CGI in Modern Movie/Series Storytelling

[DT]

Arrival is one of my favorite Sci-Fi films of recent years, and the visual effects help sell just how foreign the aliens are.

Arrival is a favorite of mine. It's one of those beautiful stories that uses "sci-fi" as a mechanism to explore the human condition/choice/life, and I dare anyone to not get a little emotional when On the Nature of Daylight kicks in at the end

Hahaha, after I read this last night, I tossed it on, so good even the 10th+ time.

In the sci-fi and adventure genres, though, I'd say special effects are required to move the story along. I can't imagine Star Trek:TOS without the transporter sequences or seeing the Enterprise being cocooned by the Tholians. Trouble is, over the years the effects have come to dominate, so people walk away raving about the CGI rather than the plot or acting.

Right, it's very dependent on the subject matter and some genres are [obviously] more reliant on FX/CGI.

Like Harry Potter movies involve magic, flying brooms, mythical creatures, fantastic locations, demonic spirits, shapeshifting castles, they kind of require the use some CGI. There's plenty of character interaction and development, some of the best story beats don't involve CGI, but just the nature of the source material makes CGI a necessity.

You also have to factor in things like safety, feasibility, cost, and being able to, as a director/writer, have a vision that isn't hampered by technical limitations.

 

[Nycturne]

Arrival is a favorite of mine. It's one of those beautiful stories that uses "sci-fi" as a mechanism to explore the human condition/choice/life, and I dare anyone to not get a little emotional when On the Nature of Daylight kicks in at the end

Hahaha, after I read this last night, I tossed it on, so good even the 10th+ time.

I think Arrival is next up on my rewatch list too.

I’d argue a lot of good Sci-Fi is exploring the human condition through experiences that are outside our day-to-day normal. While I personally didn’t connect with Ad Astra, I appreciate the themes it was tackling, and how it did so. The Martian for me was fun and aspirational take on the classic “people vs nature” story. Interstellar tries to make the point that love and family is the one thing that will always cross time and space for us (even if a little clumsily). Star Trek VI has Kirk (somewhat subtly) face his own xenophobia and biases with the death of his son, in the face of a possible peace with the space USSR.

In all these that I listed, there’s all sorts of visual effects (and some interesting set design) that help sell the world for sure. But at the core are stories that we connect with and take with us. At least I would hope, Star Trek VI is also a bit of a political thriller so some folks might ignore or miss the other parts.

Right, it's very dependent on the subject matter and some genres are [obviously] more reliant on FX/CGI.

Like Harry Potter movies involve magic, flying brooms, mythical creatures, fantastic locations, demonic spirits, shapeshifting castles, they kind of require the use some CGI. There's plenty of character interaction and development, some of the best story beats don't involve CGI, but just the nature of the source material makes CGI a necessity.

You also have to factor in things like safety, feasibility, cost, and being able to, as a director/writer, have a vision that isn't hampered by technical limitations.

I don’t think you need to use CGI to sell these things, but rather CGI is the tool for the job these days. Wizard of Oz did fine selling a fantastic setting with nothing but practical effects. You do make a good point about cost (CGI can be cheaper to do in post production depending on what you are attempting to do) and safety. And of course, this type of visual effect has gotten more than good enough to be able to sell things that don’t actually exist to an audience.

In the case of Interstellar at least, the visual effects gave people the first real glimpse of what a wormhole or black hole would actually look like in space. Research papers came out of the work on that one which even helped the work of the Event Horizon Telescope more recently. Neat stuff.