the terribly fake battle scenes always "pulled me out of the movie" watching this. Having seen excellent digital and practical effects done in the last several years (a Japanese film about Yamato actually build a full-scale model of much of the ships deck, turrets, and superstructure), I can't help but think it would help. Any thoughts?
shareStrictly from a Special effects POV and not the acting....
It all depends on WHO does the Special effects.
You get some jackass from the Michael Bay/Roland Emmerich school of CGI and you can bet it will be fraking stupid.
Done properly... quality CGI can go far to give a realistic experience.
Done wrongly, and you get Zeros and Warhawks dogfighting 5 feet off the ground dodging between hangers and around Ambulances.
The problem with CGI isn't in whether it LOOKS realistic (Though crap, low budget will still look like crap). The Problem is how the CGI is USED. Since the CGI object is not a real world physical object, it can be manipulated however one wants it to, This is quite often the Director looking for the best camera angle to get "the shot" and the Director generally doesn't know jack sh!t about how the real thing he is supposed to be filming moves in real life, constrained by physics.
A perfect example is Bay's Transformers.
Starscream was disguised as an F-22 but at one point in the film he was battling real F-22s, All CGI of course. Now how Starscream flies and maneuvers is up to the director. If he wants to pull off maneuvers that a real F-22 cannot.... he can. After all he isn't really an F-22 but a Giant futuristic robot from outer space. But the other F-22s are supposed to be real F-22s that Starscream is flying against. Even though they are just CGI... they are supposed to be real aircraft and are constrained by how a real aircraft would behave. BUT as CGI that limitation is removed and the Director makes it do what he wants.
You get a very realistic looking aircraft that behaves like a damned cartoon.
Even if you don't know much about the actual maneuvering characteristics of an actual F-22... you have seen enough planes flying that something (even if you can't put your finger on it) just seems off, not right.
And for those of who DO know... We're going WTF!?!?! as we walk out of the theater.
I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!