Are films like the never ending story any good?

311

I caught a glimpse of the never ending story at christmas,
and I enjoyed the obvious hard work put in to create machines and props rather than everything been graphically generated.

Is this type of film making finished forever ?

monkeyfudge

Well Jim Henson studios are currently working on a sequel to the Dark Crystal. So it should be interesting to see what they do with that as it will still be done with puppets, but there will also be some CGI creations.

Gillie

_Brian_ wrote:

I caught a glimpse of the never ending story at christmas,
and I enjoyed the obvious hard work put in to create machines and props rather than everything been graphically generated.

Is this type of film making finished forever ?

I would say it is!
Even before you had the NES you had Clash of the Titans, Sinbad, etc. where it was all models and machines.
It was really good stuff at the time.

CGI makes things a lot easier for Movie Makers these days.
Just look at Superman Returns and compare it to the first and second Superman movies. The gulf is huge!

Kingp35

Well if you ask me, I would prefer an animatronic creation like the Alien queen over a CGI version any day of the week!!

Gillie

Kingp35 wrote:

Well if you ask me, I would prefer an animatronic creation like the Alien queen over a CGI version any day of the week!!

Agree 100%
You can't beat that!

monkeyfudge

Gillie wrote:

CGI makes things a lot easier for Movie Makers these days.
Just look at Superman Returns and compare it to the first and second Superman movies. The gulf is huge!

Yes. The gulf is huge. The first two films are vastly superior. The special effects really don't mean much. The space shuttle scene was a very good effect, but it was a terrible scene mostly due to the fact that Lois Lane doesn't get a hair knocked of place after all that banging around.

Compare that to Lois being buried alive in the first superman film... it's a far more realistic and effective scene.

311

Do these type of movies actually need a lot more people working on the project ??
Instead of someone on a computer ,you've got safety crew ,machine builders ,film crew ,breakdowns ,mistakes .

Suppose it's just like architecture ,new isn't always better but it's cheap.

monkeyfudge

I don't think it really works out cheaper with CGI. But you don't have to really compromise on how a scene is imagined. You probably have to make a lot of compromises if you're working with traditional special effects.

I find another problem these days is that films that do use stuff like stop-motion animation are accused of having bad CGI... Like in the Life Aquatic... so many people complained about the special effects on the fish thinking they were computer genereated.

Basq

Ooh-ooh.. Labyrinth.. now that's a winner!

Kingp35

basquille wrote:

Ooh-ooh.. Labyrinth.. now that's a winner!

Love that movie!

"The Bog of Eternal Stench". Quality

monkeyfudge

And Labyrinth still looks great for the most part...

The bit with the monsters who do a song and dance number while swapping heads looks terrible though.

Basq

monkeyfudge wrote:

The bit with the monsters who do a song and dance number while swapping heads looks terrible though.

Agreed.. watched it recently and thought that too.

Also, Jennifer Connelly's acting is atrocious... but hey, things ain't changed much in there!

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

monkeyfudge wrote:

Well Jim Henson studios are currently working on a sequel to the Dark Crystal. So it should be interesting to see what they do with that as it will still be done with puppets, but there will also be some CGI creations.

no freakin way!

BlitzKrieg

I would say it is!
Even before you had the NES you had Clash of the Titans, Sinbad, etc. where it was all models and machines.
It was really good stuff at the time.

CGI makes things a lot easier for Movie Makers these days.

Your very much wrong...All the skills used to make the classics such as clash of the titans are still used today in any film that uses cgi.

Its two fold

Firstly ask any animator or filmmaker and they will tell you that the very same discipline used in the original stop-motion and classic animation etc are re-used in cgi effects...the tools have gone from specially designed cameras to computers but the process for the most part is the same.

I've met animators who were trained in classical animation/cartooning go into classess to learn flash animation etc and she told me the only thing she really needed to learn is where in the program the tools are kept...after that it was mostly the same stuff.

Secondly and more important...the actual processess themselves are not gone. CGI does not work on its own. It has been proven time and time again and any film which tries to sell itself on its special effects will use a combination of all of the above. The very same techniques seen in films like the neverending story are still used. But in conjunction with cgi.

Lord of the Rings boasted very strongly using all of the above.

Jurassic Park the big sing song for CGI used a heavy amount of animatronics mixed with CGI.

Ask anyone who watches films...the ones who dont use these techniques and rely purely on the CGI are the ones that are easily spotted and ridiculed. Compare the original Matrix to its sequels where the number of CGI increased and material effects decreased and the original still looks better.


No technique dies in cinema it is either intergrated into the next generation (non linear editing programs have the same layout as a stembeck editing desk) or it is required full stop to create the illusion.

johnny_ultimate

I watched the Neverending Story again over Christmas for the first time in years. It was a childhood favourite of mine, and wanted to see how it fared with my more critical age.

I think it has a certain sort of charm due to it's primitive (by today's standards anyway) effects. Take the example of the flying dog/dragon. I think it looks more realistic because its a model. If it was CGIified up a couple of notches it would become just another impressive CGI model. CGI lacks the heart traditional effects tend to have. While I have no objection against CGI as such, I think Hollywood should still hold a place for models, stop motion and all the other classic special effects, which I feel add a sense of nostalgia and energy to films.

And is the Neverending Story good? Not brilliant, but it has a lot going for it. Some of the scenes are bizarre and atmospheric e.g.

the death of Atreyu's horse and the giant statues crumbling, the latter proving paticularly eerie

. But the whole power of imagination message comes on a little strong at the end. Yet as a kid I loved every single minute of it (even that annoying rock creature and the weird talking wolf) and maybe thats how these films - such as Labyrinth - work best = as childhood fantasies free from critical eyes.

Woah, longest post Ive written in months.

311

Have to say I've never actually seen the film myself ,I caught a small piece when I was kid and a small piece again this christmas.

Reminded me of the respect I have of superman 2 ,with the ZOD chase .

Maybe the film monkeyudge was talking of ,will get something going again.

random_banter

As a child the Neverending Story was pure magic for me!

I saw it recently too, and I actually found the effects and models to be quite the novelty, I really enjoyed it. The same for Labyrinth.