CGI monsters enable boring filmmaking. With practical effects the filmmaker is limited, and limitations brew ingenuity...

CGI monsters enable boring filmmaking. With practical effects the filmmaker is limited, and limitations brew ingenuity. The original Alien costume sucked in good lighting, so we got an intense thriller. Jurassic Park: awesome rain scenes with the T. rex, kitchen scene with the raptors. Now we just get King Kong, flailing about, aliens that move in that fluid, CGI way that makes them completely unthreatening. Marvel movies where the hero and bad guy are fighting like Dragonball Z characters. It's tiresome and not very interesting. Reign it in people. There's no sense of tension if the monster doesn't have a presence.

The Witch was so effective as a horror because it built a playground for your imagination to play in. I just got out of Alien Covenant and didn't give a shit about the characters or creatures the entire movie.

Alien 1 was not scary though.

I agree wholeheartedly OP. Something I've also mulled over is the impact that CGI has on the actors. I can't help but feel that there will always be a difference in performance between an actor staring at a green screen and being told to pretend something or someone is there, and an actor faced with an animatronic or some other physical, convincing prop. That isn't to say that there aren't actors that could give a stellar performance even in a blank white room with nothing to work with, but those are few and far between.

The "Alien was shit in light" only help making the film better. Alien was supposed to be a sacry movie so adding more darkness gives the audience a sensation that unknown is present (like in Haloween) helping to create an ambient where everything can happen anytime

>I just got out of Alien Covenant and didn't give a shit about the characters or creatures the entire movie.
I was thinking the same thing after I saw it; the creatures were completely uninteresting, just being there, center frame, doing CGI stuff, like we're expected to be impressed with that in this day and age when anyone with a decent computer can manage sequences equally as impressive. I get the feeling that they can do so much better, make it look far more realistic and use CGI way more effectively than they do, but they just don't. Is it budget, or is it that audiences for the most part don't seem to have a problem with it so why improve?

That's my point. They needed to get creative with lighting and when to show the monster or not. Compare now to Alien Covenant

You can James Cameron for ruining the mystery along with the sequels, comics, and Alien ripoffs

>CGI monsters enable boring filmmaking. With practical effects the filmmaker is limited, and limitations brew ingenuity.
I remember watching Alien and Aliens as a child and thought if that stupid tail was hanging on a string lol.

If cgi looks so bad doesnt that make it a bigger limitation than practical.

Right.

...

I wish I saw Alien without knowing anything about the movies/universe, i bet it would have actually have been scary

The Alien looks kind of shitty now, but the scenes where they are walking towards the Alien ship are amazing, I don't think you can get that level of realism with CGI, at least not yet anyway

I dont get it. All the actors were in the same place at one point. Just film it together...

Less = more

If they made it now it would be full of shitty eye candy like Covenant. What practical forces them to do is pay more attention to details where realism are more important than lots of pretty colors.

James Cameron had nothing to do with the fact that the original Alien movie is dated. It has atmosphere, but it is not scary at all

In the original trilogy they used clever camera tricks to make it seem like they were all different heights.

But fuck putting in actual work when you can use CGI, amirite?

>Harry Dean Stanton will die in your lifetime

hold me

Because they have to give an illusion of size difference, which can't be done by just putting everyone in a room together unless that room is very well thought-out for optical illusions. Instead they film everyone separately and CGI them all in at the right scale.

>big cgi xenomorph brightly lit in centre frame wideshot
It just felt so wrong when I was watching it, almost like it represented how much Ridley didn't really get what made the xenomorph so incredibly interesting.

CGI should only be used to enhance practical effects, it should not be used to build things in space, this with very very few exceptions.

That was literally the point he made.

Unfortunately the Hobbit trilogy being in 3d meant that optical illusions were impossible.

Patently obvious Peter Jackson didn't give a fuck this time around. Can't really blame him after giving y tears of his life and just about everything he has as a filmmaker for the LOTR trilogy. He probably thought he was done with Middle Earth aside from counting the cash. Clearly only phoned it when Gulliermo dropped out and the new offer become too much to refuse.

LOTR = labor of love
Hobbit = cash grab

>aliens that move in that fluid, CGI way that makes them completely unthreatening.
I really don't think that's the problem. Fluid, well animated movement is never the problem and was something all the practical effects artists worked their asses off to achieve. The problem is when the director, knowing that the CG alien will look good, focuses on showing it too much. Sure, practical effects give you more limitations, which can give you great results, but a good director should realize that every time you show your monster, you're killing the mystery bit by bit. CG enables directors to do that, but it's still the directors's fault for making decisions like that. Alien Covenant has a ton of problems. The CG isn't one of them, though. It's Scott's lack of restraint.


>being told to pretend something or someone is there
Well, that doesn't happen as much these days. People are aware of this problem and that's why you sometimes see half assed animatronics replaced by better CG later on, or just stand in actors that will be digitally removed before the CG elements are added in.


>But fuck putting in actual work when you can use CGI, amirite?
There's still a TON of work put in there by the VFX artists, but why consider that when it doesn't fit your narrative?

Just saying practical is better is lazy.

Even when practical effects are bad the mind is still able to accept them as 'real' because they have actual presence in that they're a solid object presented on screen. In the case of CGI there'll always be something that alerts the audience to it being fake. So whereas practical effects can be bad to average and still look decent, unless CGI is top quality it'll always look terrible and unbelievable.

I don't think this is true. Do you consider glass matte paintings practical effects? Are they more of a "solid object presented on screen" than a CG matte painting? Are you aware of the amount of set extensions on films that otherwise don't feature any obvious VFX? There's so much "invisible" CG in big films and TV series these days that people never notice. Almost everytime a plane or a helicopter is on screen, it's a CG model, yet people rarely complain about that. Maybe that's what you're referring to as top quality though.

Most people forget how shitty the ending of Alien was. The alien was horrible looking and really looked like some guy in an alien suit. Also it was hurt by smoke, yet it was suppose to be invulnerable or something.

the CGI alien chihuahua that came from the backburster was terrible and looked ridiculous, with that fluidity with no regards of gravity that always looks off.

You mean this shot right?
I've heard that they really didn't want to use it but couldn't get the scene to work otherwise.

>Also it was hurt by smoke
>it was hurt by smoke
>hurt
>by smoke
>smoke

You are not qualified to watch movies. You must be this fuckwit:

That disgusting senile ruin laid hands on jcon
Let that sink in