henke on 19/5/2010 at 05:09
What are you talking about SD? Special effects or sound effects? Because if it's the special effects you're calling sloppy you are mad.
Scots Taffer on 19/5/2010 at 05:37
From what I recall the CG crowd/building/lighting effects weren't SHIT hot but were pretty good for the time, probably just a bit dated looking nowadays. Anyway, it's not a movie about CG landscapes anyway so I don't know why that was his go-to comment.
edit: plus dodgy CG tigers and CG Oliver Reed!
Fafhrd on 19/5/2010 at 06:20
I'm still really disappointed that they didn't stick with the Robin is the Sheriff take that was the hook for the script when Scott was attached to the project. Could've played out like a medieval 'The Departed.'
Scots Taffer on 19/5/2010 at 06:30
I read an article on it today, which makes it sound more like a retarded medieval Fight Club.
Thirith on 19/5/2010 at 07:06
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
From what I recall the CG crowd/building/lighting effects weren't SHIT hot but were pretty good for the time, probably just a bit dated looking nowadays. Anyway, it's not a movie about CG landscapes anyway so I don't know why that was his go-to comment.
edit: plus dodgy CG tigers and CG Oliver Reed!
I remember a number of camera sweeps across Rome that all had this fakeish blur and overly clean look that a lot of CGI at the time had. While I don't think it was abysmal, I think that Scott shouldn't have been as much of a show-off with the CGI ("Look! It's Rome! Isn't it, like, amazing?"), since it didn't age very well.
nicked on 19/5/2010 at 07:56
So, like all early CGI movies. Thing is, if those films hadn't pushed the envelope and showed off the current best-looking CGI, there'd have been less incentive to improve CGI and it wouldn't look as good as it does today. Example: watched Titanic recently? It looks like a trailer for some Wii game about a ship. Yet it's one of the most lucrative films of all time. That money leads directly to Avatar-quality of CGI.
Thirith on 19/5/2010 at 08:02
Certainly, nicked, but acknowledging a film's place in (technical) film history doesn't make it untouchable. I don't think the CGI makes Gladiator embarrassingly bad at this point, but without whatever Wow! factor it might have had when it was released, it is a creakier movie altogether IMO.
Then again, I found the film fairly overrated at the time - it's pleasant enough, but I don't think it's a classic for the ages. For that it's too predictable and generic... and (to my mind) pretty charmless.
Eldron on 19/5/2010 at 09:43
Wasn't titanic mostly high detail miniature use and the actual almost full scale ship they built?, I recall the more complicated cg they used were for including far-away humans on the bigger shots.
Those movies 10 and more years back didn't do bad cgi, I wouldn't even call terminator2 bad in terms of cgi, they just held back alot more with what they could do, some things just weren't possible in those days.
wii game, hah.
Morte on 19/5/2010 at 09:51
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
I'm still really disappointed that they didn't stick with the Robin is the Sheriff take that was the hook for the script when Scott was attached to the project. Could've played out like a medieval 'The Departed.'
As I understand it, the "Robin Hood is the sheriff" thing was a twist suggested by Scott in rewrites while the focus was still on the sheriff. The original draft of the Nottingham script was simply a retelling of the Robin Hood story as a medieval crime investigation.
Thirith on 19/5/2010 at 09:53
To me it's the difference between creating fantastic things in CGI and creating reality. None of us have seen T Rexes running after jeeps, we have little in the way of points of reference. Most of us have seen monumental cities and buildings, though, so we're more likely to point whatever is off.
Having said that, I would imagine that people who don't necessarily have an eye for the telltale signs of (dated) CGI and/or who aren't all that interested in the technical side of things just looked at the visuals of Gladiator and enjoyed it.
