WOW! I can't believe just how really strong and very loud these creatures were in this film, those special effect people did a pretty good job on them, one things for sure they were a lot more deadlier than the werewolfs from london!
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no really I'm not, I just watched this film a couple of days ago.
shareYou're crazy! Those werewolves don't even look like werewolves. They're look more like gorillas with cat's eyes and paws.
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v716/extremeroyalty/My%20Stuff/Sets/litatrish2.jpg[/img]
Well what ever the hell they were, those things were so brutal at killing people, they should have creatures like this in some horror movies today.
shareYou're off your nut.
They shouldn't have used CGI at a time when the technology couldn't do anything but make lumpy shiny objects that moved. It's awful-looking and doesn't even vaguely fit in with the look of the rest of the film--it looks exactly like a shiny computer image plastered into a film scene. At least Van Helsing's CGI weres did a somewhat better job of fitting in. I understand that everyone was eager to flaunt this technology at the time if they could afford to use it, but some discretion would have been nice. Especially in this film.
As for the structure of the beast itself?
It suffers from the same head-formation problem that the Underworld series does; a vaguely hairy ratbaboon does not a wolf make.
The movie also makes the utterly telling transformation mistake of thinking that the knees would reverse--the reversed-knee-looking part of a canine is its *ankle*; anyone who bothered to just look in a frigging kid's book on dogs would see that.
While I enjoyed seeing the structure of the handpaws, the rest of the body was, as I said in regards to the CGI, lumpy and not well put together; especially in the back half of the creature. This is, for example, extremely visible when he shoots the girl and she crawls away in wolf form.
Thinking some more on the tunnel fight after the church rave, the CGI is also a glaring thing of ugliness and highly ill-placed because for the closeups in the fight they chose to use what looked like some sort of *tangible* FX--something not made on a computer--and the quickly-interchanged visuals very much do not match. That kind of thing kills suspension of disbelief very fast.
And please, don't say "You're just spoiled on the new special effects", because I grew up on thinking the way-back werewolf film with Lon Chaney was hot stuff AND I was scared by it. I just happen to be picky and like quality in my films (something that is obviously sheerly lacking here, and that's even before discussing plot, characters, or dialogue).
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i saw the film a couple years back and thought the CGI was nowhere near as good as the classic transformation scene by rick baker. However, i did think that the cgi was ok, however after your detailed critique i must say u have changed my view, especially wid the fight scene and ankle analysis. I do giv u props for having such a strong precise opinion on how the CGI ruined the result of the movie.
shareI thought the werewolves in Dog Soldiers were much better and scarier - and all done with hardly any CGI!
Norm
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
werewolf in "Silver Bullet" was probably one of the scariest ever. The worst thing about AWIP were the CGI werewolves-the rest of the story was good. Even the werewolf in AWIN looked waaaaay better and scarier. Still, the SB werewolf is right up there at the top in the scary dept. Scarier still, considering who the werewolf turned out to be...
shareI agree with the original poster. I think that lame-as-fuc|< CGI werewolves are scary as hell. I mean, the way they don't mesh at all with their surroundings, the way the lighting plays off them all wrong, how completely obvious it is that they're simply cut-and-pasted onto the background. It's terrifying.
Actually, I guess I don't really agree with the original poster at all. My mistake. In my opinion, the FX in this movie are about one step down from Claymation. Just goes to show what happens when filmmakers decide that CGI should do all the work, then rely on people who do piss-poor CGI (for further evidence of this, see Hulk). Truth is, the work that Rick Baker did with make-up, prosthetics and animatonics in American Werewolf in London puts these CGI monstrosities to shame. If the filmmakers were smart, they would have combined CGI with the traditional physical FX to create some truly realistic and terrifying creatures. But they weren't smart, were they? No...no, they weren't. As with many modern filmmakers, they thought that CGI could carry the full load. And as with many modern filmmakers, they were wrong. Blending of techniques results in a seamless final product. Sh!t CGI, on its own, is just sh!t CGI.
Very sad that this film's FX should be so far behind those of the original, considering it was made sixteen years later. American Werewolf in London still sports the single best man-to-wolf transformation scene ever. I keep waiting for someone to top it, but every attempt I've seen is nothing short of laughable.
The realistic quality of CGI is horribly overrated! I have yet to see a CGI creation that does not look like some sort of cartoon imposed onto a real setting. In general, CGI creatures do not even hold a candle to Rick Baker's work, which is done with make-up, prosthetics and animatronics-- and still kicks major a$$! Combining CGI with real effects would probably work pretty well, but it is rarely, if ever, actually done. Now, as if the cartoon werewolves in this film were not bad enough, they don't even look like werewolves! They resemble gigantic cavemen with some feline traits-- pretty laughable, in my opinion. But it is the film itself that is a real stinker; it is loaded with predictability, bad acting, a poor plot, and it has a strong neo-horror movie feel to it-- basically, a cross between the Scream/I Know What You Did Last Summer genre and the not-so-classic Underworld genre. An American Werewolf in Paris is an insulting "sequel" to the horror/comedy classic An American Werewolf in London, and I truly wonder why it was even made.
Combining CGI with real effects would probably work pretty well, but it is rarely, if ever, actually done.
Actually, it's a very common practice, and it yields the best results in terms of special effects. The brain-eating scene in Hannibal is a great example of how blending techniques in order to achieve a seamless effect works wonders. That scene necessitated the use of make-up, prosthetics, animatronics, and CGI...each of the four techniques doing its part to achieve a realistic effect that no single technique could have achieved on its own. Sure, they could have done it all with CGI, but it would have looked phoney. Same if they did it all with prosthetics. The best effects in movies today are combinations of computer technology and live effects/stunts. The reason it may seem less common is that we aren't as inclined to recognize the fact that a certain effect was a blend of CGI and live effects...because the resulting effect is so convincing. And a lot of the CGI in such cases is very subtle...it's used sparingly, only to fill in the gaps that can't be achieved by other means.
I'm all for a bit of CGI here and there, where it's necessary to achieve the desired effect. But people have a tendency to go overboard with it, and use it when there are other (often better) alternatives. American Werewolf in Paris is a fine example. If they'd used updated versions of Baker's techniques and blended them seamlessly through limited use of CGI, they could have created the most amazing werewolf effects in cinema history. As it is, all we got, as an audience, was a bunch of phoney-looking animations.
To me, even today CGI just doesn't hold up that well when it's used as an object in a scene surrounded by real objects/people. The shading/lighting and things just doesn't look right and it has that cartoony aspect to it that makes it stand out compared to anything else on the screen.
I think that costumes/props woulda been a lot better for this film, even if the movements weren't down pat, perhaps a mix if they wanted to s how full body shots/movements not capable with a prop.
The cgi worked really well in the movie because they didn't over use it.
They didn't overuse it? Correct me if I'm wrong here (I haven't seen the film since its theatrical run, because once was more than enough for me), but wasn't every single transformation done completely with CGI? Not to mention every single shot of a werewolf throughout the entire film? No prosthetics, no animatronics...just straight CGI. If you ask me, that's overusing it.
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I've always liked werewoves and vampire movies, I see the crappy and good ones I guess, and I agree even though it looks fake, still to this day when I watch An American Werewolf in Paris it freaks me out more than any other movie, the club scene and Serafine's tranformation, it's just creepy! IT STILL IS, I just saw this movie last night, and ugh!!! Uy Anyway, I do think they should use these werewolves for other movies as well, only better, its 2009, I'm sure they can make 'em look more realistic and better than back in '97, but I really love the way they look. Even though it looks fake, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just a movie people if you don't like it, let the people that do like it, enjoy it, no?
.TE.AMO.
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Ugh. I can still enjoy this movie just because it's a fun film, but the werewolves were one of the three big problems this film had. The other two were some confusing plot points about Sarafine's werewolf status and the super-annoying zombie-ghosts. The problem with the werewolves: CGI STILL does not work in horror. What's with the feline eyes? And they looked too much like monkey faces... Plus, someone mentioned the knee bending backwards thing. I'm not sure that is what they wanted it to look like, but it did sorta look that way. Nah, epic fail on the werewolves. They could still at least be scary though, but you have to really get imaginative, because CGI never looks like it's really there enough to make you scared for the characters.
shareCGI is the worst thing to ever happen to the horror genre, period.
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They used cow and bull noises for the werewolves roars speedy.....that's just one of the many things wrong with the furless werewolves in this movie.
"You think you can mess with me?!? I eat SyFy movies for breakfast!"
even avatar looks like a high end cartoon. cgi is still a long way off from beeing photo realistic
shareThe werewolves in this film looked like the worst werewolves I've ever seen. They were way too monkey-like, and with very little body hair. They got the face ALL wrong, there was nothing wolflike about it!
I enjoy this film, but I'd enjoy it ten times more if they actually looked like wolves.
The ones in Underworld were just as bad. Why do film makers make them so look so monkey like in the face!? It's not the hard to make them wolf-like, they just have a piss-poor imagination of what werewolves should look like.
As much as I hate to say it, and even though they're not true werewolves, New Moon had the best werewolves because they have much more resembelance to a wolf than any other werewolf movie.
"If a Soldier's pride means hurting one another, I don't want it..."
I didn't like the werewolves in this movie either. But I don't think the movie storyline was really that bad.. Maybe if they kept the werewolf look and transformation exactly like or at least verrry similar to AWIL, this movie would be better??
Oh god. B, how am I ever going to make things right with her?
Faith this isn't about Buffy