The CGI stuff


Why? It just sucked.

Rest of the movie is fine so far and I hope it gets better.

Ok let me continue watching.

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When are they going to learn that CGI looks cartoony not scary? Would it have been that hard to use practical effects and make-up for some of the creatures

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Right up to the end they continue with this cartoon fest.

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Well, they went 100% practical with the IT Spider in the miniseries, and look how that was received.

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Yep, it made IT 2 cornier, but it still made money so there should be an IT 3. People need to be more discreet with their money and watching movies at the box office. I'm watching it on HBO, but watching it for free.

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SOME of the creatures, yes. How else would you do a giant Paul Bunyan, or the Pennywise Spider itself? Besides, the previous movie had CGI, too.

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Paul Bunyan thing, I'll give you. The Pennywise spider could have been done practically, I mean look at the Alien Queen in Aliens.

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Paul Bunyan and giant old lady were my biggest complaints. The spider was ok but the type of cgi made it seem less menacing.

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she was actually scary.

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She looked like putty. How was that even scar? I found her more creepy before the cgi puppet

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Didn't the book describe her as the witch from Hansel and Gretel? Maybe she was MEANT to look like putty?

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I didnt read the book, I am only commenting on what I saw on screen, which wasnt scary at all. But the old lady in the shadows was creepy.

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If it startled me, it was scary.

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None of the cgi creatures in this movie are from the book other than Paul Bunyan, & the hobo zombie. In the book it’s the late 50’s so most of the monsters are from the old Universal movies.

Since this movie takes place in the 80’s a lot of IT Novel fans thought it would be monsters from 80’s horror movies, but the licensing would be a lot of $$$. So they made up new ones like the witch etc...

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Good, I'm glad they made up new ones. I don't want to see a movie about Pennywise only to have him turn into Freddy Kreuger, it would suck.

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Agree. I’m a huge old school horror fan, but seeing those characters in a movie like this would’ve been weird.

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I agree. I didn't mind the pennywise spider... though it looked like it was wearing a diaper.

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Totally agree the CGI was terrible! they should have just used Pennywise to do the scares. Major fail for the movie.

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https://i.giphy.com/media/JUMLTR3dHEGpW/giphy.gif


Update: Hypocritically being on your phone in the theater aside (“kids these days!”), these predictable and banal CGI tirades ova hea... major facepalm.

Well, y’all keep your relatively cheesy 1990 version (mind you, I grew up with it and still have a soft spot for it so hold your get off my lawn rhetoric) that packs enough dated and ineffective effects. I’ll gladly take the big bad CGI youse guys laughably find cheap. And perhaps this “blasphemous” medium can be overused, but... clearly the likes of preded are stuck in the past. Then again... that describes, what, 60-65% of everyone on this site? Them boomers and X’ers are a happy bunch

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I don’t mind CGI, it was just used too shit in these instances. I know the 90’s CGI was crap but I was probably 15 years old then and didn’t give a crap.

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I think it's a great thing to hear more and more people rehash these complaints about the overuse and shoddiness of the cgi prevalent in the current film landscape. Because of its financial viability studios will keep the bar as low as they can possibly get away with for as long as possible, while what they can get away with is largely determined by audience response. So far the rising tide of complaint on the matter seems to have influenced a few productions to go against the grain and work with practical effects, and in every case that I can think of, to a far higher degree of aesthetic sophistication and beauty.

The argument that our options are either the remedial cgi as seen here in Spooky Clown 2, or "cornball" practical work the likes of what we had on some of the images in the 90s miniseries doesn't hold a great deal of H2O. The reality is that, as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, practical effects today have evolved an incredible level beyond what we're familiar with from the 90s, and given the proper budget and producer/director/financier trust to do it at a high level, there is virtually no effect that practical could not do much more elegantly than cgi.

That said, either route you take there will always be the matter of artistry, and unfortunately it's increasingly rare that those who control the money are willing to pay for the demands of artistry. If this film's cg vfx shots were executed at a much higher level it could have worked.

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As far as I'm concerned it DID work.

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The first movie was much better when it came to use of CGI. There was far too much of it throughout the movie, I liked the more old school groundedness of the first.

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I agree, the CGI was bad and overused. The first movie actually had Pennywise the clown scaring the children for the most part.

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I agree the 1990 version takes a dump on this version easily.... the amount of cgi in this new movie is so disturbing is this what new films have become? a silly CGI fest it doesn't match the physics and looks so digital and dumb i don't understand why the patterns of these movies keep getting released it's the same bs! back then they had creativity now they are lazy BUMS

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The 1990 version is SHIT. You can't honestly say that that stupid animatronic and stop-motion spider is better than Spider Pennywise?

CGI has been the norm for years now, and people still lament the lack of use of practical effects that would look worse, be more expensive, and take a lot longer than CGI. Take a good look at the old movies that used stop-motion, like Ray Harryhausen: they suck! It's basically the same principles that CGI uses, but is a lot smoother and more detailed, and a lot more effects can be done, too. The only effects that I can think of that have stood the test of time is the space side of the Battle of Endor and the Death Star Trench run, but those were inanimate station hull and starship models combined with motion control. Of course, they'll look the best. But how expensive and long did it take to film those? Then people criticise the Battle of Coruscant and say it's BAD, whilst the same people say the Battle of Scarif is GOOD, and only a few years passed between the two!

Stop being so nitpicky and just accept that this is the way things are done, these days!

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I think the issue is with how the CGI is used here. It looked cartoony and a way to easily fix it was maybe to use darker tones and lighting. No complaints about old Star Wars either cause I don’t judge it by today’s standards so when I watch it the old effects don’t bother me.

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It doesn't have to be people just refuse to put any effort into the effects these days..... there was much more creativity back then as opposed to today! Cgi doesn't fit in the physics of the movie at all it looks so off and cartoonish I'll take practical effects where people have to actually put effort into making it look real instead of relying on this digital diarrhea if this is the norm today then the stuff today is absolutely garbage compared to the movies back then. Even the effects in like 70's and 80's Lucio Fulci movies takes a giant dump on the atrocities that come out today.

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How are movies like Transformers or Alita Battle Angel meant to be done in a practical way? Eh? Or the endless superhero movies? Eh? If I remember, they tried superhero movies back in the 1970s and 80s, and most of those turned out to be shit.

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LOL the effects shots in Fulci films are so unconvincing, but i LOVE them, and I think there's something to that sentiment. At the end of the day a film makes an emotional impact and resonates for virtually every other reason than that we completely believe in the reality of its visual tricks.

My outlook on visual effects is this: modern eyes are very jaded to both practical and digital vfx, and most people will rarely be fooled by either one. I can always pick out cgi. On the other hand, I can usually identify where practical effects techniques were used. On rare occasion I find a practical effect can be indistinguishable from reality. So if we're going to have some awareness that what we're seeing is movie magic either way, would you rather the image in question A) looked like a video game, or B) was real photography of a physical thing that may look slightly off from reality? I think there's a place for both, but the choice should be aesthetically driven, and usually today it's not.

At the same time, the level of what practical effects shops are able to achieve today is incredible far beyond what we remember from the heyday of practical. Just take a look at some of the behind the scenes footage of ADI's scrapped work on the remake of The Thing for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBzpT7VmSaU Dude! Tell me this is not so much cooler, more fun, inspiring, sensual and feelsy than the cgi shit they ended up with! Today, the practical houses, given the appropriate budget, could solve most visual effects problems on a superior level of artistry. Unfortunately, for reasons of efficiency, financial practicality and producerial malleability, cgi is the go-to choice, and they rarely get an opportunity to shine. And to make things worse, studios currently tend to shoot for the roughest, bullshittiest cg work they can possibly get away with.

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Perhaps they couldn't afford a practical spider on a $70m budget? And as I said, the miniseries used practical effects, and they sucked. People LAUGH at that monstrosity when they see it. I'm sure others still are confused, like, "it's been the clown for over two hours, where did this crap come from all of a sudden?"

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That could be, but the budget for the effect is all down to where you're willing to go aesthetically. It's true that it would be costly to do something like full scale animatronics on the highest level, especially if we're keeping the direction of the scene mostly as is. There are so many ways you could tackle it though, and it's fascinating to imagine how else it could work.

I laugh at the spider in the miniseries too. How could anyone not? It's just ridiculous. I think the issue though isn't the medium but how it's used, and how the sequence was directed most of all. It sure as fuck doesn't make an imposing impression that we first see the creature in an extreme long shot, and it's this full Harryhausen mode, very un-scary/goofy crab/spider thing just slowly ambling around like whatever, and not amazingly well composited into the background. And then when we cut to close-ups it looks like it has the animation facility of a Chuck-E-Cheese performance, and its design is not much less comical. And then the losers throw it on its back like it's nothing and it clearly puts up no struggle at all. On and on, it's just a comically un-epic sequence in every way, and virtually the opposite of what it needed to be in all aspects.

In my opinion that whole final showdown episode in It's lair needs to be executed in a highly metaphysical, abstract, surreal way. It's a mistake to portray it as cohering much at all to mundane physical / temporal boundaries, and that would have to be a concerted effort of sensitive directing, editing, and visual effects, in which a variety of practical techniques could be used to powerful effect and stay well within those budgetary constraints.

Give me $0.5m and I could give you absolutely fucked up vfx sequences for a final showdown with It, done all practically.

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WE FIGHTIN

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I enjoyed the movie but the cgi nearly killed it for me. It was just used too much, most of the cgi monsters looked too cartoony and silly, not really intimitading at all.

The first one was a much better movie and I wasn't as bothered with the cgi as I was was here. I was kinda dissapointed with chapter 2 but still it was a decent enough conclusion to the story.

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Funny thing: What most people think was CGI were actors in makeup. I guess CGI really has superseded practical effects now.

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I highly doubt this. Even if it was an actor in makeup, CGI was used to enhance it. It’s immediately obvious with the fake-looking lighting and movements. There is no bigger atmosphere-killer in a horror film than obvious CGI, and this one was ravaged by it.

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Thats what a lot of people though, but turns out we just have screens good enough now where average audience noticed the fake studio lighting as fake and makeup actors dont always move realistically.

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