We can agree to disagree. I didn’t think Thanos was very compelling at all.
As for Oscars, when the Academy gave the best picture award to Chariots of Fire over Kramer vs Kramer and All That Jazz, they lost all credibility as an objective measure of film. So f-the academy.
Actually if you pay very close attention, site lines are not always perfect including in the MCU and including with Thanos. Are they very difficult to detect, yes. But, they weren’t perfection.
I understand CGI, from its very early days. I helped with the render farms for Toy Story. There are a lot of basic rendering flaws in that film. Most people totally miss them. I saw them at the screening the day before the premiere.
I am not saying that vfx is bad. The people who do that work are true artists and craftspeople. I think film has gone to far on relying on VFX to makeup for often average storytelling, average writing, average directing, and average acting. There is this delusion that things are “supposed to be real”. The entire concept of stylistic approaches to any of those crafts has been mostly left behind.
Audiences by and large don’t seem to want (or are incapable, perhaps) of actually using their own imagination.
It’s not to say that Brolin’s performance as Thanos was bad, it certainly wasn’t. But, it left me whelmed at best. And I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a lousy audience, because when I watch live action film or theater all I look for are the flaws.
There have certainly been some vfx that I am highly impressed with. The thinning down of pre-soldier serum Steve Rodgers was a masterful use of vfx.
As your video pointed out using Jurassic Park it has its vfx flaws, but it advanced the story. It also didn’t rely on subtle, micro gestures for its cgi performances either.
And that is perhaps where vfx and their use often fall down. They are built on data and it is only as good as the data. You can raise the same eyebrow the same amount and yet it can have a multiplicity of expressions. Based on traits that are basically rooted in the subconscious and conscious of the actor. That immediate energy based on the characters intention. Sorry but that isn’t going to always render. An artist can take a decent guess at it, and they might guess right, but they as often, as not, guess wrong. That’s not the “fault” of the vfx artist, it’s not the fault of the actor. If anything, that falls to the director and/or the writer for not making the character’s intention stronger.
Perhaps the film industry needs to acknowledge the pitfalls, but to do that, they would have to be honest with themselves and their audience. That is something I don’t expect to see anytime soon. VFX is like music, someone can hear a song and it speaks to them, others can hear it and think this is really garbage. Both opinions are valid, and it doesn’t matter if more people think one way then another. Some folks think Thanos and Rocket were great characters, perhaps even a majority of people. They left me whelmed at best.
Who’s right and who’s wrong? That is a matter we disagree on.
