CGI Hell

George Lucas has a lot to answer for. Star Wars, alongside Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, is widely regarded as the first summer blockbuster movie, and even after more than 20 years, both Star Wars and E.T. are still among the largest-grossing movies of all time. This year the Star Wars phenomenon has finally come full circle with the recor+d-breaking Revenge of the Sith, and Spielberg too has returned to Science Fiction with War of the Worlds.

Spielberg has made quite a habit of pushing his visual boundaries further and further, from the simple but effective horror of Duel and Jaws, through the family-friendly aliens of E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to the films that reinvented the blockbuster for the nineties: Jurassic Park and its lesser (but far more lucrative) sequel The Lost World and beyond. Jurassic Park was notable for its seamless integration of computer generated models with live footage – and even more so for the quality of those models. Spielberg’s dinosaurs were the most realistic and advanced computer generated images (CGI) of their day, but although the technology has improved without measure in the decade since the T-Rex first ran amok, very few films have come close to even matching the thrills of the first Jurassic Park experience.

Among those that can claim to do so are the Star Wars prequels – three films made a long time after, and with technology far, far away from the original (and superior) trilogy. For all their faults, especially the infamously clunky dialogue and rather bland acting (don’t forget that Lucas directed these instalments himself), the first three Star Wars episodes are marvellous showcases for the CGI technology that Lucas’ own Industrial Light and Magic has (largely by itself) developed, technology that Lucas has allowed to be used and honed on countless other films until finally he deemed the time right to complete his space saga.

The original Star Wars films made good use of computerised special effects, but in true Doctor Who style Lucas and co. were not afraid to use potatoes as asteroids or old trainers to double for spaceships. The flip side of this Imperial Credit is Revenge of the Sith, which with more than 2,000 different special effects shots – which is equivalent to about one effect every four and a half seconds – is one of the most tinkered-with movies in cinematic history.

Shot largely against a blue screen and featuring many completely digital characters (although, refreshingly, annoying Rastafarian fish-man Jar Jar Binks hardly features this time around), Sith contains around four times the amount of CGI that Steven Spielberg, never one to hold back on visual trickery, has used in War of the Worlds.

All well and good, but the problem with this is that the vast amounts of computing power have not actually helped to make the new films any better than the original trilogy – or even as good. While Sith opens with what is possibly the saga’s greatest space battle, the computer generated Yoda has never been as convincing as Frank Oz’s puppet; the digital inhabitants of the prequels have never seemed as real as the human(oid) scum of the original Star Wars galaxy.

Despite massive budgets and equally huge technological advances, contemporary efforts are, often as not, just not as satisfying as those from the early days of the blockbuster phenomenon – look at the rubber shark in Jaws, a film that is still terrifying regardless of the very basic effects used to make the movie, as opposed to the “special” editions of the original Star Wars films, released on DVD in a new George Lucas-approved format, and sadly far less entertaining than the original originals.

This is not to say that CGI is all bad, as films like Independence Day, Pitch Black, and more recently I, Robot and Hellboy have often proved. With a healthy mix of action and humour these films have proved popular and successful at the box office, thanks also to engaging performances which the effects have enhanced but not swamped. Having said that, David Twohy’s Pitch Black sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, was a great example of exactly how special effects can render a potentially huge movie almost unwatchable – although somewhat amazingly even this film was eclipsed by Catwoman as the action stinker of last year.

Suffering from similar problems as the Star Wars prequels, the innovative and entertaining Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was filmed without a single physical set; every location was painstakingly digitally rendered, with the superb cast acting entirely against a blue screen. Nonetheless, the otherwise pitch-perfect homage to the TV serials of yesteryear fell somewhat flat, as did Robert Zemeckis’ expensive flop The Polar Express, which featured a digitally rendered Tom Hanks in another completely digital world.

Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City collaboration with its creator Frank Miller deserves special mention here, as it may well be the film to buck this trend of limited success. Shot almost entirely on blue screen and using many diverse and detailed digital sets, the film is being heralded as a completely new type of film-making - probably not strictly true, although effects are nothing short of stunning. Rodriguez has long been a champion of digital film, his Spy Kids trilogy amongst others shot using similar technology and making much use of computer generated imagery.

Digital characters are often what prove to be the hardest of all CGI to create and hence are often what most puts an audience off. Not all digital characters are doomed to render a film a failure, though. As irritating as he is, Jar Jar Binks was not wholly (or even mainly) responsible for the Phantom Menace travesty, and look at the Lord of the Rings films’ huge amounts of CGI, none of which is more impressive than Andy Serkis as the creature Gollum. Created with similar technology to the same year’s less successful Hulk, Gollum was (and still is) the benchmark for all computer generated acting.

Peter Jackson is even now filming his take on King Kong, again capturing Andy Serkis’ actions to digitally create the giant ape. But as successful as the film will no doubt be, will audiences take to the CG gorilla as their grandparents once did to the jerky, unconvincing, but still endearing 1933 original?

This summer’s other potential blockbuster is another prequel featuring a tortured young soul coming to terms with parental loss and a desire to put the world to rights – another young man who has so many issues he swings around in a black body suit and mask. But Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s back-to-basics take on the DC Comics superhero, looks like a very different prospect to the digi-fest of Star Wars: Nolan claims that his film holds the record for fewest CG shots for a comic book film of its size.

Harking back to the gloriously dark days of the Tim Burton films, Batman Begins looks set to erase the embarrassing memory of camp that was Batman and Robin, and in doing so revitalise what was once Warner’s biggest franchise: proof positive (if it were needed) that great things can be accomplished without resorting to expensive computer graphics, as indeed they once always were.

Whereas twenty years ago special effects were used primarily to develop a story, the danger nowadays is often that computers can swamp a movie. Once again this is proved by the Star Wars prequels, in which many sets, spaceships and costumes were designed long before the scripts were even begun.

“Evil is everywhere”, claims the introduction to Revenge of the Sith. You’re quite right, George, and its name is CGI.