Interesting NY Times article on this years glut of CGI movies
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/bu...=1&oref=slogin

I'm wondering what you guys (and gals) all thought about the number of CGI movies that have been coming out lately. Do you like it, or do you think that Hollywood is doing too much "Monkey see, Monkey do?" mentality?

I think a little 13 year old girl sums it up best as written in the article:

I for one would love to support these movies, seeing as how I'm working on a screenplay I'm hoping will be a CGI movie (although it's fantasy/sci-fi based), but the "failure" of all these movies is certainly making my chances look a lot slimmer.

I think the problem is that they all feel too similar to each other. Talking animals do various things where the results are often comedic in nature (aka a "kid-oriented comedy"), and it seems Hollywood is too scared to invest in any animated movies that isn't comedy (particularly after the failures of other movies such as Treasure Planet, Titan A.E., and Sinbad, which don't follow the "comedy" theme exactly).

Heck, even Ant Bully, which apparently failed miserably in theaters, seemed too much like Antz and A Bug's Life, only with themes of communism in it lol

I'm all for seeing funny movies, but if that's all that's playing and being released, then after a while I'm going to get kind of bored of them (especially if they're not good).

Or maybe Hollywood really is out of good ideas, and are just rehashing stuff in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, we'll like it and go see it over and over.

So, do you like the amount of CGI movies coming out? Why or why not?

No, most of them are lame. They're basically carbon copies of each other. NEXT PLEASE.

Too many studios are still exploiting CGI for a gimmick purpose. It seems half of them follow Shrek's setting and appearance and the other just random shit for easy money. In fact it seems like Pixar is one of the few (I'm saying few just in case some other studio out there makes good CGI movies) CGI makers that has great plot with graphics. CGI was new enough to attract people just to see the graphics back in 1996, not 2006 when PS3 games are essentially CGI movies with a lower polygon count.

I think many were too quick to abandon cel animation for CGI, just compare any animated Disney movie from 1990-1998 to Chicken Little or The Wild, which movies are better? The one reason we don't see pure CGI anime is because Japanese animators are smart enough not to cash in on flashy polygonal shit no one cares about (outside of the crappy games of course).

I was thinking about how there were to many CGI movies out, it seems every few months there is another ridiculous one coming out. The one with the haunted house that hated kids was alright at best, but I really didn't enjoy it as much as everyone else (forgot the title)

My favorite CGI movie that was made quite recently was Hoodwinked, that movie kicked a crazy amount of ass just because of how random and ridiculous it was. I loved it.

I'm not really a fan of CGI. I mean, I know where it can be beneficial, but I think too many movies rely on it nowadays to try and surpass or advance in the way animated movies are made, etc. There are only few CGI movies that I like and Shrek is one of them. I haven't checked out Hoodwinked, but I might give that one a go. I've been thinking about it.

The studios believe that the target market (12 and under) see traditional (read: drawn) animation as dead and "old". They think these movies will be ignored at the box office because they won't appeal to a new generation. What they don't get, however is that recently released traditionally animated movies (Pooh's Heffalump Movie, Brother Bear, The Jungle Book 2, Atlantis: The Lost Empire) didn't do well at the box office because of how they were done, but simply because they really wern't that good. Similarly, Shrek and Toy Story didn't do so well at the box office because they were done in CG. They did well because they were well written movies with likeable characters and a good cast.

Releasing rapid-fire and sub-par children's movies in an attempt to make a buck is hardly something new, and most definately not something exclusive to CGI movies. It's always been just as bad, except now it's done with a Mac and not a pencil.

No amount of pretty art and animation will mask a poorly done story. None. That is why these fail, not because they are baked by Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks, but because they don't tell stories well. They are also mismarketed and all too similar.

I love animation, both CG and traditional, however I like it all the more when a good storyline is with it. It certainly makes the movie all the more enjoyable. The most recent CG movie that I saw and enjoyed was Monster House.

I want to see more variety in animation which means no talking animals, no singing and maybe even some storylines that don't placate the masses. I yearn for another Iron Giant, one of the last few traditional animated masterpieces out there which was well done.

Wow. Acid has the exact same views as me. I feel that the 2D movies are superior to the CGI drek companies are pumping out nowadays. I also agree with guyinrubbersuit's views about having more variety in animation. Too many movies deal with talking animals who do nothing eventful other than to make wise cracks.

Wallace & Gromit is the best movie I've seen in recent years. The only American CGI movie I've truly liked was Toy Story : /

I think it's selling kids short to say that they reject hand-drawn animation on sight as being archaic - Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are rife with shows that succeed with kids despite being hand-drawn. The problem, I think, is that studios believe that without the technical wow, kids either won't want to see a movie, or more likely, they won't be able to justify ticket cost to their parents. Also, you don't want to make your product too different from what's already worked - an unproven idea is always an undue fiscal risk. So more wisecracking, animals, and wisecracking animals, stat!
Sad to say, but a moratorium on animated features of any stripe, until such time as they can think of better ways than Spice Girls karaoke and butt jokes as a means to flesh out character, would be welcome.

Yeah, there are a LOT of animal CGI movies such as "Open Season", "Ant Bully", "Barnyard", that new one coming out about that mouse. SOOOO many of them. It was good at the beginning, Ice Age, A Bug's Life, Antz, but now its being overused... Hmmmm... They should switch back to drawings. That might start up a new niche market.

Pixar's movies have always been better than rival Dreamworks' for one main reason: Dreamworks chooses quantity over quality. If you look at the history of 3D animated movies, Pixar's upcoming Ratatoille will be their eighth feature film in their entire history. That's not very many. If they were the only studio making them, I doubt people would be tired of them. They take a nice long time to really develop the story and characters for all their films, and each of them has set new standards (and pushed the technological envelope in one area or another) in 3D.

Dreamworks, on the other hand, uses the same tired re-tread sorts of storylines with the same cast of (essentially) stock characters in plots that are only moderately different. The ONLY DreamWorks animated picture I've liked is Shrek. The rest have all been, well, pretty crap.

So, I look forward to Pixar films, but DreamWorks can kiss my ass.

I'm going to talk about CG in otherwise live-action movies.

Maybe I'm just a child of the 90's, but I'll always appreciate good costuming, miniatures, and puppets much more than any CG. It doesn't make the movie any more realistic, and it's painfully obvious that it takes no creativity whatsoever on the director's part to throw it together.

Just go watch something like Labyrinth, and compare it to any recent fantasy movie, and tell me which one took more effort and creative thinking.

You know, of the CGI movies released (or going to be released) this year, the only one I'm interested in is that mouse thing that Aardman's involved with.


Notice that word in caps there: Aardman. Character design by the folks who did Wallace and Grommit? Oh, and the lesser known Rex the Runt? Does this mean that Dreamworks might actually have another good movie on their hands? One that, for once, doesn't rely totally on pop culture references for humor? Yeah, sounds decent to me.

I'll have to disagree with you there. It takes just as much creativity and effort to create CG effects as it does to create puppets, costumes and miniatures. Ok maybe not as much effort for puppets to CG, but it's still a great deal of work.

With CG you get a great advantage of having a wide range of motion for the characters and even creating epic battle sequences. Lord of the Rings would not be possible on the scale it did without CG. There are times when CG seems to be overused, but if you watch a movie and say there's no CG only to find out that there was, then that's the greatest compliment you can give to the production company.

I think you're just more into nostalgia than anything. Of course I personally did not like the Labyrinth one bit.

Leave the boards forever.


;_____;

David Bowie's hair alone makes that one of the best movies ever.

Quoted for truth.