" digital effects as a selling point to the masses.
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Update II:
In Comments, Tim and Tierney mention CGI-intensive films that they like. I have to say that digital effects have their place; I just wish directors didn't currently think that that place was everywhere.
Regarding Tim's point about "Ratatouille," I have to share my observation that when it comes to animation, CGI seems to serve the exact opposite purpose it has in most live-action film: It brings the fantastical closer to reality, rather than vice versa. Thus the animated Parisian skyline gets digitally enhanced to look more like the real Parisian skyline. So the digital effects aren't working to plunge the everyday further into the fantastical, but to elevate the fantastical back toward the everyday. Having plumbed the vast reservoirs of his wisdom, The Blogger (who, perhaps predictably, pines for the supple textures of the old hand-drawn cartoon features) will issue this pronouncement regarding the role of CGI in animation: Sometimes it's a good thing; sometimes it ain't.
4 comments:
Another thread dear to my heart, thank you.
A relative of mine said, 'Hitchcock knew that our imaginations do a better job than he ever could. Ever notice how we never see what happens in the end of his movies?'
So I suspect that Alfred Hitchcock would have agreed with your general premise and furthermore, he brilliantly exploited the technique.
Our brains are by far the best entertainers.
On the other hand, two of the most memorable movies that I have seen over the last year or so included CGI. Without CGI, the movies would not have been such a pleasure.
Well, one, Ratatouille was a cartoon, but does that apply to your CGI premise? The story told was the key to the movie and the CGI made it happen.
The other movie included quite hokey, silly CGI, but it fit so nicely with the story. The movie Pan's Labyrinth used CGI only when the story was told from the point of view of a young girl on the verge of adolescence. The director portrayed the girls fantasy world through non-sensical, science fiction-like CGI images.
CGI in Pan's Labyrinth guides the viewer through the fine line of reality and fantasy as an allegory of coming-of-age. And at the end of the movie, the CGI usage faded as the girl matured. In my opinion, the movie was brilliant.
Lastly, I'll post a message in a forum where this will be appreciated, I am trying a no TV experiment. My roommate left behind an HDTV antenna and related to that, I conveniently lost the coax cable for my powered antenna.
Around the same time, my brother offered my sisters and I a corporate-stained family only discount on HDTVs. My sisters snapped them up (we're all suckers for a good deal) and they live within visual sight distance of Boston - able to get broadcast HDTV.
I gave the fancy antenna to them and now they get a handful of HDTV broadcast channel. Since I lost *ahem* my coax cable, I can't hook up my powered antenna so I don't get any TV channels.
I'm putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and I'll see how things go without a TV.
Good luck without the TV, Tim. I'm sure you'll live without it just fine.
Gesh - I'm afraid that I have to disagree, at least half-heartedly, with your opinion about CGI. That's not to say that it isn't over used, but it really can do amazing things for a film that would be impossible without it.
Take Lion, Witch, Wardrobe for example - several attempts have been made to turn the books into live action films and all have failed miserably in large part because of pitifully ridiculous mechanized stuffed animals or little people shoved into badly constructed animal costumes. (Of course, The BBC's production also suffered because of the unfortunate, fat, buck-toothed, simpering child they cast in Lucy's role.)
The current films are amazing precisely because you can see believable talking animals, centaurs, fauns and an Aslan who looks like he really could chomp your head off if he wanted to. I know that it is all CGI and I'm perfectly willing to exercise a willing suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy a visual manifestation of the world that has lived in my imagination since I was a child. Reflecting on all of this, I am even more impressed by the acting done in the film - how difficult it might be for those kids to go on acting as if all of this were real when they are really parading around with a bunch of grown ups in blue tights.
There's my 2 cents. Gotta tend to the dinner just now.
It seems like most of the comments have been general agreement with the Blogger’s thesis and a few proposed exceptions to the rule. OK. I guess I will be the dissenting voice. Aside from casting my own vote of appreciation for trolls and a certain balrog, I would pose a question that I think is more central to the issue. Where is the line?
In what way, other than its current position on the continuum, is today’s CGI different from any of its forerunners? X-wing fighters in a dogfight over the Death Star, the group climb up the Cliffs of Insanity, Hoggle in the Bog of Eternal Stench, Spock’s ears, the impossible violence of the Three Stooges and Acme Portable Holes are all part of the same trend. You said,"Movies, of course, have always been about fantasy, about creating new worlds or portraying unlikely scenarios in this one. Yet in order for all of that to succeed, real limits -- laws of physics, basic reflections of reality -- have to obtain. Otherwise, the spell is broken." I think you’re inconsistent here. Movies have always been about fantasy, about creating new worlds. The examples I’ve given are just a few that point to the fact that it’s really about breaking the laws of physics and distorting reflections of reality. If we saw what was really on the set, without filters or crafty camera angles then the spell would be broken.
"And lately Hollywood seems intent on breaking its own spell. Remember the thrill of seeing those magnificent set pieces in old historical epics with their casts of thousands? Compare that experience to the battle scenes in "Troy" or the "Lord of the Rings" series. Ho-hum. Your brain knows what you're seeing." That thrill is the very same thing that most of us are experiencing with CGI. I’m sure that those historical epics had their own critics saying much the same thing at the time. After all, when you look at those magnificent sets don’t you know that you’re seeing magnificent sets? Didn’t this whole business begin with the willing suspension of disbelief? Nobody’s trying to fool anyone. Again I say, “Where’s the line?”
I would wager that from the very beginning of moving pictures there have been those who have decried each new technology for its debilitating effect on our native imaginations. To take my continuum argument a step further, I would suggest that the complaint goes back beyond the movies. I know that Shakespeare had his gadgets and I’m sure they provoked rolling eyes from certain folks. Even in written fiction the question arises, “How much do I describe and how much do I leave to your imagination?” For example, I love Tolkien’s detailed descriptions of geography and topography but I know certain other people who get bogged down by it. As for me, if you can take me there, make me see it, feel it and smell it, I’m happy.
One last step down this road… Oral storytelling. Do you want the old man to stick strictly to the facts? Should he avoid embellishment (which inevitably gets the details wrong) or vocal impressions that are really only part of the storytellers mind? When I go see Indiana Jones on Friday I will be the little boy sitting across the fire from the old man. When he throws his magic powder into the flames and it explodes into a puff of green smoke I will be delighted. If there are telltale signs or missing shadows I won’t know it.
Relax and enjoy the movie.
Beorn –
I can’t tell whether what you offer up as the central question – “Where is the line?” – is rhetorical or not. I’m guessing that it is, and judging by the bulk of your comment, I would also venture to say that you don’t think that there is or should be a “line.” But I would suggest that there is indeed a line; just because it’s subjective doesn’t mean it’s not real. For me, when the camera stays with a character who jumps off a 50-story building and lands on his feet on the concrete, I can feel in my gut that the line has been crossed, because I get the this-doesn’t-look-right feeling – and it doesn’t look right to a greater degree than it wouldn’t look right if the camera had cut away at the top of the building and then showed him standing on the concrete in the next cut. It’s an urgent, resentment-tinged feeling of disappointment. If you can watch that same scene without feeling insulted, more power to you. The line, for you, lies somewhere else.
But of course there’s a line, even for you. I’m not buying your slippery-slope argument that just because all storytelling hinges on a willing suspension of disbelief, all storytelling is created equal, or that just because movies have always used special effects, all special effects are created equal. There is good and bad storytelling. There are good and bad descriptions in fiction, good and bad dialog in drama, and good and bad effects in movies. Do you honestly mean to suggest that there is no C-grade horror movie, with a guy clomping around in a rubber monster suit, that would elicit a cringe or a derisive laugh from you? The fact of the matter is, when the illusion fails (by inadvertently calling attention to itself), the spell is broken. You seem to have read my post as a complaint against fantasy; it’s not – it’s a lament for fantasy undone by hamhandedness. The book The Da Vinci Code is a perfect example: It’s a decent enough story at face value, but Dan Brown doesn’t know how to make his characters cross a room, resulting in such a wretched piece of writing that the whole endeavor is without pleasure for me.
Of course I don’t want the storyteller by the campfire to stick to encyclopedic fact. But if he’s going to keep me enthralled, he’d better be artful in his telling. If he has a good story but can’t string words together in a sentence; if I can see the plot turns coming from a mile away; or if he suddenly decides to supplement his oral narrative with pantomime, even though he’s great at storytelling but terrible at pantomime; then he breaks his own spell and exhausts my reservoirs of suspended disbelief. That’s what my complaint is about Hollywood and CGI lately – it's storytellers switching to awkward pantomime. Rather than using the technology judiciously, directors are in a hurry to throw it in wherever they can, like Mark Twain’s man walking around with a hammer, to whom everything looks like a nail. It’s eroding directors’ better judgment about the other aspects of narrative that we’ve been talking about.
One final note: We can only go so far with analogies and comparisons with other forms of storytelling. Film is a visual medium, so much of the pleasure we get from it derives from its aesthetics (which is why we value cinematography, etc.). There’s an aesthetic argument to be made against CGI – put simply, it’s ugly, which is why it's so jarring and so immediately recognizable. Its surfaces are still too flat, its textures too smooth. That’s one huge reason why I’d rather see a scene, shot on film, of a stuntman cowboy getting thrown off a horse in a lush green pasture with snowy mountains in the background than the same thing digitally generated. Mine’s prettier *and* realer.
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