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Comment by hot_gril | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to avoid sequels, reboots, and other Millennial nostalgia-based movies going to a mainstream theater, and I found it nearly impossible. Accidentally watched Uncharted not realizing it was based on... a video game of all things. It wasn't good. Nothing else was good either the past 2 years.

I'm not partial to old movies, but there are some gems, and they show how much you can do without modern VFX. I don't know what modern live-action movies were even improved by fancy effects besides The Matrix, which was awesome. Even when the scene is about action, it's cooler when it's realistic, like the Blues Brothers chase where they're actually driving 118 MPH and 104 real cars are getting wrecked.

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What’s funny is that considering the waste and negligence described in the article, I bet it’s cheaper to wreck 104 real cars than to pay a VFX team to do it.

The Revenant is one of the last movies in recent memory that seemed to do something novel.

If we’re going to primarily be inundated with highly computer-influenced content, I prefer it to not try to look perfectly real which is why I’ve really enjoyed some of the animated series that have popped up recently. I’ll also admit that I’ve seen Into the Spider-Verse because my friends wouldn’t let me avoid it. I’ll give Marvel a pass on that one—the animation is amazing.

> I bet it’s cheaper to wreck 104 real cars than to pay a VFX team to do it.

This reminds me: you know that scene in Tenet where a Boeing goes into building? It was neither VFX nor a model. It was a full size, real Boeing. Nolan said it was cheaper.

> I’ll also admit that I’ve seen Into the Spider-Verse because my friends wouldn’t let me avoid it. I’ll give Marvel a pass on that one—the animation is amazing.

Credit where credit is due: Spider-verse is the result of the phenomenal teams at Sony Pictures Imageworks. They absolutely nailed this movie, I could rewatch it countless times and still be amazed.

SPI has also produced some amazing technology for the industry, such as being the originator of the Arnold render engine, OpenColorIO (OCIO), and Open Shading Language (OSL).

You should also try Arcane if you haven’t yet. The animation is equally amazing and very expressive.

Netflix could not accept my payment because of some clerical error on their side and they were unwilling to fix it when I called trying to give them money. They literally could not take my money so I’ve been without Netflix for the last year, sadly. I’m a little salty because what company would deliver a canned “we can’t do that due to system error maybe try later idk lol” message to a customer when money is on the line? It’s absurd. /rant

The Matrix was great because the VFX supported the practical FX.

In Matrix reloaded they replaced them.

The result was inferior.

If you want to avoid reboots in theaters, you would have had to stop watching films in the 1930s.

Are you serious?? Lots of awesome new films come out every year.

I'm not sure what you mean. My example was a non-reboot 1999 movie.

> I've been trying to avoid sequels, reboots, and other Millennial nostalgia-based movies going to a mainstream theater, and I found it nearly impossible. Accidentally watched Uncharted not realizing it was based on... a video game of all things. It wasn't good. Nothing else was good either the past 2 years.

Same, but for a different reason: I saw too much of how the "sausage gets made", and watching an artistically shitty Marvel blockbuster just doesn't provide enough entertainment to "zone out" of the human suffering that goes into producing that stuff.

Inception, Interstellar, District 9, Minority Report, Lord of the Rings, etc.

>it was based on... a video game of all things

And the Uncharted games are great. They have good characterization, good writing and funny comedy bits. None of these were present in the movie.

> It wasn't good

Was there ever a movie made based on a video game which was good? I can't think of one.

Resident Evil

Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Postal, Detective Pikachu, Sonic 1&2. Not necessary the greatest of cinema, but all of them did a good job of turning the source material into a movie. Probably helps that the source material of all of them is relative simple and leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

Also Steins;Gate, though that's a visual novel turned anime, not a regular game. But probably the best example of staying very close to the source material and succeeding.

I've only seen Mortal Kombat out of these and I guess I have to agree with this one. It was just as cheesy as the game and it worked well.

Silent Hill was pretty decent IMO

Elf Bowling loljk Maybe you can count the original animated Pokémon movies as based on a video game.

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