Friday, September 19, 2008

More on Hollywood

You know, I'm just not impressed with special effects anymore. Squeezing in a few more bits of texture mapping or upping the polygon count has hit something of a plateau of diminishing returns when it comes to CGI. They've also blow stuff up in just about every way imaginable in Earth-like conditions.

I still have an attraction for eye candy, but not in the way the explosion factories think: I like good cinematography. You don't need as much money for that. Of course, one thing that reinforced my liking for that sort of thing was Death Note. You can make writing in a notebook awesome with the right angles and movement.

Of course, all of this takes a back seat to good writing, good acting, and so on. That should go without saying.

9 comments:

MWchase said...

The right angles, movement, and glowy lines. This is why people liked the idea of tron lines on a spork.

It should pop up messages.

"Docked with bio-armature. Entering loading mode. Please wait. Mode switch. Entering stick mode. Beginning descent. Food attached. Ready to deploy. Food deployed. Entering stick mode."

Or maybe I'm just weird.

MWchase said...

But yeah... the closer commonly available CGI gets to simulating actual actors, the closer we get to a generation of directors in the tradition of latter-day George Lucas.

That idea makes me feel as if cold is ripping into my bones.

King of Ferrets said...

Also from Death Note: The kinda infamous eating potato chips scene!

King of Ferrets said...

Question: Is Death Note out in English now, or are other people watching things subtitled in English with the original Japanese voices?

Bronze Dog said...

You'll find out about it when you find out about Robot Chicken. ;)

Anonymous said...

I never liked Robot Chicken. It's like Family Guy only with nothing but the random side jokes, which would be fine except that as near as I could tell from what I watched, EVERY side joke is the same "frat boy version of pop culture icon talks with dumb bimbo version of pop culture icon".

Death Note is awesome, but the "take a potato chip, AND EAT IT" line really should not have been there.

I wouldn't mind CGI completely replacing actors. I play video games all the time, and I can safely say it'll work out just fine.

Arthas killing his daddy is still one of my favorite scenes ever. Arthas, for those not in the know, is basically the story of the fall of Darth Vader if it was actually done right.

King of Ferrets said...

So, given that I don't remember Light ever saying "take a potato chip, AND EAT IT", I'm assuming it is, in fact, in English now.

Also, yes, Arthas is fucking AWESOME. He's pretty badass in the new expansion to WoW too.
*SPOILER WARNING*

*SPOILER WARNING*

*SPOILER WARNING*

I'm in the beta. Arthas sends you and all your friends and the old Scarlet Commander Moigraine (who is a DK btw, if you never did Naxx) out to kill Light's Hope Chapel as cannonfodder to lure out Tirion Fordring so that Arthas can kill him. Anyway, after Arthas tells everyone they were cannonfodder (even though you own the enemy horribly) Moigraine gives Tirion Fordring the Corrupted Ashbringer, which somehow becomes uncorrupted. Arthas gets pwnd and runs away, then Tirion starts up the Knights of the Silver Hand again and the Knights of the Ebon Blade, aka the DKs, ally with the Knights of the Silver Hand. And so, you stop working for the Lich King (Who is ridiculously huge. Seriously. He's bigger than a fucking Tauren.)
Oh, and while you're working for Arthas, not only do you burn a town to the ground, torture enemy Scarlet Crusaders, kill your former best friend who hasn't been turned into a Scourge, annihilate an enemy army with their own cannon, and steal a horse, slaughter it, and raise it as your own undead mount, you also get a fucking undead dragon to ride and rain death from the sky from for one quest! =D

Anonymous said...

I have no idea who most of those people are, or what an Ashbringer is.

I have the strategy games.

It seems to me like Arthas went from being a kickarse "manipulate things in the background" fellow to stereotypical evil though. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

King of Ferrets said...

You kinda need to understand the Ashbringer and the lore surrounding it to understand that sequence, so I guess that makes sense, since Ashbringer didn't exist prior to WoW. Look up Ashbringer lore.

I don't see how you get the manipulative bastard impression of Arthas, he was kinda a front lines general and such. It's been a while since I played WC3 though. Anyway, Arthas isn't really Arthas anymore anyway; he's a combination of Ner'Zhul and Arthas. Though I guess Ner'zhul was a manipulative bastard.