CGI versus live action/in camera effects.
Following the discussion in the seminar on the Superman '78 Donner film's practical effects versus Superman Returns' CGI craft it made me think of this, is CGI better outright than practical special effects?
Does all the cgi add something extra to the film? Can it go to far?
As a kid a wholely believed a man could fly based on effects that now seem antiquated. Yes superman Returns effects look much better, smoother and more accurate based on the reality we live in. BUT this is a comic movie....we're already taking the leap into believing in a world where a super human man exists who stands for truth justice and the american way. Whos morals are absolute and will protect the world no matter what. An incorruptable man in a corrupt world. So does it really matter if when he catches a helicopter with his bare hands, mid flight, if he's holding onto the chopper it the right place so it won't simply disassemble under the stress of his grip. I'm mean let's face if we're going to go into the physics and reality of supermans abilities as considered in Superman Returns, why limit it to the reaction of the plane catch. What about catching lois as she falls. So let's accept he can fly. As the great Sheldon Cooper points out, "Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32 feet per second per second... Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel... Miss Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles an hour, hits them and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces. " Where's the reality in that? Or flying around the world at heights that of airliners, where the air is very thin and the combination of high winds and the speed at which they're travelling would make it, I imagine almost impossible to talk let alone be heard. And yet that happens in both the Donner's and Singer's films.
I love the original. I never questioned whether or not something was real or rigged. Even then I knew a man can't fly but that didn't stop me believing that he could. As much as CGI and special effects help to create this mass dillusion of the overcoming of newtonian physics, what really makes me believe a man can fly was and is Christopher Reeve. And I think to some extent Brandon Routh did the same thing for me in Superman Returns. It's both of these actor's performances that really sell the whole thing. Yes I can always tell in Returns when it's not an actual person flying around as Supes but a cgi rendering of Brandon Routh in the Red, yellow and blue. And in the original films I know when Reeve is simply being hoisted into the via wires or merely lying on a gimble with a projection of the world behind him. But I believe because they believe.
I think if you don't have this kind of performance from an actor no matter how you try to make a man fly, from using wires rigs practically on set to recreating him virtually, it will never feel real. And after all that is the aim.
As an audience you take a leap of faith, but if all the cogs in the machine don't mesh perfectly, cgi, live action, actor etc. etc. you're belief will drop faster than Lois Lane from a helicopter.
