The snow monsters look like crap!

[Mr. Adventure]

Having said that, not sure why this scene was the one chosen for the Lost clip. What were they trying to accomplish? Attract monster movie fans? The scene hardly shows off the best of what the film has to offer (or presumably has to offer).

Pretty much all they've shown have been the "summer movie" kind of moments (assuming this movie has others) so it doesn't seem too out of place. Maybe they figured since Kirk was in some sort of isolated alien environment it would be somewhat Lost-ish. And maybe they don't want to give away too much stuff we haven't seen and this is an extension of what has been shown already. Maybe?? Just kind of speculating here...

 

[HortaVorta]

I thought they looked OK. My only complaint would be the color. While it may be an "underground" creature. The color is not conducive to a surprise attack predator. I would think that they would have evolved into a color pattern that would help them blend in. Bright red is not a sneaky color in an all white world. But then maybe they do things differently on other worlds. Being as big as it was might negate any need for special coloring. But still. Bright red?

Presupposing, of course, that any fauna on this planet can see color the way we do, or at all.

Or maybe the big one is in estrus or something.

 

[TGTheodore]

Having said that, not sure why this scene was the one chosen for the Lost clip. What were they trying to accomplish? Attract monster movie fans? The scene hardly shows off the best of what the film has to offer (or presumably has to offer).

Let's just say that the sequence leads directly to a monumental moment in the movie ...

--Ted

 

[Nardpuncher]

Talking GGI...am I alone in thinking the Hulk from the 2003 film looked much better than the one last year?

 

[dru]

The first monster looks cartoony. The red thing looked fine. The problem is the camera work with Pine where it looks like they had him "running" on a treadmill for a bit. Further the guy doesn't convey concern worth a damn. Looks like Abrams can't direct either.

There's a sensation that there's not any real danger, like there's an invisible partition between the "monster" and actor. It's pathetic and disappointing.

Talking GGI...am I alone in thinking the Hulk from the 2003 film looked much better than the one last year?

You can't be serious. Neither looked convincing but the dayglo Hulk of Ang Lee's film was beyond horrendous.

 

[Chess Piece Face]

The problem is the camera work with Pine where it looks like they had him "running" on a treadmill for a bit. Further the guy doesn't convey concern worth a damn. Looks like Abrams can't direct either.

There's a sensation that there's not any real danger, like there's an invisible partition between the "monster" and actor. It's pathetic and disappointing.

This. Exactly is the problem. It looks like an actor going "oh no!" as he looks over his shoulder and runs on a treadmill. That thing should've caught his right away. That is the fakeness.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

So a puppet monster instead of a CG monster would have caught him right away and ended the movie after 45 minutes (estimate, I haven't seen the movie)?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

All you need to do is use those budgets effectively, hire good miniature builders and puppet designers and pros like Michael Westmore or any number of talented creature creators and stop disappointing us.

The bottom line is: CGI is just a tool, a visual narrative device. What they do with CGI, they could do with animatronics instead, or with costumes, or drawings, or they could do it on stage with a red spotlight and shadow puppets. It doesn't really matter. In the scene we're talking about, computer graphics are used to tell us "Kirk is being chased by monsters". You could do the same with camera angles and sound effects. Whatever the technique used, movies are, literally, make-believe.

In my opinion, if your suspension of disbelief is shattered by everything that doesn't look 100% real, you're probably not in the right frame of mind to enjoy cinema for what it is.

 

[Grup]

I thought they looked OK. My only complaint would be the color. While it may be an "underground" creature. The color is not conducive to a surprise attack predator. I would think that they would have evolved into a color pattern that would help them blend in. Bright red is not a sneaky color in an all white world. But then maybe they do things differently on other worlds. Being as big as it was might negate any need for special coloring. But still. Bright red?

Presupposing, of course, that any fauna on this planet can see color the way we do, or at all.

Or maybe the big one is in estrus or something.

And this is why we (myself included) are referred to as geeks.

 

[M'Sharak]

In my opinion, if your suspension of disbelief is shattered by everything that doesn't look 100% real, you're probably not in the right frame of mind to enjoy cinema for what it is.

This.

This is true, no matter whether one is talking about using physical models or miniatures or computer models or shadow play or complete blackout with only audio in telling a story.

The thing which is most important in allowing willing suspension of disbelief is not anything the filmmaker does; the most important thing is allowing your own imagination to fill in what's implied by the images and action (or the absence thereof) on the screen. A good storyteller will give you everything you need to do that, and a very good one will give you just enough and nothing more. The whole idea of going to a movie or to the theater is to be entertained, and if you take your own imagination out of the equation, most things are going to look a lot flatter and less real.

 

[OneBuckFilms]

Actually, I thought both monsters worked well.

 

[TGTheodore]

Actually, I thought both monsters worked well.

Me, too. The second one scared the sh*t out of me for a few moments. Impossible to judge them by the clip.

1. No sense of continuity of the entire scene.

2. The CGI or final composites frequently aren't completely done for advanced press clips.

--Ted

 

[Dr. M'benga]

I thought they looked fine. My only problem was the "being chased by a monster until it gets eaten by a bigger monster which then starts doing the chasing" a la Phantom Menace.

 

[TGTheodore]

I thought they looked fine. My only problem was the "being chased by a monster until it gets eaten by a bigger monster which then starts doing the chasing" a la Phantom Menace.

Which, I suspect, was exactly what it was supposed to be. A little cinematic wink.

--Ted

 

[JonnyBoy]

And if the creatures were done with any other technique other than CGI, such as Go-motion or puppetry, people would be saying things like "Jesus, couldn't they afford a computer on this movie?", or, "I can't believe that's the best they could do.", or the oldy-but-goody, "Did they spend the rest of the budget on the weed they were smoking when they built their foam snow-lobster?"

I think the snow-lobster looks awesome. And of course there's no sense of danger. We all know Jim Kirk won't die on Delta Vega. And there's only so much you can do to introduce tension into a scene that has no surprise ending.

 

[HortaVorta]

I thought they looked OK. My only complaint would be the color. While it may be an "underground" creature. The color is not conducive to a surprise attack predator. I would think that they would have evolved into a color pattern that would help them blend in. Bright red is not a sneaky color in an all white world. But then maybe they do things differently on other worlds. Being as big as it was might negate any need for special coloring. But still. Bright red?

Presupposing, of course, that any fauna on this planet can see color the way we do, or at all.

Or maybe the big one is in estrus or something.

And this is why we (myself included) are referred to as geeks.

Hah.

I shall refrain from pointing out the apparent discrepancy in throwing away a larger protein source for pursuing a smaller by suggesting it is territorial/nesting behavior rather than feeding behavior.

 

[HortaVorta]

In my opinion, if your suspension of disbelief is shattered by everything that doesn't look 100% real, you're probably not in the right frame of mind to enjoy cinema for what it is.

This.

This is true, no matter whether one is talking about using physical models or miniatures or computer models or shadow play or complete blackout with only audio in telling a story.

The thing which is most important in allowing willing suspension of disbelief is not anything the filmmaker does; the most important thing is allowing your own imagination to fill in what's implied by the images and action (or the absence thereof) on the screen. A good storyteller will give you everything you need to do that, and a very good one will give you just enough and nothing more. The whole idea of going to a movie or to the theater is to be entertained, and if you take your own imagination out of the equation, most things are going to look a lot flatter and less real.

Well said.

 

[CaptainHawk1]

In my opinion, if your suspension of disbelief is shattered by everything that doesn't look 100% real, you're probably not in the right frame of mind to enjoy cinema for what it is.

This.

This is true, no matter whether one is talking about using physical models or miniatures or computer models or shadow play or complete blackout with only audio in telling a story.

The thing which is most important in allowing willing suspension of disbelief is not anything the filmmaker does; the most important thing is allowing your own imagination to fill in what's implied by the images and action (or the absence thereof) on the screen. A good storyteller will give you everything you need to do that, and a very good one will give you just enough and nothing more. The whole idea of going to a movie or to the theater is to be entertained, and if you take your own imagination out of the equation, most things are going to look a lot flatter and less real.

Well said.

I disagree. I'll reiterate my answer that I gave first and foremost in that I think the snow monster looks very good, but it needs to be said that this argument doesn't hold any water.

If suspension of disbelief combined with good storytelling were enough to carry a film then why not just do all of the effects with construction paper? Sorry, if I want to suspend disbelief that much, I'll watch a play.

Films are supposed to be visually stunning and realistic... that's the point. As Lucas says (but has failed to live up to), you want the effects to be so good that the audience doesn't realize that they are effects.

I don't think most audiences are sitting there and looking for imperfections in effects, but the fact is that they don't need to because they are so blatant. This isn't 1975 where people don't have a problem with the rubber shark. Audiences are a lot more sophisticated and quite frankly should be able to expect a lot more for their $9.50 than the combination of real life and cartoons. It's not a matter of not looking 100% real, it's matter of not looking 10% real.

Again, this is no reflection on the snow monster or any of the effects in this movie because they actually look fantastic but there are plenty of movies made in the last 15 years that are just embarrassing and frankly, insulting.

 

[chi]

snow monsters look pretty cool to me, i have no complaints.

 

[Flake]

Trekmovie.com have a higher quality clip on their site, the monsters look much better there. They will look even better in HD, better still in a cinema and ULTIMATE AWESOMENESS at IMAX!