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On
seeing the Matrix: Reloaded II: The unreality
of effects
Some effects are there to look real and some are there
to look totally unreal. Each requires a different response
from the audience. One you're not supposed to notice
and it furthers the building of the world; it is in
service to building bridges to the audience just like
an actor's performance is there to make you care about
the character. The other is there to trumpet the fantasy
of the moment. It's for people to know they got their
money's worth in the two hours of escapism that their
ticket has bought them.
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| Battle
of the models |
Kelvin
and I have a running joke when we see a scene that requires
huge special effects like in a disaster film. We think
that when you see live action people running in the
foreground away from whatever the thing is they should
be screaming: "Aieeeee special effects!!!"
Obviously, no one is going to believe that an entire
town was really covered in lava or was wiped out by
an alien mothership, so the unreality of the special
effects is subservient to scale and imagination.
Compare
that to the illusion of reality in a film like Titanic,
in which the effects were replicating something people
knew existed even if hardly any of them had even seen
a photograph of the real Titanic. Yet, people always
remarked on that one scene where an escaping passenger
threw himself off the end of the ship and then hit the
propellor. The case isn't just that the modelling and
animation was very successful and seamless, but that
the shot itself was rooted in an audience connection
with even this 'extra' who was 90% (100%?) CG modelled.
An alien throwing himself off a spaceship and getting
fried by an engine wouldn't feel the same. The audience
can imagine themselves as a passenger on the Titanic
trapped in the same situation; they can't easily imagine
themselves as passengers on an alien spaceship.
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| Not
the French Connection |
In
the Matrix: Reloaded there are two scenes that
skirt this feeling. I'm not spoiling anything here.
When Neo starts fighting the multiple Agent Smiths initially
there are extended sequences where he does nothing but
fight stuntmen wearing makeup (and probably touched
up later to match the face of the original Smith). In
the original movie, the dojo scene is a classic because
we are watching Neo suddenly learn that he has 'kungfu'.
The special effects there are sped up film, wire work
that is brushed up and editing. The Neo vs multiple
Smiths scene in Reloaded starts that way but
then quickly becomes 'the battle of the models'. This
is not to say that the actual shoot was not as difficult
or more difficult than the dojo scene in The Matrix,
but that the illusion of unreality is quickly crossed.
I do not have any personal attachment to the CG characters.
It tells the story and shows off some CG and that's
really all it does.
The
second scene for me is the highway chase scene and I
think this is more telling. It's an extended chase sequence
with cars dipping in and out of traffic and causing
lots of crashes. The conceptualization is giddy and
as a piece of filmmaking, it's great. However, there
are two 'problems' (in quotes because they are only
problems in terms of what I am talking about here).
One is that whenever we are caught up in the speed of
the chase, the action is slowed down so that we can
admire a special effect such as the agent landing on
a car and crushing it or fat Morpheus doing flips on
top of a trailer. If it had all been carried out with
a minimum of slow motion, then we wouldn't have time
to squint at the special effects, not just to pick out
the unreal aspects of the effects but also because they
wouldn't be presented as brauvura FX beauty shots that
we are to admire slowly for how grandiose they are.
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| More
not always better |
The
second 'problem' is that they are too perfect in execution.
From background articles, etc. we know that it was mostly
practical effects (the building of an entire stretch
of highway on the Almeda military base, hundreds of
GM vehicles to be destroyed, etc. ) so this is not just
a criticism of the CG. What I like about purely practical
stunts is that there is the element of surprise and
unplanned motion, a result that is put up on screen.
There
is a beauty in nature and physics that is the result
of a million interactions that is so far very difficult
to replicate in a superbly controlled filmmaking medium
that movies such as The Lord of the Rings and
The Matrix have helped forge. It is the same
with human performances. Unpredictability and variability
are beautiful things, especially in a chaotic scene
such as the highway chase scene in Reloaded.
I would be interested to know how much of the stunt
riding of Trinity going against traffic was real and
what was CG. To me, it looked mostly CG. In this scene
in Reloaded everything seems very tightly controlled,
even the practical elements. Not enough chaos. So the
sum of that scene is an emotional detachment the same
as if I was watching Wiley Coyote trying to catch the
Roadrunner. Nothing unpredictable will happen because
the creators wouldn't have drawn it that way. Compare
the careful plotting and deployment of the Reloaded
highway chase scene to the harshness and speed of The
French Connection or even To Live and Die in
L.A.
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