'The Matrix' Changed Visual Effects. Now 'Resurrections' Pivots To Reality. (wsj.com) 48
While 1999 movie influenced everything from videogames to action movies to the metaverse, latest installment shows some restraint. From a report: The jaw-dropping visual effects in "The Matrix" transformed the quest to prove what is possible on screen. The franchise returns this week to find out if there is anything more that can be done. For the 1999 original, filmmakers invented a way to make Keanu Reeves's hero, Neo, defy physics while dodging bullets on screen. The effect blew enough minds to get a nickname -- "bullet time" -- plus changed the look of action movies, and influenced mediums from animation to videogames. For the new sequel, "The Matrix Resurrections," filmmakers deployed much-higher-caliber technologies, including three-dimensional imagery made using artificial intelligence. But after 22 years of digital evolution, high-end movie effects are approaching a plateau near perfection. "We went from pulling off what seemed to be impossible, to a sort of inability to create surprise" in the movie industry, says John Gaeta, who helped craft the bullet-time effect. He was a visual-effects designer on the first three "Matrix" films; now he is making things for the metaverse.
This year the movies presented us with a car slingshotting from cliff to cliff ("F9"); Ryan Reynolds running amok inside a videogame ("Free Guy"); and giant monsters crushing the Hong Kong skyline ("Godzilla vs. Kong"). Any viewers who paused to ask themselves -- "How did they do that?" -- likely came up with the same answer: "Computers." Human characters that are totally computer-generated and believable are still on the frontier, "but I'm not sure if there is anything else that can't be done given enough money or time," says Ian Failes, editor of befores and afters, a magazine covering visual-effects artistry. Despite any numbness among viewers to digital spectacles, Hollywood's demand for them has only increased. Visual-effects houses have raced to compete in a global production boom and fuel the streaming wars with flashy content. Some directors are reacting to the VFX arms race by practicing more restraint. Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" depicts settings such as the desert planet Arrakis with a naturalistic look. Instead of zooming viewers into a fleet of attacking space ships, the director presented the nighttime ambush in silhouette at a distance, conveying a somber sense of scale. "He was just showing the reality of the world," says Namit Malhotra, chief executive of DNEG, a visual-effects company that worked on "Dune" and "The Matrix Resurrections." He adds: "When you're spending that kind of money, it's hard for filmmakers to control the desire for more, a little more oomph."
In the new "Matrix" release, director and co-writer Lana Wachowski plays with expectations that the sequel must level up. Spoiler alert: In the movie, Mr. Reeves's character is reintroduced as a videogame designer whose big hit was called, yes, "The Matrix." The events in the film franchise supposedly happened within the world of his videogame -- including that signature action sequence in which Neo bends time and space. As a group of videogame developers brainstorm ideas for a sequel to "The Matrix," one declares, "We need a new bullet time!" The original bullet time was "a borderline hack," as Mr. Gaeta recalls it, that started with 120 still cameras firing off film photographs of Mr. Reeves dangling on wires. Those images were stitched together with software to simulate a swooping camera move in slow motion. The successor to that technique is known as volumetric capture. A camera array captures people or spaces from every angle, and then A.I. meshes this video into 3-D footage that can be viewed and manipulated from any perspective.
This year the movies presented us with a car slingshotting from cliff to cliff ("F9"); Ryan Reynolds running amok inside a videogame ("Free Guy"); and giant monsters crushing the Hong Kong skyline ("Godzilla vs. Kong"). Any viewers who paused to ask themselves -- "How did they do that?" -- likely came up with the same answer: "Computers." Human characters that are totally computer-generated and believable are still on the frontier, "but I'm not sure if there is anything else that can't be done given enough money or time," says Ian Failes, editor of befores and afters, a magazine covering visual-effects artistry. Despite any numbness among viewers to digital spectacles, Hollywood's demand for them has only increased. Visual-effects houses have raced to compete in a global production boom and fuel the streaming wars with flashy content. Some directors are reacting to the VFX arms race by practicing more restraint. Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" depicts settings such as the desert planet Arrakis with a naturalistic look. Instead of zooming viewers into a fleet of attacking space ships, the director presented the nighttime ambush in silhouette at a distance, conveying a somber sense of scale. "He was just showing the reality of the world," says Namit Malhotra, chief executive of DNEG, a visual-effects company that worked on "Dune" and "The Matrix Resurrections." He adds: "When you're spending that kind of money, it's hard for filmmakers to control the desire for more, a little more oomph."
In the new "Matrix" release, director and co-writer Lana Wachowski plays with expectations that the sequel must level up. Spoiler alert: In the movie, Mr. Reeves's character is reintroduced as a videogame designer whose big hit was called, yes, "The Matrix." The events in the film franchise supposedly happened within the world of his videogame -- including that signature action sequence in which Neo bends time and space. As a group of videogame developers brainstorm ideas for a sequel to "The Matrix," one declares, "We need a new bullet time!" The original bullet time was "a borderline hack," as Mr. Gaeta recalls it, that started with 120 still cameras firing off film photographs of Mr. Reeves dangling on wires. Those images were stitched together with software to simulate a swooping camera move in slow motion. The successor to that technique is known as volumetric capture. A camera array captures people or spaces from every angle, and then A.I. meshes this video into 3-D footage that can be viewed and manipulated from any perspective.
First Matrix felt serious (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal opinion is that the first Matrix felt a lot more serious than it was perhaps designed to be.
But then the follow-ups are all very cartoonish and comic book like which was their design. I personally feel the success of the first one was because it was accidentally more serious.
The viewer was Neo. No one knew what was going to happen yet so you are also coming out of the Matrix as well when you watch it. Number two and three could not capture that
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I watched them all again recently, and I'm inclined to agree, but in all honesty I don't think any of them have aged well, even the original.
I just found it a bit slow and tired now, the visual effects look atrocious. I appreciate it's important to not judge changing tech too much, but here's the problem, even films from 20 years prior like Star Wars just haven't aged remotely as badly in terms of their effects.
Watching them through again has left me entirely uninterested for this new one. I just have no mo
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My personal opinion is that the first Matrix felt a lot more serious than it was perhaps designed to be.
They accidentally threw in a Big Idea that was about right for its time, and that probably carried its success.
V for Vendetta may well have done a similar thing. Though it has decent actors capable of more than "whoa!".
Their other fare... (*checks wikipedia*)... lots of "meh" and "wtf am I watching anyway? Might as well go watch an Uwe Boll movie.
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The timing of the Columbine shootings played a role in the box office success of the first one, too.
Yawn (Score:1)
Changed has times (Score:2)
Old days: "Special effects are too expensive, let's fake it with clever editing."
New days: "Reality is too expensive, let's fake it with special effects."
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Re: Changed has times (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also done lazily.
The first Jurassic Park film, and most of the Pixar films to date, the animators go out of their way to make the stuff in the computer move the way ot would in real life: dinosaurs and people shift their weight from one foot to the other as they walk, or start or stop running.
I saw the trailer for the new Jurassic Park film recently and it was pathetic. Giant dinosaurs that weigh as much as a city bus look like their floating from wires and just shuffling their feet as they walk. It's
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They're not dinosaurs now, they're "action lizards".
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This?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Looks amazing to me, different trailer perhaps.
Re: Changed has times (Score:2)
The very same. Look at the tricerotops thing at 2:10 lifting both of its right legs and staying perfectly level.
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Some nerd did out the math and it looks pretty close but won't ever quite look as real as Tom Cruise actually climbing the Dubai tower.
Practical effects and the fast and the furious (Score:3)
The early fast and the furious we're simple practical car chases not even effects per se. It was visceral. And in the case of Tokyo drift just lyrically beautiful visuals. And even in todays absurdist fast and furious many of the effects are practical like the washing machines flying out of windows . But with the interstitial cgi that gives them super powers it lessens the gleeful awe of practical expulsions and destructive mayhem in the screen.
It's also why the old jackie chan films were just crazy fun
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FTFY:
Old days: Let's make a move with a good story, good characters and character development, and special effects aren't that important since the other two will bring people in and have them watching it more than once since it is engaging rather than overwhelming.
New days: Watch it once who cares. Get tired of cartoon effects and loud booms and stop going to the movies. Watch shows that have good stories and character development and with just as good if not better production quality as movies, but on TV o
Re: Changed has times (Score:3)
Indeed. The original Matrix film was a good story supported by cutting edge special effects and cinematography. The subsequent two were increasingly about cashing in on and focusing on the special effects, with story character developments ignored. The third was so poor that I have still have no interest in wasting my time watching it again or any further tired follow-ups still trying to cash in on the first.
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The issue with anything that's expensive in film is that people get paranoid about wasting the money and want to plan shots to the N-th degree. Which wrings the last drop of creativity and spontaneity out of the shoot.
With VFX, the shooting order isn't just 'Storyboard' > ''Acting rehearsal, Set design, Blocking" > "Shoot". There's a 'previz' stage after storyboarding which means they plan every shot in excruciating detail and replicate it in 3D before shooting the pl
Sequel of sequel of sequel... (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember how the first Matrix movie was a ground-breaking event, with a very captivating plot and stunning special effects (this is where the "Matrix effect", or bullet time, started).
The two other movies were mostly crap, I don't even understand how I got to see the third one. They won't get me again into this.
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I originally felt the same way.... like they should have just stopped after the first Matrix, as a stand-alone movie.
But much more recently, I stumbled onto somebody's web site where they tried to explain everything in the trilogy, and they went into SO much depth about symbolism in the second and third films and what it all meant, etc. etc. -- they had me second-guessing my opinion. It's been a long time since I watched any of the films, and I'm not a big fan of re-watching movies I've seen before. But m
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I still dig the Matrix movies on some level, but I laugh every single time I see the Kernel. Literally making the Kernel look like Colonel Sanders is just a bit too meta-jokey for me to take even remotely seriously.
Re: Sequel of sequel of sequel... (Score:3)
The character you are referring to is called The Architect.
No idea where you got "kernel" from, but it wasn't the movie.
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Memory is a funny thing. Apparently my mind just filled in that little detail for me out of nowhere. Not the first time, probably not the last.
Re: Sequel of sequel of sequel... (Score:2)
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I was really hoping that Matrix 3 was going to show that all the humans were dead long ago, and that these Zion reboots with thousands of Neos were all attempts to recreate the human mental condition so that the machines could eventually bring human
Re:Sequel of sequel of sequel... (Score:4, Insightful)
Movies are like jokes... if you have to explain it, it wasn't good.
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I just watched the two sequels in preparation for the new movie and the highway car chase scene in the second movie with the two albino ghost characters was as good an action scene as anything in the first movie.
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I'm going to be "that guy"... It actually started 12 days prior to the release of The Matrix. Wing Commander was the first movie released to have bullet time special effects of the same type as everyone recognizes in The Matrix. It's rated as absolute trash, but as I was a fan of the video game and CGI in general, I enjoyed it for my own reasons. The effect wasn't used for bullets though, it was used to demonstrate the effects of a starship's space warp engine kicking in during the middle of an action sc
Re: Sequel of sequel of sequel... (Score:2)
Thanks, I didn't know
Re: Sequel of sequel of sequel... (Score:2)
Hah! Neat.
I just watched the trailer on IMDb and while the movie looks wretched, the bullet time effect is right there in 35s.
BBC review (Score:3)
The film is still slick and stylish, with a scattering of provocative philosophical and political concepts, but considering that the franchise used to be synonymous with jaw-dropping innovation, much of The Matrix Resurrections is numbingly familiar. True, the sunglasses have been updated, and the characters now have more tattoos, but those are the most significant advances. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions may have been pretty impenetrable, but even they had a visionary, boundary-pushing ambition which is lacking here.
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non-existenet (Score:2)
> now he is making things for the metaverse
Yeah, that thing that does not exist? I like how its lowercase 'metaverse' like its just something that exists in the world like 'air' and not a proper noun for a named thing like Meta.
Re:No Laurence Fishburne (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you watch the previous sequels? Morpheus' character was destroyed by those movies; bringing him back would have been pointless.
In hindsight, it seems clear that the team that put the Matrix together lacks the ability or luck to recreate the magic. Just like musicians, movie directors/writers/producers have one-hit-wonders.
Both Morpheus and Mr. Smith had real gravitas in the Matrix; the Oracle was enigmatic, ... the sequels were like bad fan-fic that just ruined them all.
As far as I"m concerned there's only one matrix movie.
Bullet-time not an effect, story-telling device (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullet-time wasn't a visual effect, it was a story-telling device.
It had nothing to do with the actors, nor with the subject being presented. It was simply a way of moving the camera.
It could have been achieved in any number of ways. They chose [I presume the most practical] method of doing so, which can certainly be described as a visual effect. But that visual effect was in the method, not in the result.
What we saw was an actor doing what the actor did. Nothing was fake. It was simply filmed with many simultaneous cameras. That's not a visual effect. That's a filming technique -- no different than coloured lights and out-of-frame platforms.
What we want new isn't a novel visual effect. What we want is a novel story-telling device.
Books never had visual effects -- obviously. Any book could have always described a fantastic action scene. But a poorly-written book would describe such a scene, leaving the reader to say: "bullshit. that's not possible". On the other hand, a well-written book would leave the reader saying: "that's awesome, what a hero!"
We're looking for something that let's us believe the fantastic -- ever-increasing fantasies. A visual effect might put it on-screen, but often without being believable.
Speed showed a bus jump across a gap -- one with virtually zero incline, making that moment total horseshit. Spiderman swings effortlessly on webbing, without a single muscle flexing to hold his own bodyweight -- again, horseshit. And we can all list hundreds (if not thousands) of hollywood explosions from handheld small devices with fireballs realistic only of nuclear denotations.
On the other hand, we've seen excellent visual effects that disappear into the story -- so realistically presented that Jason Statham looks like he took lessons from Jackie Chan. I can't tell you if there were wires, or camera-cuts, or magic shoes, or volumetric capture. All I know is that Jackie Chan definitely didn't use any visual effects whatsoever, and that Jason Statham definitely didn't actually do it himself.
That's what we want from the sequel; we want to believe something new. We don't care if it's a visual effect, or something else. Make me believe the story that you're telling.
Last week, I believed that Sandra Bullock could portray a non-comedic character, in a non-pleasant story, without any hint of congeniality. I can't tell you how much of that was the performance, the make-up, the wardrobe, or the writing. But I can tell you that I believed her in the role.
+1 (Score:2)
well said
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Bullet-time wasn't a visual effect, it was a story-telling device.
It had nothing to do with the actors, nor with the subject being presented. It was simply a way of moving the camera.
That's not so. The scene that made the nickname had parts captured from a camera array, and parts that were computer generated. There also were no actual bullets, those were CGI.
The ground-breaking thing they did was in the software that (a) generated a list of key positions to place the cameras, so they would have enough visual information (e.g. textures) to generate the scene with a minimum number of cameras and (b) software to create realistic scenes that were matched with the live action. The entire
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I actually didn't know about the software-to-calculate-optimal-placement. That's pretty slick.
But my argument doesn't change. The fact that there were CG items included, has nothing to do with bullet-time itself -- those items are certainly visual effects, and are beyond the scope of this conversation. That bullet-time technique would have been identical on an apple rolling down a hill, or a snail traversing a log.
I agree with you that coloured lights, et cetera can certainly be considered visual effects
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Interesting, I think your definition requires that visual effects be added in post-production, since criteria (a) precludes anything that's actually captured while shooting. Common special effects like explosions, squibs, moving lights and lasers wouldn't be visual effects, since they would be observable to someone who's on set during shooting. Using wires wouldn't be a visual effect, unless you count the fact that they have to be painted out in post. I'm not sure what you mean by criteria (b) :)
I submit
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I think our definitions are solidifying nicely.
Yes, I would count erasing the wires as a visual effect.
I would also count some non-post techniques as visual effects when they are specifically done for the camera's perspective. For example, in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there's a scene filmed through a car's windshield, pointed at the two cabin occupants. The passenger fades away. It was done with a very old technique of shifting a piece of glass, thus deflecting/refracting/reflecting the acto
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Spiderman swings effortlessly on webbing, without a single muscle flexing to hold his own bodyweight -- again, horseshit.
The fictional character of Spider-Man can lift and throw a car. His own body weight is a such a smaller percentage, that lifting himself is less strenuous than you or me lifting our arms. He is oft depicted as effortlessly holding himself up on a ceiling using one or two fingers, and the biggest problem i have with that is the portion of the ceiling should come down with his fingertips.
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Ha! I honestly never thought about the ceiling!
I'll take your example as a better description of my point, thanks!
Critical review (Score:3)
While the effects were good at the time, and they created that pause and circle around the fighter during a fight, but the first movie was just a good movie. Acting, story, visual style, it had it all. The fight scenes IIRC were what they were most proud of at the time, they went through a lot to make them as good as possible. Also the visual style where they colorized the world based on the mood (like blue for the real world being stale, artificial and depressing)
Wake Up (Score:2)
The new film, like the first, ends with Rage Against the Machine's 'Wake Up'.
Only this time I took it much more literally, as the movie was causing me to fall asleep.
Good riddance. (Score:2)
Maybe if thereâ(TM)s kind of peak VFX, movies can finally get back to telling good stories instead. Or provoke thought.