For the last few years, the hands-down winner for the most overused and abused tool in movies has got to be CGI effects. One only had to watch this year's Van Helsing or the last Charlie's Angels movie to realize just how pointless these effects can be in the wrong hands.
Not that I think CGI is inherently bad… without it we wouldn't have great films like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or the (perhaps less great, but equally anticipated) Star Wars prequels and countless other really good movies. It's just that, far too often, as with most new toys, they've taken over the movie as if a few minutes of good CGI can replace story, character or any idea of storytelling. (Yeah, I know, it's Hollywood, how can I be surprised. And yes, I'm aware that the Star Wars films can get slapped around for wooden characters and clunky screenplays as well. Bear with me… there's good storytelling behind all that clunky dialogue.)
But, though I mention Van Helsing, it's perhaps the only real example of overabused CGI in this summer's crop of movies. The Day After Tomorrow had its fill of CGI, sure, but its problems had more to do with a bad story than an overdependence on CGI. Same could be said for The Chronicles of Riddick, which suffered more from clunky execution than heavy-handed CGI. (In fact, at times, it's a beautiful film to look at with some spectacular looking digital set pieces.)
No, the culprit this year is the damn "cinema verité" notion of the hand-held camera. The worst culprit here, of course, was The Bourne Supremacy. I liked this movie, but I found the camera work annoying at best and utterly pointless at worst. One of the things that was so cool about the original was the way you'd see Bourne go into action, deal with his situation and then move on. There were some extended fight scenes, sure, but there was a "cleanliness" to the scenes… a lack of visual clutter that made them fun to watch.
Not so with the new Bourne. This is handheld, taken to the extreme. There were entire scenes where I just wanted to let my eyes unfocus so I wouldn't try to resolve what was going on, since I knew all I'd do was make myself sick (the director was quoted in Entertainment Weekly as responding "excellent!" when told that someone had stumbled from the theatre to vomit at the premiere. That's just self-indulgent BS on the director's part, as far as I'm concerned.) I will have to admit that there were moments during the final car chase where this camera style worked, but they were only moments, and the entire climax of the chase was one jittery, jump-cut blur of unidentifiable images that did absolutely nothing for me. (And don't even get me started on the earlier fight scene with the last of Bourne's counterparts.)
Here's the deal… people go to the movies to SEE THE MOVIE, not to ride some visual rollercoaster that's going to send them running to the bathroom to vomit. I saw the Bourne Identity twice in the theatre and bought the DVD the minute it came out (and then the new "extended" version they released this year). I saw Supremacy once and, while I'll probably end up buying the DVD, it's not high on my list of faves, which is really disappointing.
Last week, I finally dragged myself to see The Forgotten. Not a terrible movie, but eminently forgettable (pun intended) with one of the least compelling endings in recent memory. And, sure enough, repeated scenes of handheld, jittery camera work. I can't even see the point in it here (at least in Bourne I could understand it occasionally). But here, it seemed like they just decided to do it because they could or maybe because they thought it's cool.
What's amusing to me here is that, as I've heard it explained, the directors that do this are looking for a more "realistic" look to their movies. But it's a realism based on a type of moviemaking (documentary or news footage, generally), so it's reality, filtered through the unreality of the camera… so it's really not real at all. And it's certainly, at this point, overused and abused.
Not that I think CGI is inherently bad… without it we wouldn't have great films like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or the (perhaps less great, but equally anticipated) Star Wars prequels and countless other really good movies. It's just that, far too often, as with most new toys, they've taken over the movie as if a few minutes of good CGI can replace story, character or any idea of storytelling. (Yeah, I know, it's Hollywood, how can I be surprised. And yes, I'm aware that the Star Wars films can get slapped around for wooden characters and clunky screenplays as well. Bear with me… there's good storytelling behind all that clunky dialogue.)
But, though I mention Van Helsing, it's perhaps the only real example of overabused CGI in this summer's crop of movies. The Day After Tomorrow had its fill of CGI, sure, but its problems had more to do with a bad story than an overdependence on CGI. Same could be said for The Chronicles of Riddick, which suffered more from clunky execution than heavy-handed CGI. (In fact, at times, it's a beautiful film to look at with some spectacular looking digital set pieces.)
No, the culprit this year is the damn "cinema verité" notion of the hand-held camera. The worst culprit here, of course, was The Bourne Supremacy. I liked this movie, but I found the camera work annoying at best and utterly pointless at worst. One of the things that was so cool about the original was the way you'd see Bourne go into action, deal with his situation and then move on. There were some extended fight scenes, sure, but there was a "cleanliness" to the scenes… a lack of visual clutter that made them fun to watch.
Not so with the new Bourne. This is handheld, taken to the extreme. There were entire scenes where I just wanted to let my eyes unfocus so I wouldn't try to resolve what was going on, since I knew all I'd do was make myself sick (the director was quoted in Entertainment Weekly as responding "excellent!" when told that someone had stumbled from the theatre to vomit at the premiere. That's just self-indulgent BS on the director's part, as far as I'm concerned.) I will have to admit that there were moments during the final car chase where this camera style worked, but they were only moments, and the entire climax of the chase was one jittery, jump-cut blur of unidentifiable images that did absolutely nothing for me. (And don't even get me started on the earlier fight scene with the last of Bourne's counterparts.)
Here's the deal… people go to the movies to SEE THE MOVIE, not to ride some visual rollercoaster that's going to send them running to the bathroom to vomit. I saw the Bourne Identity twice in the theatre and bought the DVD the minute it came out (and then the new "extended" version they released this year). I saw Supremacy once and, while I'll probably end up buying the DVD, it's not high on my list of faves, which is really disappointing.
Last week, I finally dragged myself to see The Forgotten. Not a terrible movie, but eminently forgettable (pun intended) with one of the least compelling endings in recent memory. And, sure enough, repeated scenes of handheld, jittery camera work. I can't even see the point in it here (at least in Bourne I could understand it occasionally). But here, it seemed like they just decided to do it because they could or maybe because they thought it's cool.
What's amusing to me here is that, as I've heard it explained, the directors that do this are looking for a more "realistic" look to their movies. But it's a realism based on a type of moviemaking (documentary or news footage, generally), so it's reality, filtered through the unreality of the camera… so it's really not real at all. And it's certainly, at this point, overused and abused.
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