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Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness

Not just practical effects just like. Basic set design lol

How… How do they think sci-fi was done before CGI?

Really badly? Do you remember sci-fi before CGI? It was shit. And don’t say Star Wars because they went back and fixed that with CGI later.

*big sigh* *puts head in hands* heathens who’ve never watched pre-MCU sci-fi movies OR the unedited Star Wars movies, my beloathed

So first of all, most people agree that the majority of the “CGI fixes” in the Star Wars original trilogy (excluding minor visual/sound effects like lightsaber colors and blaster sounds) are unececssary, extremely conspicuous, and/or bad. This is not news to literally anyone older than about 20 who has consumed Star Wars content on any level. There are quite literally two very famous ‘despecialized’ fan projects explicitly dedicated to un-doing all of the shitty “fixed” CGI effects while simultaneously restoring the OT in HD.

And yes, I do, in fact, remember sci-fi special effects before CGI was the foundational cornerstone of moviemaking. It was not, in fact, shit:

Also, ironically I can show you by….*gasp* using fucking Star Wars, of all things. Welcome to the Tatooine pod race set of The Phantom Menace, which was not, as popularly believed, CGI’d but was instead a fully-built miniature set:

Yes, they built the entire set as a minature, built life-sized pod racers for the actors, then spliced the two together using digital effects. Yes, they did such a fantastic job that people think the entire set and scene sequence was basically completely CGI’d to this day. You’re fucking welcome for undervaluing the time, effort, and talents of set designers by implying that set design and practical effects inherently mean things will look like shit.

CGI also ages really poorly. What you think looks incredibly realistic now is going to look terrible in a few years. Just look at the original vs remastered Star Trek. They “restored” Star Trek around 2006 and replaced a lot of the practical effects with CGI, and maybe it looked ok in 2006, but it looks so bad and fake now.

You can see a video comparison for one episode here: https://youtu.be/ruPVTPCavdM

In the 60s they built a whole model of the Enterprise, complete with blinking lights and beautifully sculpted/painted details. It looks stunning! Then they replaced it with that horribly smooth and fake looking cgi ship.

Just look at this beauty

You can see the model at the Air and Space Museum in DC

Unfortunately the remastered version is the only version available to stream, but you can still find DVDs with the original effect.

made in 1968 and still stunning 2001 A Space Odyssey

Originally posted by maekar76

Originally posted by bongjoonsho

Originally posted by scoop16

the designers worked with engineers at NASA to make realistic futuristic special effects using models and matte paintings no computer effects at all! - and incidentally inspired David Bowie to write Space Oddity, later performed in space by astronaut Chris Hadfield

Originally posted by laughing-on-the-internet

Originally posted by samuelljackson

Originally posted by vahkarianmoved

Originally posted by junkfoodcinemas

The CGI of the original Jurassic Park may not be aging well (though arguably still better than some), but the practical effects will always look stunning. 

I want to talk fantasy.

Originally posted by cinema-phantom

This shot was achieved with splicing and green screen.

Originally posted by time-means-nothing-for-me

This wild-looking shot (and similar manipulations) was famously achieved by having a professional juggler in a duplicate of Bowie’s jacket and gloves sitting behind him, basically with Bowie in his lap, doing the handwork while Bowie kept his arms behind the juggler. You may have seen a game based on this on Whose Line Is It Anyway.

Originally posted by inafarawaykingdomrol

This? Wires! Splicing! THE CGI TO DO THIS DIDN’T EXIST YET! (The juggler is hidden under the cape. If there’s a scene where he’s wearing a cape, that’s actually probably why.)

Originally posted by thebowieologist

And this? This heartstopping shot?

This does appear to be from the version with CGI—

—CGI THAT WAS USED TO ERASE THE SHADOW FROM THE PRACTICAL EFFECT.

The shot itself hasn’t changed. The lift itself was done with wires and Bowie was given some propulsion with an air cannon so he could make that turn at speed. A minor amount of CGI was used in the 30th anniversary to “touch up” the work done in 1986, and one of the things they did was to remove a shadow on the wall from one of the wires.

How about this?

Originally posted by 60s-heartshaped-chevrolet

You don’t know it, but you’re looking at a practical effect. In real life, the Ruby Slippers are almost orange. That luxe, rich ruby color showed up on the film as black when the shoes were the correct color, so the costumers adjusted the actual costume to give the color they wanted.

Originally posted by witchinghour

A MODEL OF A HOUSE SHOT INSIDE A NYLON STOCKING ATTACHED TO A FAN.

Originally posted by ernestsewell

MAN IN A COSTUME.

HORSES DUSTED WITH COLORED GELATIN.

Originally posted by dailyflicks

And this? This is where it would’ve been useful to have CGI. Margaret Hamilton got really badly burned on the steam doing one of her entrance/exits, and ended up in the hospital. THIS is what you use CGI for.

You come into my house and insult practical effects?

I’ll just finish off by reminding you THIS IS ONE, TOO.

Originally posted by cinemotionpicture

That last one, iirc, was there was a double in a sepia-toned costume, and the interior door and wall there was painted brown, so when it was lit and shot it all appeared to still be in the sepia tone of the Kansas scenes, and part of why Dorothy stepped back out of the frame was so the double and Judy Garland (in the proper blue-and-white costume) could swap.

You are correct. The double’s name, by the way, was Bobbi Koshay.

#this is also a purely personal opinion but aged practical effects are charming #in a way that aged cgi is not (via @glorious-spoon)

There are also a lot of backgrounds that are matte paintings!

Lord of The Rings used some incredible miniature sets too.

The real reason CGI has taken over is not because it creates better effects (although it is very useful!) but because it’s cheaper. The practical effects artists have union protections. CGI artists don’t.

CGI (at this point) works well to do things like smooth out practical effects (erase wires, etc).

And when you want a bit of uncanny valley effect, to make actors look like animated characters without hours in the makeup chair.

Use CGI to remove safety gear from the shot, so the stunt people are safer.

And unionize CGI artists so they have safer working conditions & are properly compensated.

I think what genuinely frustrates me about posts like this is that they illustrate a trend in media criticism on the Internet that I like to call, “It Is Not Possible to Celebrate This Thing Without Shitting on All the Other Things”. Like, look–of course practical effects that are done with great attention to detail and a lot of money thrown at them are going to look believable! It’s great to talk about those artists and their works and how amazing they are! But you can do that without saying, “At least it’s better than this shitty shit that was shat out by some shitty CGI artist.”

Because you know what? CGI is a tool in your toolkit as a visual effects artist just like any other. When it came time to depict the Hulk in ‘The Avengers’, they didn’t choose CGI over practical because of the budget or the unions or any of those considerations (and for those of you who are already getting angry, I will get back to the unions thing later). They chose CGI because the Hulk does not have the proportions of a normal human being, so a costume and/or make-up would not have accurately depicted his barrel chest and broad shoulders, and animatronics are limited in their range of motion which would have made it impossible to do the wide-angle long takes of the action scenes they were required to do. And stop-motion, while I love it as an art form, always looks like stop-motion and it reminds the viewer of the artificiality of what they’re seeing.

(This is why the stop-motion Thing was cut from ‘The Thing’. Speaking of amazing practical effects.)

CGI has advantages. It depicts fluidity of motion very well, it allows for wider and longer shots than animatronics, and for some difficult builds that animatronics simply can’t capture–you know why we got so many tentacle monsters and giant snakes in the 1990s? It’s because a genuinely prehensile animatronic is virtually impossible, and while you can fake it with clever camerawork (reverse-shooting the animatronic tentacle pulling away and then cutting to a scene of the character already wrapped up in a prosthetic) it still limits you in the kind of shots you can produce. The reason audiences went nuts for CGI wasn’t because we were all some kind of rubes and suckers who’d never seen pixels before, it was because CGI allowed the directors to shoot their movies in entirely new and different and exciting ways.

But even that doesn’t get to the heart of it. Saying, “Hey, CGI is useful for doing some things that simply don’t work with practical effects!” is nice and all, but the more important point is, “You don’t need to crap all over CGI just to let people know how amazing practical effects are.” You can say, “Hey, look at this great effects work over here! Look at the fun miniatures and suitmation in the Godzilla movies! Look at the hours of hard work Ray Harryhausen put in for ‘Jason and the Argonauts’! Look at the trippy weirdness of ‘Society’!” And you can do it all without saying, “Everything that isn’t this is shit.”

Because I got news for you: Tastes change. We’re always nostalgic for the things we saw thirty years ago, and we’re coming up on a wave of 90s kids who are going to love ‘Anaconda’ the same way 80s kids loved ‘Clash of the Titans’, and all those obvious CGI artifacts are going to become part of the movie’s charm the same way you can see the fingerprints on the original Kong’s fur. Your aesthetic judgments are not objective, they are colored by the memories of who you were when you watched all your favorite movies, and you do not need to insult the work of others to lift up the things you like.

(And this doesn’t just go for effects work. I can’t count the number of times I see someone expressing their affection for a film that got mixed reviews with, “At least it’s not a piece of shit like [insert movie they didn’t like] here.” You don’t need to insult other movies to enjoy the one you’re watching.)

Likewise, if you want to advocate for better treatment of workers (see, I told you I was getting back to the unions) you can do it without muddling your message by turning it into a commentary on the aesthetic differences between your favorite movies and the newest Marvel release. You can just say, “Damn, CGI VFX houses should be given more time and money,” without turning that into, “CGI VFX houses should be shut down and that money given back to practical effects artists who would do it better.”

(Especially because there’s an element of hypocrisy to those statements anyway–a lot of the movies people laud as examples of what’s truly possible with practical effects, like ‘The Thing’, were notorious for hiring independent contractors and literally working them until they collapsed. Rob Bottin wound up calling in Stan Winston to work on the Dog-Thing because he’d put himself into the hospital with pneumonia trying to meet the film’s punishing schedule, and I could give you a half-dozen more examples of practical effects injuring or killing people off the top of my head.)

We’re talking about art. Tastes change, styles go in and out of fashion, and a lot more of this commentary is actually about the style of the work in question and not its technical capabilities. I’m not saying everyone has to like everything, but it’s possible to dislike something without disrespecting it… and more importantly, without disrespecting the people who made it.

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