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On The Eve Of IRON MAN's DVD Release, Mr. Beaks Reports Back From Stan Winston Studio!
A few weeks ago, I had the rather mindblowing opportunity to tour Stan Winston Studio out in Van Nuys, California. To say that I was "overwhelmed" when I entered the showroom is a gross understatement. As I stood at the entrance, the first creatures that caught my eye were the Commando Elite and the Gorgonites from Joe Dante's smart, subversive SMALL SOLDIERS. Pretty cool. Then I made my way into the room, and completely lost my ability to process visual information for a few minutes.
Schwarzenegger's Terminator. The T-800 endoskeleton. A velociraptor. Edward Scissorhands. Tom Cruise's Lestat (photos forbidden). A frozen Kristen Stewart (from ZATHURA). Andy Kaufman's robotic head from HEARTBEEPS. A trio of rejected designs for HOWARD THE DUCK (which Stan evidently liked enough to keep around). And a forlorn Teddy from A.I. sitting all by his lonesome on Stan's director's chair.
That last sight threatened to cast a bittersweet pall over the day, but key artist Christopher Swift and model shop supervisor David Merritt weren't about to let us dwell on the company's profound loss of a few months ago. Ever the entertainer, Stan would want the show, and the work, to go on, to continue flaunting the same degree of excellence that made the studio one of the top practical f/x outfits in the industry. For the newly-minted Legacy Studio, the edict is simple: do it better than the last one.
Right now, "the last one" is Jon Favreau's IRON MAN, which called upon Swift and Merritt to build fully functional Mark I, II, III and IV outfits into which stuntmen could fit and in which they could achieve some range of movement. Easier requested than built. Though they're more than happy to boast about their accomplishment now, you can still hear the residue of many stressful nights in Swift's voice when he describes how a seemingly successful test concluded with pieces of the suit clattering off onto the ground. Swift can laugh about Favreau's sternly encouraging response now ("Guys, you did an amazing job, but... those parts are going to stay on in the movie."), but I doubt he was laughing back in March of 2007.
This tour/interview opportunity was timed to the DVD/Blu-ray release of IRON MAN on September 30th. Seeing as how that's tomorrow, I thought today would be a highly appropriate time to share this interview with you. It's a tech-heavy discussion, but most of you guys are the kind of nerds who used to devour this stuff in Starlog - and if you take that as an insult, know that I'm insulting myself, too. Walking around a facility like this, and talking with artists who worked their magic into some of my all-time favorite movies, is what makes this job very easy to do.
Jon Favreau has been a proponent of practical f/x. He was really into it on ZATHURA, so, obviously, he turned to you guys on IRON MAN. But I heard you saying earlier that the Mark III was not always going to be a practical suit?
Swift: Not originally. Due to the expectations of what they were looking for, I don't think it made sense for them at that point to think of it as a practical suit, whether we could actually get a person in it, can he move... being the fact that it's such a slick design, it's almost like a car body that has to have joints in there. It's not like an armored suit in the knight days, where you have a lot of pieces that you could see the movement happen within those. This was a slick suit. It was like, "How can you make all of that stuff move, and make it practical." So I think the idea was that it was going to be digital, and that we would get insert shots from the suit that we made as well as reference points for lighting, for digital, and all of that. Again, except for the Mark I, which was always... that one does make sense; that's more built like an iron suit from the knight days.
How did you do it?
Swift: (Pauses. We laugh.) We're asking the same question ourselves. At the end of the movie, we were like, "How did we do that?" It really did seem like an impossible task.
Merritt: The directive from Marvel and production was really to put the emphasis on it being a superhero. The idea of fitting someone in there wasn't as important. So once we nailed down that design from [illustrator] Phil Saunders and moved on to building a 3-D model, we were able to then start taking scans of the body, and starting to... see how things were going to work. Through that process, we were able to kind of get an idea that this might work. Meanwhile, as they were working out their budgets for digital, I think they came to the realization that whatever we could get practically would only help the movie. So they really started embracing that.
Swift: I would love to say that - being that the majority of us who worked on it are pretty seasoned as far as doing a lot of suit work and things like that - it was like, "Oh, we'll just make this and go on our expertise and our talent." But there were many, many nights where we were here late pulling our hair out going, "How are we going to do this!?!?""
Merritt: It was so tight.
Swift: It really was tight. We didn't know that from the very beginning, so we didn't... move over to that ideology until well into the building part of it. We had very little time to actually do this. There was a lot of engineering as we went along. We literally built it piece-by-piece and part-by-part. We would solve problem-by-problem instead of looking at it as a whole, like "How do we solve the leg problem?" So we would literally get a guy in here and put the legs on him, and let him walk around. "He can walk. Can he run?" We literally built it up piece-by-piece the same way you'd engineer the suit for real - although we didn't have the robots welding it all together. That was all of us as the taskmasters.
Merritt: But we did start out using robots in a way. We utilize a lot of rapid prototype process machines here as a tool for us to get our job done. And when we started getting into actually fabricating for the Mark III, we were able to... start refining the surfaces and really treating it like an automotive body, making sure the lines were clean.
I have a colleague at work who has this incredible Iron Man t-shirt of the thirty or forty different variations of the character. How did you settle on a variation for the final design of the suit?
Swift: I would have to say the majority of that was done between Phil Saunders and Adi Granov with the producers and Marvel themelves. They were very particular about not only staying in tradition with the actual design of Iron Man, but making it also a new spinoff version - but not changing it so much that you wouldn't recognize it. Not only that, but they really paid attention to the fans and their thinking. I'm a big comic book fan, and I can't tell you how many times I've seen a comic book turned into a movie where I'm like, "Well, that doesn't look like the costume! You changed it! It's an established character!" They were really particular about staying honest to that, and being true to the fans to make sure they weren't disappointed when they saw the suit.
Merritt: Once we got ahold of it and made our 3-D model, we worked with Phil to make some modifications so we could start to realize how joints were going to truly move, how plates were going to open up, how the hips were going to work so they wouldn't crash into each other. We'd make those modifications and run them by Phil, and he would make little changes. We went through that process for two or three weeks until we came up with something they were happy with.
Do those practical logistics make substantial changes to the visuals, or were they just small tweaks?
Merritt: They were small enough tweaks that you really wouldn't notice. The only real change was that Shane [Mahan] and Chris adjusted the head a little bit. That was about it.
Swift: The back of the neck, yeah.
How do you think the fans would've reacted if it was an all-digital suit?
Swift: That's really hard to say without seeing it and knowing it. Let me answer that by saying this: when the movie came out, and they were showing it down at the Arclight Theater, the Arclight asked us to send down our Mark III suit. It was sitting there in the lobby, and I went down there to see a different movie, and I could barely get through the crowd that was standing around the Mark III suit. Regardless of how it plays onscreen, the fact that somebody could sit there and see a real Iron Man suit in front of them - looking at the suit, and then going to see the movie - I think it just makes a mental difference. "Wow! There's a real thing there! There really was a guy in this movie in a suit. No matter how many shots or how few shots, we just know that there really was an Iron Man suit." And I loved watching little kids run around going, "I want to be in that suit! Can I go in that suit?" You don't get that from just watching a digital movie.
What was it like for the stuntmen in the suits? I heard that one of them fell down and was terrified that he'd broken it.
Swift: That was the Mark I. Mike Justus, I would have to say, was pretty much solely [the guy in the suit]. When you don't see Robert Downey Jr. actually lifting his head up, it's pretty much Mike Justus.
Merritt: Oakley [Lehman] also.
Swift: Oakley was also in there, but I think Mike was the one who fell. He said he fell like a sack of potatoes. He made one misstep, and... he stopped, but the suit kept going.
Merritt: We had to switch Mike and Oakley out. You could only be in the suit for three hours before you just got tired. I know this is getting off-track a little, but when we were talking about the weight before, there's a difference between having, like, an eighty-pound backpack on and... eighty pounds just wrapped around you, it's just totally different.
Swift: It really worked out to our advantage that... at the point in the movie where the Mark III suit comes out, and he's going out doing all of these things, Jon's very good about keeping things very organic and realistic. He never came to us, like on a lot of movies, and said, "I want this to always be pristine and shiny." So if it gets a nick, and it gets a scratch, and it falls down, keeping continuity might be a problem, but if it gets a nick, it's okay. Let the suit be an iron suit; it does get nicks, and it not only shows reality, but vulnerability - which is important to the storyline. If you think he's invincible, then what's the point? That really helped us out: the fact that we could expand upon when suits would get nicked up and broken and things like that, we ran with that. We allowed it to be part of the suit and the look of the suit.
Following up on the different looks for Iron Man over the years, have you guys began talking about what to do new in the next one?
Merritt: I don't think we're there yet.
Swift: We've gotten very little information. The most I've heard is the possibility of the War Machine, and that it's Terrence Howard in this one. I have to say, I talked a lot with Terence on the set, and I said, "Get ready. Because in the comic books, you end up in the suit." And he said, "Really!?!? I love the idea! I want to be in that suit!" And you know what? He'll probably get his opportunity. He's got a great build; he's very skinny, so we wouldn't have a hard time fitting him in the suit.
In the '70s, Iron Man had roller skates. Can you put roller skates on him for the next one? (Laughter)
Swift: No, but there is talk of an Iron Chimp that roller skates and smokes cigars. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I, for one, am looking forward to that.
You talked about the difficulty of building the suits. I don't know if it was the time frame specifically, but in terms of what you've done before, where does [IRON MAN] rank in terms of a challenge?
Swift: As far as building time and all of that? I would say up to par with everything we get nowadays. What would you say?
Merritt: For me, it was right up there among the top three. Just in having to get him into the suit, the logistics of it all was really challenging. The time frame was pretty standard for a lot of films these days. But what we ended up having to do over the long run, that's what made it challenging.
When you say "top three", what are the other two you're thinking of?
Swift: Probably the last two movies we worked on.
AVATAR?
Merritt: Yes, AVATAR. The TERMINATOR movies. It just was hard.
Is that how it always is in this business? The next movie is always the hardest project?
Swift: It can be. It usually depends on how much are we doing for the movie. Sometimes we just get one small character that we can focus on; other things, like IRON MAN, we just have to do much more. We have to build not only one Iron Man suit, but three types of suits. And we had to build the Iron Monger. I give all the credit to Dave. To expand on what he was saying, these suits were built piece-by-piece, so opposed to when we do open organic suits such as a monster, we'll sculpt the whole thing; hands might be separate, head will be separate... we'll break it down in that sense. For the most part we have a large majority of it that's all one part; once we get it molded and sculpted, we run it as such and paint it as such. These were almost separate parts and pieces; putting the whole suit together, it really had to be built that way. It was a big effort.
Merritt: With the Mark II and the Mark III, there were well over eighty pieces to the individual suits. We had to figure out how it was going to move, how it was going to fit, and how he was going to move within it. And then there was the undersuit, and filling in the joints in between.
Swift: There were two factors that I looked at, especially with the Mark II and the Mark III - basically they're the same suit - which is Dave's team did such an awesome job of taking all those pieces and making them so pristine and beautiful. To the eye, they're just perfect pieces. At the same time... the aesthetic part is one thing, but on the other hand, how do we make it all work. There was engineering that, taking those parts of those beautiful pieces and trying to figure it out. Even when we had the pieces, there would be re-cutting and re-engineering, and Dave's team would have to go back and re-work another thing and make it beautiful again after we had to cut out a certain part because it wouldn't bend right or whatever.
There's been an obvious trend in the way these stories are told: even the most fantastical thing has to be sort of grounded in some kind of practical realism. What is more of a challenge for you guys: something like [IRON MAN], where there is a layer of realism to it, or is it when you have complete freedom to do whatever you want?
Swift: As in making it, or as in liking it as a fan?
Both.
Swift: Because to me, I'm a big fan of grounding things in reality. I think one of the things that makes IRON MAN work as a movie, and I've heard this from so many people, not only my own, is the fact that people go, "That really could be. That really could happen. Somebody could really bulid a suit." With technology, we don't even know half the stuff that's going out there military-wise, but it seems plausible to make a suit. It's basically an aircraft fighter built around a guy, as opposed to actually getting in a machine. So in that sense, as a fan, I think that reality grounds the movie to where I can go through it and believe it. That makes it work for me as a fantasy comic book movie. As far as building it, there's always a challenge to making something look real and not silly and stupid if it has to be such.
Merritt: A lot of that is in the filming too. In the camera angles, and how the approach it.
Swift: This particular suit... I'm very proud that it came out of the studio. When you see it in person, it works from every angle, from every shot; it just looks like the real thing. I don't look at any part of it and go, "You know what? We could've done better. We failed in this part. It didn't look so good from this angle."
Merritt: The first camera test we went to, everybody was there: Marvel, production and so on. The first five-minute flight was at [unintelligible]. So we took him down there, and we had the green-screen suit on, so we had holes in it and everything. We put it on, they do the camera test, and when everyone saw him they were just kind of blow away by... for the first time ever, seeing Iron Man walking. The next day, we went down for the screening; we all took our notepads, and we're all ready [to take notes]. And the first time they saw Iron Man, I remember Favreau goes, "That's our guy!" And we walked out of that screening room without a single note.
Swift: The funny part was that... Shane is a really good showman, so we put the guy in the suit in a tent. And when he walked out, he walked out [in the full suit]. I remember... we were so not ready for this test. He walked out of that tent, and everybody just went, "Oh, that's it!" Then he took ten steps, and, like, eight pieces fell off of him. Jon was like, "Guys, you did an amazing job, but... those parts are going to stay on in the movie."
When was that in the production process?
Swift: Probably around March [2007].
Merritt: It was before we started shooting.
They're talking about a release date of 2010 for IRON MAN 2. Are you guys worried about being on another tight schedule?
Merritt: No. These days, we just have to approach it fast and furious, and jump right in.
Swift: We always know it's going to be tight, and that's just the way it is. The things that become a worry are... we do this as artists, so we want to do things that we're proud of. Not only do we do it for the fans... we do it for ourselves.
With the passing of Stan this year, there was a lot of talk about this being the passing of an era - which it was in a way. Some people think practical f/x are on their way out. Do you guys think practical f/x will be strong in the 21st century?
Merritt: Oh yeah, I think so. I mean, digital is a great tool. It makes our jobs easier. It's one of the reasons we're able to build things as quickly as we do, because we know that we'll be able to get away with certain things. You know... everybody loves practical. I mean, it just looks right and looks real. Even digital loves it because it makes their job easier. I think it'll be around for a while.
You read the rest of this interview, which turned into a brief AVATAR interrogation, here, so I'll just leave it at that, and figure that you'll get the rest of your IRON MAN fix when you snap up the DVD or Blu-ray tomorrow (September 30th).
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
Merritt: The directive from Marvel and production was really to put the emphasis on it being a superhero. The idea of fitting someone in there wasn't as important. So once we nailed down that design from [illustrator] Phil Saunders and moved on to building a 3-D model, we were able to then start taking scans of the body, and starting to... see how things were going to work. Through that process, we were able to kind of get an idea that this might work. Meanwhile, as they were working out their budgets for digital, I think they came to the realization that whatever we could get practically would only help the movie. So they really started embracing that.
Swift: I would love to say that - being that the majority of us who worked on it are pretty seasoned as far as doing a lot of suit work and things like that - it was like, "Oh, we'll just make this and go on our expertise and our talent." But there were many, many nights where we were here late pulling our hair out going, "How are we going to do this!?!?""
Merritt: It was so tight.
Swift: It really was tight. We didn't know that from the very beginning, so we didn't... move over to that ideology until well into the building part of it. We had very little time to actually do this. There was a lot of engineering as we went along. We literally built it piece-by-piece and part-by-part. We would solve problem-by-problem instead of looking at it as a whole, like "How do we solve the leg problem?" So we would literally get a guy in here and put the legs on him, and let him walk around. "He can walk. Can he run?" We literally built it up piece-by-piece the same way you'd engineer the suit for real - although we didn't have the robots welding it all together. That was all of us as the taskmasters.
Merritt: But we did start out using robots in a way. We utilize a lot of rapid prototype process machines here as a tool for us to get our job done. And when we started getting into actually fabricating for the Mark III, we were able to... start refining the surfaces and really treating it like an automotive body, making sure the lines were clean.
Merritt: Once we got ahold of it and made our 3-D model, we worked with Phil to make some modifications so we could start to realize how joints were going to truly move, how plates were going to open up, how the hips were going to work so they wouldn't crash into each other. We'd make those modifications and run them by Phil, and he would make little changes. We went through that process for two or three weeks until we came up with something they were happy with.
Swift: The back of the neck, yeah.
Merritt: Oakley [Lehman] also.
Swift: Oakley was also in there, but I think Mike was the one who fell. He said he fell like a sack of potatoes. He made one misstep, and... he stopped, but the suit kept going.
Merritt: We had to switch Mike and Oakley out. You could only be in the suit for three hours before you just got tired. I know this is getting off-track a little, but when we were talking about the weight before, there's a difference between having, like, an eighty-pound backpack on and... eighty pounds just wrapped around you, it's just totally different.
Swift: It really worked out to our advantage that... at the point in the movie where the Mark III suit comes out, and he's going out doing all of these things, Jon's very good about keeping things very organic and realistic. He never came to us, like on a lot of movies, and said, "I want this to always be pristine and shiny." So if it gets a nick, and it gets a scratch, and it falls down, keeping continuity might be a problem, but if it gets a nick, it's okay. Let the suit be an iron suit; it does get nicks, and it not only shows reality, but vulnerability - which is important to the storyline. If you think he's invincible, then what's the point? That really helped us out: the fact that we could expand upon when suits would get nicked up and broken and things like that, we ran with that. We allowed it to be part of the suit and the look of the suit.
Swift: We've gotten very little information. The most I've heard is the possibility of the War Machine, and that it's Terrence Howard in this one. I have to say, I talked a lot with Terence on the set, and I said, "Get ready. Because in the comic books, you end up in the suit." And he said, "Really!?!? I love the idea! I want to be in that suit!" And you know what? He'll probably get his opportunity. He's got a great build; he's very skinny, so we wouldn't have a hard time fitting him in the suit.
Merritt: For me, it was right up there among the top three. Just in having to get him into the suit, the logistics of it all was really challenging. The time frame was pretty standard for a lot of films these days. But what we ended up having to do over the long run, that's what made it challenging.
Merritt: With the Mark II and the Mark III, there were well over eighty pieces to the individual suits. We had to figure out how it was going to move, how it was going to fit, and how he was going to move within it. And then there was the undersuit, and filling in the joints in between.
Swift: There were two factors that I looked at, especially with the Mark II and the Mark III - basically they're the same suit - which is Dave's team did such an awesome job of taking all those pieces and making them so pristine and beautiful. To the eye, they're just perfect pieces. At the same time... the aesthetic part is one thing, but on the other hand, how do we make it all work. There was engineering that, taking those parts of those beautiful pieces and trying to figure it out. Even when we had the pieces, there would be re-cutting and re-engineering, and Dave's team would have to go back and re-work another thing and make it beautiful again after we had to cut out a certain part because it wouldn't bend right or whatever.
Merritt: A lot of that is in the filming too. In the camera angles, and how the approach it.
Swift: This particular suit... I'm very proud that it came out of the studio. When you see it in person, it works from every angle, from every shot; it just looks like the real thing. I don't look at any part of it and go, "You know what? We could've done better. We failed in this part. It didn't look so good from this angle."
Merritt: The first camera test we went to, everybody was there: Marvel, production and so on. The first five-minute flight was at [unintelligible]. So we took him down there, and we had the green-screen suit on, so we had holes in it and everything. We put it on, they do the camera test, and when everyone saw him they were just kind of blow away by... for the first time ever, seeing Iron Man walking. The next day, we went down for the screening; we all took our notepads, and we're all ready [to take notes]. And the first time they saw Iron Man, I remember Favreau goes, "That's our guy!" And we walked out of that screening room without a single note.
Swift: The funny part was that... Shane is a really good showman, so we put the guy in the suit in a tent. And when he walked out, he walked out [in the full suit]. I remember... we were so not ready for this test. He walked out of that tent, and everybody just went, "Oh, that's it!" Then he took ten steps, and, like, eight pieces fell off of him. Jon was like, "Guys, you did an amazing job, but... those parts are going to stay on in the movie."
Merritt: It was before we started shooting.
Swift: We always know it's going to be tight, and that's just the way it is. The things that become a worry are... we do this as artists, so we want to do things that we're proud of. Not only do we do it for the fans... we do it for ourselves.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
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will fuck your eyes
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Didn't the Predator design come from the Winston studios?
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they WERE and ARE the best. Period. Oh, and thanks for NOT giving in and making IRON MAN another CGI crapfest ala 'THE INCREDIBLE HULK'. Too bad Winston and Crew did'nt get to work their magic on that one. CGI never works as a primary tool (for me at least) and in my opinion hurt Jacksons KING KONG as the only depiction of the main character. All I see in these CGI dominated movies are actors in front of green screens. Keep all CGI movies where they belong-in the video games, but off the big screen.
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Sep 29, 2008 3:57:04 PM CDT
after all they've done....why would the Iron Man suit....
by dannyglovers_dickblood
....seem like an impossible challenge? I mean really-- its just a fucking plastic suit. Whats the big deal?
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If they do, it will be our fault. Practical effects forever.
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The Predator is in the showroom, too. So is the full-scale lion from THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS. Didn't think much of the movie, but that beast is fucking phenomenal.
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King Kong was one of the best visual effects I've seen in a long time. It made the character look life-like. The things that hurt it were length and shitty CGI in other areas.
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Jeebus, was I the only one who liked it? It wasn't Iron Man, it wasn't The Dark Knight, but I thought it was a lot of fun.
I can't wait for the 3 disc set with (hopefully) the super-extended Norton cut. The more the merrier says I, and perhaps that version will lesson some of the vitriol being released about the reboot. -
like no one saw this on torrent a bazillion times
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Thanks Mr Beaks
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I thought it had an emotional storyline and Ed Norton was likeable. I liked the humor as well. The romance score was memorable too, like when Ed and Liv hug in the rain. The CGI Hulk was much better that the previous film and when he said "HULK smash!" I cheered. This movie was fun and anybody who didn't like it is an uptight cynical asshole. How bout that? You like them apples bitches?
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And a lot of the shots of him when he first appears look good but it's almost as if they did the FX shots in order and ran out of time (maybe they did). By the time he got to New York, he was as cartoonish and weightless as any other CGI effect you see in movies. Then he looked good again on the Empire State building. And they must have put the interns on the dinosaurs because they looked worse than in Jurassic Park, which still holds up today.
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You know it's true. But I still bought the DVD becasue I'm a sucker. Just the single-disc becasue of the inevitable double dip however.
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Weren't there 3 stages in the movie? The guys keep talking about the final one as Mk3...
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1. That somehow, some way, whereever Bruce happened to be, the U.S. Army was up his ass. He could've been on the moon and he'd end up being chased by Ross and crew. Give me a break.
2. Liv Tyler. Not for a second did I believe Betsy Ross even made it through Algebra 101. She was an actor wearing glasses.
3. Did they have to kill the dog?
4. Hulk's CGI completely sucked. He looked worse than a video game. How does Hulk downgrade visually with a bigger budget? Because Leterriere has a low bar for what looks good. Guys like Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg know where to set the CGI bar and expect their digital artists to meet it. They won't let shit get through.
5. The stupid "love scene" between Hulk and Betsy in the Smokies cave. It looked completely fake, was hokey, and embarrassing.
6. The silly Bruce-Betsy edit montage when they're thinking about each other in their separate beds. That sequence belongs in a Disney musical, not a supposedly "smart" super-hero film. Or maybe this was just a dumb movie.
7. The jokes. Lame. Not funny. Maybe it's funny to a Frenchman, but nobody laughed in my theater. Maybe Letterier needs to refer back to his Jerry Lewis collection.
8. The lame fight at the end. Lame lame lame. And what was with the whole Hulk chest beating thing as he stands over Abomy? Lame lame lame. And what happens with Abomy? Do the cops throw some cuffs on 'em and book 'em for disorderly conduct?
9. Why is Bruce still on the run at the end? Doesn't he earn some kind of reprieve from Ross being that he saved his ass? What about Betsy?
10. The Tony Stark cameo at the end. It distracted from the film and made one forget about the film they just watched, which is actually probably a good thing. For the sake of the film, I think trying to weave a Tony Stark cameo in the middle of the film and actually implementing it into the story would've been a superior choice, but again, Leterrier is not a very superior filmmaker.
Long live Ang Lee's HULK! -
It's not Stan Winston Studios anymore?
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Sep 29, 2008 5:07:59 PM CDT
Agree. Iron Man is one of the year's most overrated films.
by chishu_ryu
If not THE most overrated film of the year.
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Sep 29, 2008 5:11:38 PM CDT
That plasticsuit was injection molded & vacuformed
by dracula_wants_the_amulet
those parts where designed on a computer. Fit around 3d scan data of a real body. It was a new challenge for SWS and what they pulled off was amazing. Like the skull in IJ4 this started in a computer and it was dragged into the real world. Sculpt on the PC is like 400% faster. Ask these guys and they will tell you that. There is a new marraige between making things on the PC and bringing them here into the real world. Iron Man would have taken a lot longer to pull off with out that perfectg symmetry by the way. If these guys sculpted it over a Bodycast. Stop hating the CGI it's a tool and it has it's place. Practical and it have merged already cutting down on cost and improving rework issues. Director doesn't liek this shape. No problem They can rework it 400 times faster into a new shape sculpting oin the pc then they could in the real world. MAke a mistake hit undo. I'm telling you guys. CGI is a wonderful tool. You just have to know when and how to use it. And these guys know that. Great artical by the way. Love this FX shit!
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Hulk smash, not make wet melodrama
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about digital vs practical again.
Not to mention the old chestnut about Jurassic park.
Does anyone actually remember Jurassic park? Hell yes great practical and digital stuff, but it used every 'cheat' in the book for the famous t-rex stuff. Night, check. Rain, check. Debris, cropping feet, you name it. I'm not trying to take away from it at all because Phil Tippett is a golden God. I'm just trying to stop you guys embarrassing yourselves by comparing that to something like the Kong dino stampede. The worst stuff in that sequence was actually practical interaction effects with the guy running Flintstones style with his feet sliding in midair, and lousy shadow matching on the live actors. It doesn't occur to you I dunno (oh the i-rony) that the difficulty of the dinos colliding and falling all over each other in that scene is like 10 levels of magnitude higher than ANY of the JP movies? I love well-done practical. And well-done digital. And a bit of objectivity in regard to both.
P.S. The spitter and newborn practical dinos in JP sucked arse. We can probably all agree on that. The newborn's scale makes it a logical candidate for digital, but as I said, interaction and lighting made that a big no-no back then. -
Less action, but fun character stuff. Entertaining. 3rd best hero film ever. Mabey the actionheads needed more action, but I thought the story- the story was very good and entertaining. Overrated my ass!
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Was not high brow enough? You nerds crack me up.
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I don't really do it anymore. I'm strictly PC CGI now. Thats why I say what I say. I noticed the flow change right away. No more syran wrap and dog brushes to make pores and wrinkles. No more rakes to define shapes and nasty solvents and flames and compressed air to smooth my clay. No more wasted time building large shapes by add gobs of clay onto itself and slowly tearing it back off into a shape. Adding and removing clay takes much more time to do in the real world vs digital clay. I got an airbrush like interface I add and subtract by intensity by airbrush nozzel size. I make my base meshes in maya and I go to town. I can make a complete head sculpt from a base mesh- the head sculpt I want to make in a few hours with the texture applied as a 16 bit grey scale displacement map or a tilable alpha map. This would take me up to a week or even a month in some instances. The texture work alone in the real world vs CGI is like night and day. Could take a day maybe two to do real skin texture on a 1:1 head in the real world where it only take a hour or more max to do the same thing in CGI. Once Rapid Prototype becomes more cost friend. It will be the Dawn of a new Era. I think the thing that really blows my mind, and this also speaks well about CGI sculpting. I make it once, and it can be RP'd at any scale from that single sculpt. The toys are not new sculpts now based on a few images sent out by the studios- The toy makers use the same CGI model made for the film. You guy really don't understand if your hating on CGI. I know what I'm talking about. I was a practical only guy for a long time. CGI has made practical a better place. You use the CGI to make the practical object now.
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colliding and falling all over each other in that scene is like 10 levels of magnitude higher than ANY of the JP movies?"Even the parts in the first 2 JP movies set in daylight where the dinos were colliding and falling all over each other, and actually appeared to have weight?
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Still ranks in as my favorite movie of all time...
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Are you watching a movie or are you an engineer inspektor? Why do so many people these days watch a movie under a microscope? Stop taking everything so personal. Just let yourself go. Stop over analyzing every scene.
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There is a place for both in films and I like'm both. Good work is good work no matter what the medium. In this age, the medium simply determines the effectiveness of the message more so because audiences are not challenged to use their imagination so much as simply believe what they see.
While the stature of every woman you see on a magazine cover is computer enhanced, the retoucher still had to work from a real person. The final image is simply the best or better than the best that person can visually achieve.
This forum is about the love and loathing of cinema. While our thoughts and feelings are real, movies are about fantasy. -
Its up to the filmaker to suspend that disbelief and make us emotionally involved in the film. It does not mean perfect FX, but bad FX can take one OUT of the film. CGI is now much like stop-motion. You can see it a mile away when its the primary object. The original KING KONG was 100x better that the CGI version. They did a better job at conveying the story. Yes, some CGI works-in small doses-but it just clogs the movie lovers arteries when overused. IRON MAN used both to good effect. If you wanna go all CGI, hire George Lucas and make a new age Muppet cartoon.
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The reason the original Kong was better was because in 1933 no one had ever seen special effects like that, but once the public got used to stop motion effects. you got a slew of crappy movies with stop motion, minus some ray harryhausen films of course. The original Jurassic Park blew us away like the original Kong did for the same reason. In 1993 we had never seen special effects like that, but now we're used to CGI and focus all our attention on it. just like stop motion did, once in a while you get that film. where the story is so good that you forget about the stop motion or CGI and just think of the story and action, like LOTR did. I knew the Hulk was gonna be CGI and no Hulk CGI on earth could please any cynical talkbacker here. So i went in just accepting it for what it was, a fun comic book movie. Back to Kong, comparing a remake like PJ's Kong to it's original counterpart. Which helped change film forever and aged like fine wine is absurd! It's not like Peter Jackson was trying to top the original. He was just giving his interpretation, albeit with horrible casting, minus mrs watts. I liked PJ's Kong. I just think it was ridiculously overdone, just way too long and over the top. PJ is a good director. He just needs to know when to hold back, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you have to do it.
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I believe we are basically on the same page. Good observations on the original. BTW: I love KONG and only have one DVD to my name: The PJ uncut version of KONG. I also liked it but was disappointed he went all CGI for Kong, but aside from 2 moments, it all worked well-KONG, that is, not some of the cast.
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You clearly have no idea how close Incredible Hulk was to the comics, and how spot-on motherfucking perfect Iron Man was in terms of loyalty to the books.
You can have your crappy Ang Lee melodrama. Frankly, I think everything Ang Lee ever made has sucked. He's one of those directors that is so full of himself that he can't see fit to make a movie that doesn't try to crawl up the viewer's ass to remind them how "deep" he is, when he's really not that deep. Mostly, his films are just Slllloooowwww.
Please, dude-- Stay away from comic book movies. You're obviously not the target audience. You apparently like stories that meander around for what seems like five hours without actually getting anywhere. -
Sep 29, 2008 11:58:24 PM CDT
So far Iron Man was the most enjoyable film for me this year.
by amy chasing
Dark Knight is excellent and Wall-E is a masterpiece, but I had the most fun with Iron Man. Can't wait for the sequel - Rob Downey & Sam Jackson = bloody awesome!
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It was just really a well made film. There are about 60 CGI shots in JP. Most of the dinosaur stuff was Latex Puppets/Animatronics. Someone should make a youtube video and points out each CGI scene from that film. Yes there were amazing CGI scenes that gave the audience a KING KONG shock- like when Grant and Ellie got out of the jeep and they look up at that huge Brontosaurus eating from that tree, and the T-Rex Vs the Velosoraptors scene at the end that stuff was completely CGI, except for a few shots of the Velosoraptors entering that room and jumping around the bones trying to eat everyone. If you really look for it you can tell the difference between each scene, but I don't think anyone watched it when it came out and did that on the first viewing. The story pulled you in. You were watching real dinosaurs on the screen. What an amazing ride that film was.
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The part that still wows me from JP is when Dr. Ian Malcolm makes the T-rex follow him. To this day it still looks like a living animal with weight distribution and everything. Cap that off that it steps on a jeep when it starts walking and it's raining. Sadly here we are in 2008 and no CGI has impressed as much as that one did in 93.
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I think practical effects are making a comeback. Watching the Joker dressed as a nurse, limping towards the camera. As the hospital starts exploding behind him, was unforgettable and awe-inspiring. Then trying to trigger one last bomb and having the van blow up and he quickly dashes into the School bus. The building starts to demolish and it drives away. No CGI in the world can top a once in a lifetime shot like that!
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Actually I usually talk nonsense around here.
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So, what did the variations look like?? I suppose I will never get to see them since the world thinks the movie is just utter crap, but
I am so curious as to what Stan would've kept in his showroom. Description please? Pleeeeease? -
That's the summer in a nut shell.
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It was all about the visceral shock of seeing that for the first time when all we'd had before then other than stop-motion in terma of apples-to-apples was basically a water tentacle and a chrome (easy for cg) human shape.
So everyone remembers that initial overwhelming shock (which was the first time I'd been so blown away since seeing the original Star Wars at the cinema aged 8), rather than the specifics of the execution - which is exactly what everyone criticises in new cg films. It's a bit like how we all (except the cooler-than-thou) love 78 Superman because we saw it as non-cynical kids when if it came out now people would scream blue murder about how it made a mockery of Luthor, the comic, the original art deco look, etc. etc. Our enduring memory of the first time we saw JP1 colours our criticism. I just think that because of all the clever cheats in addition to lack of objectivity (due to having no apples-to-apples comparison at the time), JP 1 is a very BAD (as in innappropriate) example to compare to.
Not to mention that a huge factor in believing the dinos' "weight distribution" was the fact that until then all we'd ever seen was dinos walking VERTICALLY. The bird exposition and tail-rudder stuff bought us completely before we'd even started. And the jeep sequence IS masterful. But like I said before it cheats every which way (not neccessarily a criticism). Just a great balance too metering the shots out between the cg and prac. The rack-focus was great sleight-of-hand too.
Btw all the secondary weight stuff like sagging skin and jiggling muscles was done BY HAND frame-by-frame as the procedural/physics controls weren't in place back then, beyond simplistic flocking stuff like the Gali herd.
I dunno - I should have been clearer. Even the interaction between a few dinos in the JP films is nowhere near as complex or widescale. A few biting, jumping on, or coliding while running is nothing like multiple animals tumbling arse-over-tit being squashed and carried along and bouncing about every which way. The amount and scale of it is miles beyond JP films. The big mistake was in not allowing 4 times as long on that sequence. Kong was a fucking nightmare for the animators in that regard. The Hulkdogs sequence is probably more analogous to JP.
As for ambition, I think a lot of people will MOAN about Benjamin Button in a couple of months' time. Because the CG in that is attempting what we can't possibly be convinced by, suspension of disbelief taken into account. A human face (which our brains know better than anything else even if we can't articulate why). Harder than absolutely anything else, ever. On top of which, the very concept of the backwards ageing continually says to our brain NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL - because the situation CAN'T be real! Basically it's a no-win situation and can NEVER convince us, no matter how good the technique is.
As far as cg as the technique though, using that rather than different actors in traditional makeup (for the extreme scenes I mean - as they did use traditional for the stuff closer to Pitt's age) serves the allegorical/fable-like tone better. And is more in keeping with the pitch/mood of the story Fincher is going for. The metaphor of it being Pitt's character's journey is solid and therefore appropriate NOT to go the other actors/other techniques route.
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Finally, getting back to objectivity, people also forget JP1's shitty deus-ex-machina ending. Ever wonder why the Rex bursts in with NO FUCKING WARNING at the very last second? Especially considering Spielberg is the goddamn king of the "telegraphing" technique (even in the same movie)?
Because this movie started one other cg tradition - changing the movie at the last second to include MORE CG. Originally, and right up to the last possible moment they were going to 'fight' the Raptors Ripley-style with earthmoving equipment. Which actually makes sense and WAS set up, with all the construction and so-on. With pretty much no time left, SS decided he had to have the Rex return - even though he hadn't built the scene that way and there was no time to shoot it. All it needed was a couple of shots showing not just Raptors outside but also separately the Rex, with rising music cues intimating they were closing in on our heroes rather than each other, and THEN you could have the "last second" scene work just fine. It's just galling because this is the same film where his telegraphing/setting up a scene reached perfection with the puddle vibration gag (or at least equalled the brilliance of the Jaws music cue). So again, don't misunderstand. I love JP1, if you read properly I'm NOT a hater, but I'm just not blinded like most here. -
I meant the big mistake was not allowing 4 times as long TO WORK on that difficult sequence. Cheers.
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Ang Lees Hulk was decent up to a point...the last 30 minutes killed the movie for me as it dipped into some crazy shit with Nick Nolte at the end (a mutant poodle???...still cant get over that). I DO think Iron Man is a bit over-rated but even still...its one of the better comic-book movies out there for sure.
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JP kicks ass as much now as it did then. id love to see it re-mastered and cleaned up for a Hi-Def release...would look amazing.
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and 7.1 sound. Awww yeah.
Hopefully soon, as there's no more Spielberg/Universal/Paramount HD roadblock.
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that WOULD rock...the T-Rex roar would be deafeningly kick-ass.
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That was a cool techy interview. I picked up the blu-ray version this morning.
I enjoyed this and Incred Hulk for what they are- entertainment. I didn't feel the need to rip them apart (unlike Heroes). -
was the fun Batman movie ('cause he IS Marvel's Batman), and Dark Knight was the full-on relentless one.
Win-win! -
...take the dicks outta your mouths and have a fucking clue. IM >>>>>>>>>>>>> TDK. Dark Knight is clearly the most overrated movie since Titanic.
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is there not room in your tiny brain for the concept of liking both, or at least not having to hate one because we like the other? Don't overload yourself there pal.
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and use a practical caucasian one instead. Eastwood would've owned as Fury and you know it!
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What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
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This is one of the better articles that have graced AICN recently.
Well done, Beaks. -
The T-rex surprise appearance at the end of JP. Yeah that always made me laugh. Earlier in the film every step the T-rex took made a sound and shook the ground. Yet at the end he makes no sound at all. I can only assume the T-rex was in stealth mode or tiptoeing lol, not to mention that the human characters don't even notice the T-rex until it bites on the Raptor. I mean the animal is like 18ft tall. You'd think they'd notice him in the room.
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He's there, but nobody will talk about it! ;) And still better than the gymnastics thing in JP2, where from the first time they mention it you're like "Oh no..."!
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the "wrong" Nick Fury eh? So you preferred the version with Hasselhoff? ;)
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You could learn a lot from this article and talkback. Beaks posts an excellent article, and an informed, intelligent discussion follows. You post shit like Scriptgirl, look what happens then.
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just watched it last night and i was really entertained by it. Robert Downey Jr. is such a great actor. IRON MAN ROCKS!
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That chick is seriously hot. And the best part of Iron Man was Gwyneth Paltrow's ass. The movie itself was good fun, but she looked hotter in that movie then I've ever seen her in my life.
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