"The Incredibles" setting new standards?

pat kenny

(Note: this post needs to be moved I just noticed there is a general films board, I mistakenly thought only the two subcategoies were selectable)


This isn't really a film review so I couldnt put it on the film review board its more of a minor rant.

I'v seen some irritating middle aged man doing news spots on two seperate channels this week he's the head of Pixar.He's patting himself and his buddys on the back for making supposedly giant leaps in CG animation with "The Incredibles".Newsnight was one of a few shows lavishing the same praise onto the films technical achievments.
I have seen some trailers fot the movie and I can't see anything remotely revolutionary about it.
Upon seeing the trailer and hearing the praise I look over at my pretty crappy DVD collection.Nestled in the collection is "Final Fantasy: The Spirits within"
it's not a great film and thats being generous as it has some serious flaws.

But I popped it into the DVD player to see on a purely technical level how it looks.My suspissions were correct, it still looks stunning and not just becase it is done in a more realistic style.Every effect is a technical marvel. In comparison "The Incredibles" looks like well , pretty amature work.
I took a peak at the back of the box of the DVD it reads
"ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2001"
Almost four years ago columbia tristar and square pictures made a tecnically superior film and yet these c[]cksuckers at PIXAR are patting themselves on the back for there "Giant Leap" and the media is giving them a helping had.


Its just a pitty "Final Fantasy" was a bit crap, otherwise the creators would have got the credit they deserved for their technical acomplishments.

I'm sure that I will probably like "The Incredibles" as it looks like a fun movie but I'd probably like it just as much if it was regular animation.

I propose a toast to all those who worked on "Final Fantasy: The Spirits within"

ixoy

Well wait till ya see it, but FF is over-looked often on a technical level, I'll give you that.

The leaps-and-bounds made by Pixar are realistic. They're often at a detail level - the individual hairs on Sully's back say in "Monster's Inc". Water is incredibly difficult to animate because of reflection, fluid dynamics, etc. but was done very well in "Finding Nemo". Watch "The Incredibles" for those sort of details or items like skin tone or the number of facial muscles animated. I think you're making the erroneous comparison to them looking cartoonish whereas FF went for a more "realistic" look. It's a flawed comparison because Pixar have often said they want to use the cartoon look - it doesn't make it worse at all once you have a look at the other stuff being done.

If ya want a better comparison, check out The Polar Express, coming in December which appears more "real" and you'll see the advances you're looking for.

Slutmonkey57b

Check out the Polar Express and you'll have to remember:
Sign the consent form for admission to John of god's BEFORE you go into the cinema, because after you've gouged your eyes out from the horror of watching it, you won't be able to see where it lists your condition as "Danger to Self"

Horrible POS film. And I've only seen the trailer.

Kêrmêttê

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Check out the Polar Express and you'll have to remember:
Sign the consent form for admission to John of god's BEFORE you go into the cinema, because after you've gouged your eyes out from the horror of watching it, you won't be able to see where it lists your condition as "Danger to Self"

Horrible POS film. And I've only seen the trailer.

A friend of mine was invited by Mr. Kelleher to a private viewing of this film with his wife and 2 kids. They left after half an hour because the kids were uneasy about what they were watching. This is supposed to be a kids movie??
It might be a technical masterpiece but the content of the film, apparently, left a lot to be desired.

ShiverinEskimo

I agree that FF looked fantatstic and pushed all sorts of technical boundaries back. (i actually liked the story too). However the trailors for The Incredibles don't do the justice i reckon. I mean going as far back as Aladdin when the 2d animation was still standard yet the flying carpet scene was considered revolutionary at the time. The incredibles is the first Pixar effort involving human beings as characters. Final fantasy based their characters on real people and went for the realistic look which i feel is much easier to achieve because you already have a 3d model to compare and contrast against. What pixar have achieved is a new design of human being and married it to the pinnacle of their technology. Which for me is astounding. Any animator will tell you that the hardest partof animation is drawing a human being (hence why animals feature so often) the type of human being animated in The Incredibles is completely new unlike final fantasy's.
So although FF was technical genius perhaps you need to take into account also that there were plenty of available templates for them to build on with all the cut scenes in games that existed that were going for the real look that square Inix went for with FF. Pixar had no such templates. All in all credit to both teams but especially pixar they married humans, humour and technology - very difficult threesome.

mycroft

pat kenny wrote:

Almost four years ago columbia tristar and square pictures made a tecnically superior film and yet these c[]cksuckers at PIXAR are patting themselves on the back for there "Giant Leap" and the media is giving them a helping had.

I propose a toast to all those who worked on "Final Fantasy: The Spirits within"

Ahem

It is an article of faith at Pixar that trying to make your animated characters look as realistic as possible is as pointless as it is difficult. If you want to annoy one of the studio's artists, simply mention the 2001 movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a critical and box-office disaster that sought to make its characters so lifelike it might as well have used real actors. And if you want to annoy yourself, make a point of seeing the forthcoming film Polar Express, a clunky animation from DreamWorks whose central character's movements are based on motion-capture sensors affixed to the face of Tom Hanks.

There is a contingent of the digital-effects community to whom that is the holy grail - to create photographically real humans," says Brad Bird, the writer and director of The Incredibles and, previously, The Iron Giant. "To me that is the dumbest goal that you could possibly have. What's wonderful about the medium of animation isn't recreating reality. It's distilling it."

And

Computer animation's best human characters, consequently, are strictly symbolic representations, not lifelike creatures. And in any case, profound human emotions are not always best conveyed by the characters who appear the most human at first glance. (If you need convincing of this, compare any single appearance by Charles Schulz's endlessly complex Snoopy - animated or in strip cartoon - with the entire cinematic output of Richard Gere.)

Both quotes from How Pixar Conquered the world

ShiverinEskimo

did you ever want to say something then after you splutter it out in garbage someone comes along with clarity and effectiveness...damn you mycroft

mobile04

ive seen this movie and its a little out of the disney pixar groove .
i dont want too spoil it pm me and ill explain .
saw a private showing for my job bye the way .

ShiverinEskimo

Well Brad Bird who was involved in the simpsons said he wanted this one to be a bit darker than the rest. Does that conform to your out of the groove? or is it something else?
This month's empire mag has a good piece in it about brad bird and the incredibles. Worth a read for any pixar fan.

mycroft

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

Well Brad Bird who was involved in the simpsons said he wanted this one to be a bit darker than the rest. Does that conform to your out of the groove? or is it something else?
This month's empire mag has a good piece in it about brad bird and the incredibles. Worth a read for any pixar fan.

And again ahem

"Really, really little kids should not see this movie ," says Bird, who wrote and directed the film, and provided the voice for its funniest character, Edna, a fashion designer to the superheroes. "They should wait till they get older. We're getting some reactions from people who were disappointed that their four-year-old was a little freaked out by it. Well, I don't want to compromise the intensity in order to please a four-year-old."

from the above link, man that article is like a swiss army knife for arguments.

ShiverinEskimo

*sigh*

Does it have the solution for putting marmalade on toast without getting sticky fingers by any chance?

Hobbes

mobile04 wrote:

ive seen this movie and its a little out of the disney pixar groove .
i dont want too spoil it pm me and ill explain .
saw a private showing for my job bye the way .

Or you could use the [ s p o i l e r ] tag.

eg.

This is a spoiler