You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me (The Bad Special Effects Thread)

[CrazyGirl17]

Anyone seen the adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 541? It's actually a decent film, but since they didn't have the special effects to make the robot Hound, instead... we have guys on jetpacks. Really. And it is the goddamned cheesiest effect I have ever seen in my life. Don't believe me? Look the movie up for yourself and you'll see...

 

[Vivi22]

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It had some pretty bad cgi in some spots. Azog looked fucking awful.

The CGI in both Hobbit movies is unforgivably bad. I actually think the second one managed to be worse in a lot of ways, but I haven't seen the first since it was in theatres so I may be forgetting just how bad it was.

But the river scene in the second one as well as pretty much everything that involved them fighting Smaug? Awful. Absolutely awful. There's even one point where the frame rate seems to suddenly drop and you get some really choppy animation on Smaug. How the fuck does that even happen and make it into the movie?

I think half the reason the LotR look better is simply because they relied a lot more on practical effects. That and the CGI was really well done at the time and they kept instances of really shitty animation and integration to a minimum so it holds up a lot better. I honestly have to wonder if Weta has just forgotten how to animate things since those movies.

EDIT: Actually, looking at their filmography, a lot of the movies they've done make me think they really might have forgotten how to do CGI since LotR.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

There's a trope for this: They Just Didn't Care [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyJustDidntCare].

One of my favorites: Attack of the the Eye Creatures. (They put two "the"s in the title, not me.) There's a scene where a group of the titular Eye Creatures are running through an area... but they apparently didn't have the budget for more than a couple full costumes, so most of them are wearing a monster head and black clothing.

 

[Glongpre]

For something different than the hobbit, I nominate The Book of Eli and the incredibly obvious greenscreen while they are rowing across the river. It was an entertaining movie, but as soon as that scene began, I instantly noticed something was weird.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

One that immediately springs to mind was the horrible CGI blood effects in the live-action Blood: The Last Vampire movie.

Seriously, your movie is literally called Blood! How is it that it has some of the worst blood effects I've ever seen in a Hollywood film?!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The FX in Starship Troopers have aged horribly. It was the early day of CGI and I guess people were too focused on the 'now' to notice all those CG bugs would not age well.

I have a real hard time containing my befuddlement here. That movie still looks fantastic. To me it was the days of CGI before it got loaded with sub-surface scattering up the ass, making everything look overly squishy and fuzzy. Example: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. There was a nice starkness to CGI back then that's almost completely missing today.

The FX in Starship Troopers have aged horribly. It was the early day of CGI and I guess people were too focused on the 'now' to notice all those CG bugs would not age well.

Really? I thought they mixed the practical effects, i.e. actual bug models, and CGI pretty well. The starship sequences are a bit iffy but to me, the bugs look fine.

The bugs look fine in close ups because they tend to not use CGI in those. All the mangling and dismemberment looks very good as well. But the big set pieces look fake as hell. They're not entirely deal-breakers but not once did I truly believe them.

 

[Frezzato]

I'd like to mention I Am Legend but not specifically because the special effects were bad (which they were). It's that the movie to me is quite excellent only because Will Smith carried that damn film on the merits of his acting talent. Not to mention the fact that the entire movie was basically just...him. Well, him and a dog.

In addition, I think it would have been much scarier if the effects had been practical (like The Descent), but I've had a hard time determining if his acting is better specifically because of the bad CGI or if Smith's acting was incredibly good despite the terrible CGI.

Eh, I've been sick for the past 5 days. I'll probably regret this post later, but for now I'll leave it as is.

 

[Headsprouter]

Well hello der.

That's The Giant Claw. Decent for a B movie, acting isn't that bad, monster taken seriously, looks like that.

It looks like a deformed Pokemon. It's actually starting to remind me of several pathetic breeds of small dogs.

Spoiler: The Catalogue of Derp.

HURR

DURR

DERP DERP DERP

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Hah. Those aren't bad effects. These are bad effects:

No, no, no.

Spoiler: THESE are bad effects

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

There's a trope for this: They Just Didn't Care [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyJustDidntCare].

One of my favorites: Attack of the the Eye Creatures. (They put two "the"s in the title, not me.) There's a scene where a group of the titular Eye Creatures are running through an area... but they apparently didn't have the budget for more than a couple full costumes, so most of them are wearing a monster head and black clothing.

Actually, there is a better trope for this [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpecialEffectFailure].

 

[Loop Stricken]

The scene where the clown transforms and the scene in hell were particularly awful

Whilst I do agree with those scenes in particular, surely you must agree with me that the scene where he impales his cloak into the road to destroy the semi looked pretty damn cool.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

Damn you. Now I want to watch the movie Q [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084556/] (1982).

Also, thanks for the laugh! Like I said, I'm still getting over a cold. It's good for clearing up the lungs.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I have a real hard time containing my befuddlement here. That movie still looks fantastic. To me it was the days of CGI before it got loaded with sub-surface scattering up the ass, making everything look overly squishy and fuzzy. Example: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. There was a nice starkness to CGI back then that's almost completely missing today.

OT: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Special mention to the CG claws in the bathroom scene. Fucking Lord did that look like dog shit. X-Men: First Class was pretty terrible as well. The only thing in that movie that didn't look like crap were Beast's feet.

You ninja'd me on both points.

I was going to say Wolverines Claws seem to get less realistic as the movies progress (although I haven't seen Origins 2, so I can't comment on it yet)

And the Hobbit movies special effects look pitifully bad when compared to the Lord of The Rings.

I think it's worse in these cases because we can compare the dodgy CGI in the later movies to the better CGI in the originals, which makes it more baffling and unforgivable.

 

[pearcinator]

The FX in Starship Troopers have aged horribly. It was the early day of CGI and I guess people were too focused on the 'now' to notice all those CG bugs would not age well.

Really? I thought they have aged quite well...sure they are a little bit cartoony now but the whole movie is a parody of itself so it still works. I think it looks better than most late 90's/early-2000's CGI (HULK, Star Wars episode 1, Spiderman for example). Maybe you've been spoiled by the 'gritty realism' of modern movies (being all brown, grey and black). I thought is was better that the bugs were vibrant and colourful.

The worst CGI I can remember was from the movie 'Spawn'. The effects of "hell" were so terrible they looked worse than an N64 game! Also if you compare Spawn with Starship Troopers (both came out in 1997) then you can agree that Starship Troopers was ahead of its time!

 

[Poetic Nova]

There's this one movie that was set on an island with a volcano. There's a scene with said volcano erupting, except it was an obvious scale model. Plus the monsters and everything where truelly awfull cgi. Needless to say it was a SyFy channel movie.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The FX in Starship Troopers have aged horribly. It was the early day of CGI and I guess people were too focused on the 'now' to notice all those CG bugs would not age well.

Really? I thought they have aged quite well...sure they are a little bit cartoony now but the whole movie is a parody of itself so it still works. I think it looks better than most late 90's/early-2000's CGI (HULK, Star Wars episode 1, Spiderman for example). Maybe you've been spoiled by the 'gritty realism' of modern movies (being all brown, grey and black). I thought is was better that the bugs were vibrant and colourful.

Funny you should mention the N64, I was thinking the same thing about the bugs in Starship Troopers - which, by the way, I didn't take as a parody at all. This is from a review I made:

You can't fool me. I've seen satire. Dr. Strangelove is satire. Catch-22 is satire. Hell, RoboCop is satire. These movies take slice of life unto their hands and hold it up for mockery. And so we laugh at the government, we laugh at bureaucracy and we laugh at businessmen. Satire is precious because it can ridicule the powerful and get away with it. How does it get away with it? I suppose you take either of two roads: hide in subtleties or hide in plain sight.

Starship Troopers is no satire. It doesn't criticize, it shows. It says "This is militarism", but doesn't condone it, and if anything it celebrates it simply by playing it straight. I don't care how nonsensical the plot is, how over-the-top the set pieces are, how graphic the death scenes get, how corny the dialogue sounds or how campy the performances feel. Starship Troopers isn't about plot, character, style, humor or drama. It's about soldiers fighting and dying until the movie is over and they can't fight and die anymore.

Sometimes the emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, you know.

You may read the rest of it here if you want, but I wouldn't suggest commenting there since it's dangerously close to necro'ing.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

The FX in Starship Troopers have aged horribly. It was the early day of CGI and I guess people were too focused on the 'now' to notice all those CG bugs would not age well.

Haha, I thought that FX held up pretty well. Did you ever see the effects in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder though?

Some of the most hilariously bad special effects in a movie that tries to be serious, ever. And of course much worse than the original film.

 

[pearcinator]

Funny you should mention the N64, I was thinking the same thing about the bugs in Starship Troopers - which, by the way, I didn't take as a parody at all. This is from a review I made:

You can't fool me. I've seen satire. Dr. Strangelove is satire. Catch-22 is satire. Hell, RoboCop is satire. These movies take slice of life unto their hands and hold it up for mockery. And so we laugh at the government, we laugh at bureaucracy and we laugh at businessmen. Satire is precious because it can ridicule the powerful and get away with it. How does it get away with it? I suppose you take either of two roads: hide in subtleties or hide in plain sight.

Starship Troopers is no satire. It doesn't criticize, it shows. It says "This is militarism", but doesn't condone it, and if anything it celebrates it simply by playing it straight. I don't care how nonsensical the plot is, how over-the-top the set pieces are, how graphic the death scenes get, how corny the dialogue sounds or how campy the performances feel. Starship Troopers isn't about plot, character, style, humor or drama. It's about soldiers fighting and dying until the movie is over and they can't fight and die anymore.

Sometimes the emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, you know.

You may read the rest of it here if you want, but I wouldn't suggest commenting there since it's dangerously close to necro'ing.

Satire - the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

The movie is satirical, here's a few reasons why.

1. Humans perceive these bugs as a threat even though they live on the other side of the galaxy...lightyears apart.

2. Humans invade their homeworld without any thought because they are far more technologically advanced. Humans get dominated in the first battle. Which is actually similar to the war on Iraq where Americans were not expecting the opposition to be any good.

3. The propaganda clips that play several times are completely biased and interprets the bugs as completely evil aliens.

4. There is no way that the 'bug meteor' that destroyed Buenos Aires came from the bug homeworld. The bugs couldn't possibly have planned that attack...they would have had to shoot the meteor off centuries, if not millenia earlier. That didn't stop humans from blaming the bugs though.

5. "service guarantees citizenship" - conscription for all of humanity to be considered a citizen of Earth. Where is the sense in that?

6. The end of the movie they capture a 'brain bug' from a different planet (not the homeworld) and then proceed to 'run tests' to figure out how they operate. Tests involve torturing the alien by jamming a drill in it's face. You just watched a movie where the bad guys are winning...but that's ok because the bad guys are humans!

So the movie is a funny, overly exaggerated political war movie. The irony lies in the fact that humans are the evil aliens but because the bugs are grotesque giant insects the viewers are led to believe that they are the evil ones. If you don't see that then the movie is actually ridiculing the audience for being so stupid.

The movie was ahead of its time by a few years which is why the satire originally went unnoticed.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/-em-starship-troopers-em-one-of-the-most-misunderstood-movies-ever/281236/

http://www.cracked.com/article_19259_6-mind-blowing-ways-starship-troopers-predicted-future.html

 

[ajr209]

The scene where the clown transforms and the scene in hell were particularly awful

Whilst I do agree with those scenes in particular, surely you must agree with me that the scene where he impales his cloak into the road to destroy the semi looked pretty damn cool.

I can agree on that. The end of the chase scene was pretty damn sweet and one of the few things they did right. That and Leguizamo's (not sure if I spelled that right) over the top performance as the clown were the two bright spots of the film for me.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Funny you should mention the N64, I was thinking the same thing about the bugs in Starship Troopers - which, by the way, I didn't take as a parody at all. This is from a review I made:

You can't fool me. I've seen satire. Dr. Strangelove is satire. Catch-22 is satire. Hell, RoboCop is satire. These movies take slice of life unto their hands and hold it up for mockery. And so we laugh at the government, we laugh at bureaucracy and we laugh at businessmen. Satire is precious because it can ridicule the powerful and get away with it. How does it get away with it? I suppose you take either of two roads: hide in subtleties or hide in plain sight.

Starship Troopers is no satire. It doesn't criticize, it shows. It says "This is militarism", but doesn't condone it, and if anything it celebrates it simply by playing it straight. I don't care how nonsensical the plot is, how over-the-top the set pieces are, how graphic the death scenes get, how corny the dialogue sounds or how campy the performances feel. Starship Troopers isn't about plot, character, style, humor or drama. It's about soldiers fighting and dying until the movie is over and they can't fight and die anymore.

Sometimes the emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, you know.

You may read the rest of it here if you want, but I wouldn't suggest commenting there since it's dangerously close to necro'ing.

Satire - the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

The movie is satirical, here's a few reasons why.

1. Humans perceive these bugs as a threat even though they live on the other side of the galaxy...lightyears apart.

2. Humans invade their homeworld without any thought because they are far more technologically advanced. Humans get dominated in the first battle. Which is actually similar to the war on Iraq where Americans were not expecting the opposition to be any good.

3. The propaganda clips that play several times are completely biased and interprets the bugs as completely evil aliens.

4. There is no way that the 'bug meteor' that destroyed Buenos Aires came from the bug homeworld. The bugs couldn't possibly have planned that attack...they would have had to shoot the meteor off centuries, if not millenia earlier. That didn't stop humans from blaming the bugs though.

5. "service guarantees citizenship" - conscription for all of humanity to be considered a citizen of Earth. Where is the sense in that?

6. The end of the movie they capture a 'brain bug' from a different planet (not the homeworld) and then proceed to 'run tests' to figure out how they operate. Tests involve torturing the alien by jamming a drill in it's face. You just watched a movie where the bad guys are winning...but that's ok because the bad guys are humans!

So the movie is a funny, overly exaggerated political war movie. The irony lies in the fact that humans are the evil aliens but because the bugs are grotesque giant insects the viewers are led to believe that they are the evil ones. If you don't see that then the movie is actually ridiculing the audience for being so stupid.

The movie was ahead of its time by a few years which is why the satire originally went unnoticed.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/-em-starship-troopers-em-one-of-the-most-misunderstood-movies-ever/281236/

http://www.cracked.com/article_19259_6-mind-blowing-ways-starship-troopers-predicted-future.html

I would advice against quoting Cracked for truth but OK, I'm ready to believe some people think it's a satire and didn't consider it a total waste of time while others think it's not because hey, maybe it's not.