Hollywood, please stop your love affair with computer graphics. Practical effects are so much more…practical looking.
Source: geektyrant.com
New Line Cinema released a series of new posters for Jack The Giant Slayer which play off the classic "Fee Fye Fo Fum" line from the fairy tale the movie is (loosely) based on. You can see the whole set over here.
The posters reinforce the fear sparked with the trailer (below) that the film is straying into the territory of unsettling digital playgrounds first seen in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland. Can we officially declare this a trend now? A disturbing one at that.
Source: youtube.com
When Alice came out in 2010 it seemed a natural progression for Burton, since his 2005 remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory included over 800 visual effects. One could even argue Alice's world is hallucinogenic enough to warrant the eye-candy smorgasbord. But then things got out of hand.
Whenever something is successful, Hollywood likes to replicate it because hey, free money. So in 2011 Sucker Punch took the concept of fully digital worlds for a darker turn. But its critical failure heralded the quick return of frenetic bubble gum universes. This year alone, Oz: The Great And Powerful and Jack The Giant Slayer are forgoing silly things like "sets."
Of course, CGI is one of the easiest ways to convey to an audience that characters aren't in Kansas anymore, so to speak, but when the only thing real on the screen is the actors (and occasionally not even then), it doesn't matter how big your effects budget is. Our brains don't like it. At all.
Please Hollywood, throw us some men in raptor costumes.
