👉 To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days by clicking brilliant.org/CGY/. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription. This is the first video I’ve ever been really nervous to post because it’s my first time addressing some “bad” CGI - Although, I’ve tried to be really fair to it. I also really enjoyed the second half of this video where we discussed all the pros of a CGI suit because those certainly have been overlooked for many years - Especially all of the Lantern Corps stuff. I think that was really impressive and for sure deserves more credit. But yea, how do you guys feel about this suit? Did this video change your opinion on it at all? Or is it still bad 😂
All I have to say. When you’re 9 years old. You don’t really care. I loved this movie when it came out. But I can see how an actor can hate it. I think they did great on blending the cgi with the heads. Forget about the ability to form anything you want.
Another huge problem is that the suit is supposed to be glowing but there's no green light reflecting on his face or his surroundings. That's why his head and body don't look connected.
I agree, adding some actual green LEDs to the mocap suit would have helped tremendously. I'll say this for the movie, the director's cut is nowhere near as bad as theatrical. They cut some really good scenes.
Good point. I liked the movie, (with a minor cringe or two) and had to explain numerous times to the clueless, the suit is comprised of pure energy, not solid fabric, which is why they opted for CGI. However while I thought the suit was passable in that context, yes, a glow would probably have enhanced the illusion.
Funny thing about the iron man “floating head” is that I actually saw a cosplayer on Reddit who talked about how people kept saying she photoshopped her face onto armor… She kept insisting her and her bf made the armor, 3D printed and custom fitted and everything… the issue is that the metallic paint of the full body armor without the helmet creates an odd effect where the armor and head appear to be lit completely differently. Thats what makes it look fake, is the mismatched lighting. She literally had the Iron Man effect in real legit armor anyway! The people in the Reddit thread were talking about how the CG artists probably used light simulation and made the suit look real, but not right. There’s a difference. Sometimes CGI has to fudge things because our eye is so used to a certain look, like Hollywoo explosions and stuff.. so instead of making it “look right” they made it “look real” but the problem is that in that specific situation, “real” looks fake because of a trick of the light! Haha So this girl made a few posts showing the armor being made, and how they took the photos and inside with harsh lighting it looks fine… outside in softer daylight it immediately started looking like a fake floating head stuck on armor. But a cool thing was that by removing one sleeve of armor, the effect goes away.. it gave our brain another reference for human skin and shadows and lighting and it seemed much less fake! Our brains are so weird… light is so weird. It’s so complicated and small things can mess with our perception of what’s real, or what looks “wrong” to us even if we can’t explain what or why it feels wrong…
as an artist who uses references it’s so weirdly interesting seeing how differently skin reacts to lightning when compared with clothing or in this case armour. Like there’s so many different effects going on at all times like sub surface scattering making skin look like it’s glowing and bounced lighting changing shadow colours, it gets really hard to make it a cohesive piece
For me it's photography. I had my family members and friends thinking that some of my outstanding pictures are photoshoped. Yes, I love to make silly images as joke but it's funny and sad when people think you manipulated the few pictures that you honestly captured at the right time and near perfect lighting condition that the image looked far too beautiful or surreal to be real.
For years I've only heard bad things about this movie. Bad CGI, bad writing, bad movie. A few years ago I finally decided to watch it and I couldn't see any of that. I genuinely enjoyed it.
Worst thing about this movie was the lack of imagination with what a Green Lantern could do with his powers. It wall mini-guns and F-16s or some crap. The only thing limiting a Green Lanterns powers is his imagination. Sometimes it kinds of feels like he craps on his own movie to mimic the publics reaction. And the publics reaction was shaped by the critics. A Green Lantern movie would absolutely have to require a ton of CGI, and this movie wasn’t any better or worse than the MCU movies.
The crazy thing is, and I know a lot of people say this about every movie with a director's cut, a lot of the story problems aren't in the director's cut. It takes the movie from a 5 to at least a solid 7.
@Agent-57 yeah, it also didn't have a major moment where we see why the ring chose Hal. Never gave us a moment where he does something impossible with will power.
With Ryan Reynolds trying to make every possible joke with Green Lantern and the General Public hating on the movie, I'll say this: This movie was the only movie we had at home on DVD and we used to watch this movie over and over again. I just liked the movie and I loved to watch the action scenes over and over again.....
I have treat he’s it many times as well and not just be aide it was all I had available. It’s fun entertainment. People just like having stuff to complain about!
1000% if Reynolds didn't try to keep milking the GL joke throughout his career, the movie wouldn't be nearly as hated. It was never amazing, but people just pilled on it
@@wheeler6768agreed, he even killed himself in Deadpool 2 when he was about to read the Green Lantern script. Didn't he meet his wife filming this movie? He acts like this is his worst failure.
@@lelecoleco_bangu6924 he is one of the funniest guys actually and really gifted when it comes to jokes, their delivery and timing! pure genious! He stands out!
The idea that it was the worst cg ever is absurd. The suit itself looked amazing, even if it didn’t blend perfectly with Ryan’s head. If the film had been better, nobody would have cared about the imperfect cg.
These types of comments really make me happy. We put so much work into this movie and when it came out it was panned. I get it, I've worked on plenty of crap, but this one was special for me. It was my first time working on a mega budget film.
@@RichardServello I really liked this movie. Not only CGI part , story was also pretty good for me. The most amazing part is constructs were actually constructs and not some space magic effects. Many Green Lanterns just use a green dust going around instead of guns/bombs/shields.
@@RichardServellothe CGI was good for GL and felt it worked for the suit as it is just a construct made from the green light of will emitted from the ring. The guardians could have used another couple of weeks they seems like they did not get as much time as needed.
@@RichardServello regardless of the public response, you should still be proud of this, a CG suit like this was super ambitious for a 2011 movie, and the fact that it looked as good as it did throughout the movie is really impressive. It's not perfect, but the general response is definitely excessive, I think most people just jumped on the hate train because it was the popular thing to do. I really enjoyed the movie and the suit as a kid
@@RichardServello I never had any issues with the CGI. I've always thought it looked cool with the energy suit. But the floating head problem caused by a disconnect in the lighting really is unfortunate. So it's quite disheartening how Ryan Reynolds keep putting all the blame on that. He seems like a true history revisionist. Same thing he did to Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Apparently he didn't know the character(?) he signed on to play THAT version and then when it was panned he put all the blame on the producer/director/concept artists. And of course, they are to blame as it's ultimately their vision for these things, but he did agree to play THAT character. Maybe he should've read a Deadpool comic before. And then when it seems he ultimately did, the real Deadpool came along. But I'm not a fan of Reynolds at all. Not an interesting actor and he isn't even that funny
I kid you not, I could never see the problem with the Green Lantern suit. Sure, it can look weird at times, but it never bothered me that much. It's crazy though how it looks a lot better than CGI in some modern films.🤔
I agree. I mean, if i really started dissecting every frame of the movie it might start to break down, but i never really looked that hard. My problems with the movie were in the script, not the visuals.
My problem with the suit was that it looked too tight, like someone repainted his skin to look like the suit instead of him actually wearing the suit. His mask was even worse, it especially looked like some painted his skin with a green plastic texture. It didn't look like the mask was on top of his skin, it looked like it was in his skin.
Agreed - watched »Green Lantern« four times, liked it (as I liked the Ironman stuff any other popcorn flicks), never thought there was any problem with heads »floating« on suits.
Constructs were really interesting. There were SO MANY that none were art directed before they got to comp. We would get EVERY energy pass they came up with and everyone would look dev a single construct, then the best design would win. My look of the brick wall was used in the training scene. Might not seem like much, BUT it was the only non-glossy construct so it was fun to create something that still fit in the world but was technically different.
@@santos8468 it's the best because there are none better than it. It's also the worst because there are none worse than it. My comment was for the algo and the LOLS(small lol in this case 😢)
"CGI" is the go-to complaint when people just want to turn off their brains and regurgitate a popular albeit nonsensical sentiment People who hate on the use of CGI in a freakin SUPERHERO MOVIE are just... Fake comic fans at BEST. CGI is the best way to transfer that comic feel to the big screen when it comes to heroes with actual super powers
0:49 Hell no! When it came out, I enjoyed it, (with a minor cringe or two) and spent a few moments in homes, bars explaining why the suit was as it was. WHICH IS NOT THAT FRIGGING BAD IN THE CONTEXT, THAT THEY WENT WITH CGI BECAUSE THE SUITE IS COMPOSED OF LANTERN ENERGY AND NOT A FABRIC AND NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK SOLID!
Yeah, when i first heard they were planning on doing a full CGI suit, I was imagining something more visually interesting like having the lantern logo projected in front of their chest like in the comics. What they gave us could have been accomplished better with practical light-up suits like in Tron Legacy (which came out the year before). Then, even if they needed to touch something up, they would have had better reference footage, and ambient green light on everything in the area.
The story. The fucking story. I was sold with Ryan Reynolds’s as Green Lantern, but after leaving OA the movie is just really bad story to a charismatic character.
I 100% agree! Re-watching as an adult now, the bad story direction was what made it a hard watch. Like the toby Spiderman movies, but I'll stop there... 😬
For years I believed I was the only soul that didn't hate this movie. Yes, it had a bad script and the CGI was noticeable, but I always praised their character design and world building. One of the scenes that stuck in my head since I watched it, was when we got to see all the lanterns and see the alien design with their unique suit/armors. But outside from Hal Jordan and Parallax, the concept and consistency with the lanterns was truly enjoyable for me and I respect the ambition and their efforts. TBH I think this movie became one of those memes that everyone knows they must trash on it because it's fun.
Same. It seems like everyone’s complaints with this movie are them comparing this to what could have been (with the script being leaked earlier into production, or people wanting a physical suit) as opposed to just judging it for what it is. It’s not a great movie by any means, but everyone treats it like it’s unwatchable, it’s just fine.
@@basti.9022 I've been a fan of Green Lantern since I was a little kid in the late 80'-90's, not a superfan I just know about the lore and stuff. Reynolds campy acting style ruined the character, good for Deadpool, bad for Green Lantern. Also making the movie an origin story that's pretty hard to fit into a couple hours, especially when they also squeeze in the Parallax character, which was actually the end of the Hal Jordan era before it was rebooted in comics. They made a movie with the origin, the death, and the reboot of Hal Jordan rewritten into one and it's a MESS. On top of that, they used childish elements of the comics as far as his powers and heroic feats. As if making the movie for a demographic that's not even going to be interested in that character. And that's why people say it's bad. As a stand-alone movie it's passable but it got dragged by the fans.
Nope! I'll "die on the hill" that the production design was A++ and it made sense that his suit is a CGI suit because it's a RING CONSTRUCT in the comics.
While you're 100% correct about the fact IT'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK UNCANNY, you have to realize that this film was made in order to bring the hero to WIDER AUDIENCES. What they should have done is have Hal Jordan make a "Human Spider" tier suit, then through sheer willpower alone have that uncanny suit manifest upon him. Would have really helped out on character development, helped the audience see the uncanny suit as an upgrade, as well as being able to sneak in some goofy jokes/references. Won't lie, I know I just typed the "wider audience" blasphemy spiel. What I'm trying to point out is that they failed at their true intentions.
IMO having at least one character acknowledge the suit/constructs looking weird because they're basically imagination brought to life by the ring would have gone a long way to getting people to have the CGI less. So many people on the films release complained that the ring constructs didn't look realistic, when of course that was never the goal. If viewers all heard it in universe that the constructs are supposed to look like they're somehow less than real it'd help with that. It's 100% a having a nice idea, but lacking the ability to put it across effectively.
That would have helped...A LOT. Also didn't help that a lot of the blue screen shots were dark and magenta and several of the green screens were yellow. Overall production was less than stellar and gave us more than a few headaches!
Thank you for doing this. I've honestly never understood the hate this film gets. I think it's quite good and the cgi works well imo because the whole green lantern power is making these constructs. It makes perfect sense that the suit would match that, and I've never had a problem suspending disbelief watching this films. And it's one of the few superhero films that I don't mind rewatching many times. Plus the whole Green Lantern theme of conquering fear is great.
I've honestly liked this movie since it came out and even have the art book where you can see ultra HQ images of the different corps members. It's pretty funny to hear people rag on the cgi in it, particularly the suit. I still maintain that the vfx team did an incredible job and people only say it looks terrible because they know it's cgi going in. A really strong case I feel for it was just a personal experience I had where I was watching the deleted scenes that have no finished vfx work on them so it was just Ryan and Mark Strong in the mocap suits talking. My mother happened to walk through the room at the time and said "what are they wearing?" I had to explain that the suits in the film proper were fully cgi and she'd watched that with me in the past. Just never realized.
Even though it was considered bad at the time, the CGI Suits don't actually look that bad and haven't gotten much worse as time goes on. It was moreso the disconnect between how Ryan's head and the Suit moved. The body actually blends in with the footage fairly well at times and it's really only the Mask that constantly looks horrible. Now I am being loose with the term "blends in" because it's constantly glowing & reminding you that it's fake but the alien GLs do look like they're in the scenes. When they're not attaching a real head to it, the CGI Suits work. So rather than a full CGI Suit, they should've had a practical suit that was just the dark greens and then add the highlights & glowing with CGI. Even if they'd end up replacing the whole thing with CGI, the animators would've had better reference footage if Ryan wore a tight suit. At least we're able to learn from it, like I never noticed that the movement at the bottom of the neck was why it's easy to tell when a real head is placed on top of CGI. It explains why that part is usually hidden like with Iron Man. On a side note, was there even an explanation for why his eyes turn Blue when wearing the suit? I'm assuming the character had blue eyes in the comics and this was a way to pay homage but the constant color change looks bad and makes the CGI mask even more unbelievable when Ryan's eyes are being edited too.
Even just having a real collar could have saved so much labor. That said it would have entailed some compromise of not looking as otherwordly, not as much like a perfect second skin.
Yeah I had that thought a few minutes into the video and couldn't not think it. A practical suit with the same effects would look much better. I also don't think the suit looks that bad, my big thing is the mask. It's too small and tight
His eye turn blue to mimick the way he looks in the comic where his eyes are pure white when he wears the domino mask, I guess it was a middle ground because they figured completely white eyes in live action was too creepy for kids or something
Y'know, looking back at these clips, I genuinely think the biggest visual problem with the suits is the colour grading - the green is *way* too heavily saturated to look tangible next to the live-action elements. Any shot with a primarily digital environment, the suits look great, but in shots where they're the only digital element (especially darker or backlit ones) the luminance of the green is way too high to look like it fits in with the rest of the shot. I remember Corridor Crew mentioning a similar issue in the original live action Sonic trailer - his fur's so intensely blue that it doesn't look like it's reacting to the ambient light enough
My uncle who was a huge green lantern fan took me to see this movie before his condition got worse and while it’s not the greatest it has a special place in my heart. Thank you for bringing positivity to this movie!
unironically love this movie. it also gave us possibly the most beautiful Barbie face ever created with the carol ferris doll. Not to mention bringing blake and ryan together. 💜
As a result of watching this video, I had a dream last night where Ryan Reynalds became my roommate and I was hanging out with him for a few weeks and the entire time he was kinda rude and didn’t like me but he was also really insecure about being in green lantern so I spent the time trying to convince him that green lantern wasn’t actually THAT bad of a movie and he shouldn’t be so hard on himself especially when the problems with the movie weren’t his fault. Over the time he grew to be a bit kinder to me and to himself
This is the first video I'm watching on your channel and I just wanted to say what a fucking refreshing video this is. With all the negativity on the internet, being able to pull up something universally hated and being able to see through it and pull out the positives and the effort of the crew from it is amazing! Thanks for this and if you ever read this, hope you have a great day!
So I'm in the process of making my first feature length and watching this really did change my opinion of the movie. I appreciate the new perspective and that's a lot of true things to consider in practice. It's not easy. Love the channel, man
@@pingaswingas1 The eyes were actually pretty simple! Rather than using CGI eyes layered on top of the suit, they simply stretched and squashed the eyes of the suit in Photoshop!
I always loved the suit design. The glowing emblem with the viens glowing throughout the suit was so cool! Had they lighted the environment and his face better it would have looked better.
Not gonna lie, I've kinda always been okay with the CGI suit. 1) It's the first time they've tried doing the GL suit in live action (to my knowledge) and 2) How else did you think they were gonna make it. it's a suit made out of energy that's in a CGI world, its gonna look a little weird. What they should do in the future though, is to have a practical suit that they can use and add CGI effects to in post. A mocap suit can be used when the suit is being put on or taken off.
Oh, another little bit of insider info. The rooftop scene was a reshoot WAY into post production. Ryan was in Africa shooting another movie that he had to shave his head for. The entire sequence was shot in a hotel room drapped with green fabric. He was wearing a TERRIBLE wig, which was subsequently replaced by CG. I had one shot in that sequence...it looks SO BAD. LOL. In case you didn't know :)
Anytime you don't see Ryan's face he's fully CG. We would have a butt reel every week of all the shots that were from behind to not have to deal with footage.
It wasnt even the muscle movements and all that that made the cgi look bad. It was the fact that cgi didnt even look that realistic back then so doing half and half just never looked right. The head looks way to real compared to his suit because it was his real head. It wasnt a bad movie necessarily, it was just way too overambitious for its time. 11:40 is a great example
honestly the suit is the easiest to meme on, but the VFX is probably the best part i love how they made the suits unique ... the actual movie though? yeah it wasn't very good. & yeah as another person in the comments pointed out, the fact that there's no actual green light makes it blend less; so yeah maybe they could have used physical suits with green LEDs for the filming & add the CGI on top
Weirdly enough, my problem was never with the CGI of the suit. I was used to the 90's CGI, so I actually found that part somewhat impressive. It was the plot of the movie that I feel was the bigger failure to me. They set up several plot threads that felt like they'd be better served over longer story arcs and instead of doing the pacing to match, decided to squish the entire thing into one movie that felt rushed and didn't have the chance to really grow into itself. I have a DVD copy of it that I save for nights with friends, usually for MST3K type riffing.
The Iron Spider suit covers his head mostly of the time, and don't mark his body muscles, so i don't think is comparable. Bcs once they cover Tom Holland's face, it's just 100% CGI body without need to blend with a real person. Ryan's face was always visible.
Think of how much money and how many skilled artists worked in service of this suit, and wonder why the heck they didn't put just a little more time and effort into the script.
We had the entire building in Culver filled with artists AND the building in the culver studios lot next door. We also had a facility in New Mexico. Smurfs was going at the same time so we had to have an additional render farm brought into the parking lot in trucks! Power outages also happened often.
I thought it was genuinely pretty good. Like, when I was a kid I thought it was pretty cool and looking back now, the concept of the idea of the suit and end result was still pretty solid
tbh, i rarely actually even noticed the CGI blunders in many of the movies mentioned. i guess a big part of it was that i wasn't exactly looking out for it, but another aspect of it was that i was able to immerse myself into the movies and look past the technical flaws
It's fascinating how they insisted on having the suit be fully CGI instead of just using a real one and using CGI to then add all those energy effects. Most problems like this shouldn't even be problems. When they are, it means your approach is wrong.
That wouldn’t really make the process simpler. In orther to add the light effects, they’d still need to make a full cg suit to match the movements of the practical one. And even if you only render and comp in the lights, it can still feel janky if the cg double doesn’t match well
@@bernnymwamba7522 yeah, you now not only need to perfectly match the head movement, but every other body part as well. if you do the suit full cgi end comp out the mocap, it is way easier and probably cheaper as well.
Hal is notorious for being unimaginative with his constructs, so they got that accurate in the film. Constructs are convoluted as hell anyway a bunch of characters construct things they couldnt possibly imagine in detail
I know I'm in the extreme minority here....but I didn't actually dislike the movie. Not gonna be on my list of favorites or anything, but I don't mind it for a casual watch.
Could they really not make a practical translucent suit with controlled green LEDs or fiber optics? That would have been hella amazing. Doesnt have to be as thick as the Superman Lives costume, but in a similar vein?
The CGI in this film was great. The problems with the film were the pacing, the writing, the lack of more action showcasing the powers, it's a whole lot of fluff that isn't about Green Lantern doing Green Lantern things.
I always genuinely thought the CGI in this movie was truly sick. You can always notice a new detail that you didn't see before with the alien lanterns, in Oa, or with the ligthbuildings.
If the reason they chose the full cgi suit was for an alien look and do interesting things with the lighting effects on the suit, why didn't they just do a cloth suit with a cgi overlay for the effects? As you point out the constructs look really good and they work with the look of the cgi, if the suit was practical and had those effects on it I think you'd still have those connections and would look great
If they had green bulbs of light on the suit as well it'd light up the faces of characters, making it seem more real... O wait. Green suit, greenscreen... I think I get why they didn't have a suit and green light. Tho bluescreens are a thing. 🤔
Thank you for making this video! It's been 13 years I think since I first watched this movie as a teen and my opinion is still the same. The cgi looked amazing and it still does! Your video proves it without a doupt.
It makes sense to use a cgi suit though. The suit is a construct like all the other ring constructs. It makes sense to have it look consistent with all the effects.
i always liked it. it looks "otherworldly". and i'm actually something of a VFX artist myself :D i just don't think the GL suit is that bad. i think a lot of people see something "different" and their only interpretation is "bad".
I honestly think you missed the (imo) biggest problem: that the suit isnt based in reality. Staynes armor is very grounded, detailed in ways that not only the vfx artists but the audience too were very familiar with. With the energy suit theres nothing to sort of compare it to real life, so it sticks out even more as just being fake
I think the only thing that makes the suit and constructs feel disconnected to people is the lack of green bounced light on the face. They seem to radiate light, but none of the light appears on the actors or environment.
I never thought the cgi looked bad but its nice to see just how ambitious it was in context. Based on the clips, the thing that hurts most is the dull camerawork, likely a consequence of the cg suit and greenscreen.
I promise you that if the movie was actually good and didn't make Parallax a gigantic poop monster, people would have easily overlooked the horrible suit
Don't think that didn't go unnoticed. It was a running joke in the studio that he was a giant poop monster. There was a joke shot when GL flies out of the warehouse and someone animated Mr. Hankey flying after him.
Excellent analysis. Thank you. Might the entire concept be saddled with same challenge that Superman suffers from, namely, when anything thing is possible, there isn't enough tension in the story?
On a side note. I remember walking away from this movie feeling like the movie they wanted to make was the Yellow Lanterns Vs the Green Lanterns but they needed to make this movie first to set the scene. The villains make the hero and the villains in this movie feel cobbled together. Vector Hammond felt like he was only there because the audience wouldn't connect with a giant floating CGI head that was Parrallax. Meanwhile, Sinestro was set up to be a sequel villain with real motive and depth.
I, to this day, don’t understand why this movie got so much hate. Maybe it’s because I saw it through the eyes of a child but it was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Maybe I should rewatch it as an adult.
Honestly, I appreciate the explanation bc I don't think ppl realize how hard that stuff really is. And like you said, I think it actually captures what the comics were trying to convey. As a fan of the comics it was really cool to see it come to life. I think most of the problem the film sufferS from is more revolved around the writing / casting. I don't think RR was the right choice for the role.
0:30 it blows my mind how so much more CHI is used than you would ever imagine in Marvel movies. Like why not just make physical suits for the actors? It would cost WAY less time and money to do that, instead of CGI-ing in the suits. Completely unnecessary for them to do that.
This just explained why book to cartoon is so much better (most of the time) than book/cartoon to irl. Without cgi magical elements of a can feel lacking but with it they can feel awkward.
honestly, i never thought the CGI was that bad, and enjoyed MOST of the movie (though there are certainly issues I missed watching this when I was younger). I also think I always, sort of intrinsically understood WHY the suits were all CGI, it's consistent with the constructs as you said, but maybe it could have benefited from a partial suit being practical, and then have the CGI build on, and overlay on top of that, just to ground it a little, and maybe solve the neck problem by having a real collar
What you say here matches with my impressions when I watched this movie years ago. I felt like they should have taken a Tron approach. Giving Reynolds an actual suit that looks like a lantern suit, but has CSO elements ON it that can be digitally replaced or built on... Instead of a blank suit with mocap. They could have easily incorporated things in a way where most of the body would have been real and only the effects layered on top mattered. And would have been just that - layers. Not a full replace!
Great argument. So, what you're saying is Doctor Strange's third eye and Thor Love and Thunder's floating heads are actually good effects because it's impossible to do in a practical way.
I think one thing people forget when bashing CGI is that vfx artists don’t want to create something that looks bad, why would they? I’d argue that 9 times out of 10, it’s not a lack of skill or artistry, but a lack of budget or clear art direction.
Hey, just found your channel and just wanted to say loving your content so far! Seeing your Spider-Man 2 video compare practical effects and CGI when used in conjunction, I'd love if you did a video on Real Steel
The movie (and this video) is a valuable record of the progress in the art of capturing and reproducing the minute details of the human body movements of a professional actor toward the goal of becoming believably a living human body going through the experiences portrayed in the movie.
I applaud you for defending CG artists, whose work mostly falls short due to decisions made by people not associated with the visual effects companies. Regardless of the flaws, I never understood the criticism of the suit. There are plenty of elements deserving of criticism for the movie (💩☁), but in my opinion the suit isn't one of them. As you stated it was energy formed into a suit. As such it wasn't physical material clinging to his body, so the justification for the wonky definition is that the suit looked like Hal's mental idea of what it should look like. From your research it seems they actually tried materials and techniques to create a physical suit and simply couldn't make it work.
I think the better solution would have been to have gone with a practical suit and then added VFX touches to it. Because nothing about the CGI suit looks something somebody couldn’t have physically made.
I never thought the movie was terrible, but it was just a hard one to translate for the screen. Being able to create anything with the power of imagination and willpower including your own uniform was an uphill battle to properly depict. I think it worked with surprising consistency, but it wasn't perfect.
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This is the first video I’ve ever been really nervous to post because it’s my first time addressing some “bad” CGI - Although, I’ve tried to be really fair to it.
I also really enjoyed the second half of this video where we discussed all the pros of a CGI suit because those certainly have been overlooked for many years - Especially all of the Lantern Corps stuff. I think that was really impressive and for sure deserves more credit.
But yea, how do you guys feel about this suit? Did this video change your opinion on it at all? Or is it still bad 😂
i saw the movie as a kid, i thought the suit was awesome
All I have to say. When you’re 9 years old. You don’t really care. I loved this movie when it came out. But I can see how an actor can hate it. I think they did great on blending the cgi with the heads. Forget about the ability to form anything you want.
Another huge problem is that the suit is supposed to be glowing but there's no green light reflecting on his face or his surroundings. That's why his head and body don't look connected.
I agree, adding some actual green LEDs to the mocap suit would have helped tremendously. I'll say this for the movie, the director's cut is nowhere near as bad as theatrical. They cut some really good scenes.
Damn it! I never noticed this before and now it's all I can see in every scene even on the all cgi characters lmao smh
It was an issue lightsabers had before the started using practical LED’S.
Good point. I liked the movie, (with a minor cringe or two) and had to explain numerous times to the clueless, the suit is comprised of pure energy, not solid fabric, which is why they opted for CGI. However while I thought the suit was passable in that context, yes, a glow would probably have enhanced the illusion.
Exactly! There needs to be more light emanating from the suit, or (which would be much easier) way more ambient light effecting the suit.
Funny thing about the iron man “floating head” is that I actually saw a cosplayer on Reddit who talked about how people kept saying she photoshopped her face onto armor…
She kept insisting her and her bf made the armor, 3D printed and custom fitted and everything… the issue is that the metallic paint of the full body armor without the helmet creates an odd effect where the armor and head appear to be lit completely differently. Thats what makes it look fake, is the mismatched lighting. She literally had the Iron Man effect in real legit armor anyway!
The people in the Reddit thread were talking about how the CG artists probably used light simulation and made the suit look real, but not right. There’s a difference. Sometimes CGI has to fudge things because our eye is so used to a certain look, like Hollywoo explosions and stuff.. so instead of making it “look right” they made it “look real” but the problem is that in that specific situation, “real” looks fake because of a trick of the light! Haha
So this girl made a few posts showing the armor being made, and how they took the photos and inside with harsh lighting it looks fine… outside in softer daylight it immediately started looking like a fake floating head stuck on armor. But a cool thing was that by removing one sleeve of armor, the effect goes away.. it gave our brain another reference for human skin and shadows and lighting and it seemed much less fake!
Our brains are so weird… light is so weird. It’s so complicated and small things can mess with our perception of what’s real, or what looks “wrong” to us even if we can’t explain what or why it feels wrong…
as an artist who uses references it’s so weirdly interesting seeing how differently skin reacts to lightning when compared with clothing or in this case armour. Like there’s so many different effects going on at all times like sub surface scattering making skin look like it’s glowing and bounced lighting changing shadow colours, it gets really hard to make it a cohesive piece
That's actually really interesting.
Do you have a link to this? Curious how the cosplay looks like
For me it's photography. I had my family members and friends thinking that some of my outstanding pictures are photoshoped. Yes, I love to make silly images as joke but it's funny and sad when people think you manipulated the few pictures that you honestly captured at the right time and near perfect lighting condition that the image looked far too beautiful or surreal to be real.
Name of cosplayer?
Honestly, the VFX of this movie isn't even that bad.. I've seen worst in the last few years for sure. It was just a bad movie overall
It's not a bad movie!
It could have been much better!
Honestly the movie wasn't that bad, sometimes it feels like DC movies get unnecessary hate for no reason
For years I've only heard bad things about this movie. Bad CGI, bad writing, bad movie.
A few years ago I finally decided to watch it and I couldn't see any of that. I genuinely enjoyed it.
The Mask looks really weird, but there are way more bad movies out there... some people expect that every movies has to top everything else...
Worst thing about this movie was the lack of imagination with what a Green Lantern could do with his powers. It wall mini-guns and F-16s or some crap. The only thing limiting a Green Lanterns powers is his imagination.
Sometimes it kinds of feels like he craps on his own movie to mimic the publics reaction. And the publics reaction was shaped by the critics. A Green Lantern movie would absolutely have to require a ton of CGI, and this movie wasn’t any better or worse than the MCU movies.
That bit about that alien flying as if he was swimming while Reynold's character flies rigidly like a jet blew my mind. What an amazing detail!
I'll just come out and say it: this movie's problem is not the CGI, it's the story itself.
The crazy thing is, and I know a lot of people say this about every movie with a director's cut, a lot of the story problems aren't in the director's cut. It takes the movie from a 5 to at least a solid 7.
@@Cotygeek Might watch it later, been a while since I last saw it!
Yup… the cgi is actually great here… the story not so much..
It basic. Mid. Offers nothing to remember. The villain is the worst part.
@Agent-57 yeah, it also didn't have a major moment where we see why the ring chose Hal. Never gave us a moment where he does something impossible with will power.
With Ryan Reynolds trying to make every possible joke with Green Lantern and the General Public hating on the movie, I'll say this: This movie was the only movie we had at home on DVD and we used to watch this movie over and over again. I just liked the movie and I loved to watch the action scenes over and over again.....
Ryan Reynolds can be so unfunny sometimes. it's not coincidence his movies are always average or straight up bad
I have treat he’s it many times as well and not just be aide it was all I had available. It’s fun entertainment. People just like having stuff to complain about!
1000% if Reynolds didn't try to keep milking the GL joke throughout his career, the movie wouldn't be nearly as hated. It was never amazing, but people just pilled on it
@@wheeler6768agreed, he even killed himself in Deadpool 2 when he was about to read the Green Lantern script. Didn't he meet his wife filming this movie? He acts like this is his worst failure.
@@lelecoleco_bangu6924 he is one of the funniest guys actually and really gifted when it comes to jokes, their delivery and timing! pure genious! He stands out!
The idea that it was the worst cg ever is absurd. The suit itself looked amazing, even if it didn’t blend perfectly with Ryan’s head. If the film had been better, nobody would have cared about the imperfect cg.
These types of comments really make me happy. We put so much work into this movie and when it came out it was panned. I get it, I've worked on plenty of crap, but this one was special for me. It was my first time working on a mega budget film.
@@RichardServello I really liked this movie. Not only CGI part , story was also pretty good for me. The most amazing part is constructs were actually constructs and not some space magic effects. Many Green Lanterns just use a green dust going around instead of guns/bombs/shields.
@@RichardServellothe CGI was good for GL and felt it worked for the suit as it is just a construct made from the green light of will emitted from the ring. The guardians could have used another couple of weeks they seems like they did not get as much time as needed.
@@RichardServello regardless of the public response, you should still be proud of this, a CG suit like this was super ambitious for a 2011 movie, and the fact that it looked as good as it did throughout the movie is really impressive. It's not perfect, but the general response is definitely excessive, I think most people just jumped on the hate train because it was the popular thing to do. I really enjoyed the movie and the suit as a kid
@@RichardServello I never had any issues with the CGI. I've always thought it looked cool with the energy suit. But the floating head problem caused by a disconnect in the lighting really is unfortunate. So it's quite disheartening how Ryan Reynolds keep putting all the blame on that. He seems like a true history revisionist. Same thing he did to Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Apparently he didn't know the character(?) he signed on to play THAT version and then when it was panned he put all the blame on the producer/director/concept artists. And of course, they are to blame as it's ultimately their vision for these things, but he did agree to play THAT character. Maybe he should've read a Deadpool comic before. And then when it seems he ultimately did, the real Deadpool came along. But I'm not a fan of Reynolds at all. Not an interesting actor and he isn't even that funny
I kid you not, I could never see the problem with the Green Lantern suit. Sure, it can look weird at times, but it never bothered me that much. It's crazy though how it looks a lot better than CGI in some modern films.🤔
I agree. I mean, if i really started dissecting every frame of the movie it might start to break down, but i never really looked that hard. My problems with the movie were in the script, not the visuals.
My problem with the suit was that it looked too tight, like someone repainted his skin to look like the suit instead of him actually wearing the suit. His mask was even worse, it especially looked like some painted his skin with a green plastic texture. It didn't look like the mask was on top of his skin, it looked like it was in his skin.
Agreed - watched »Green Lantern« four times, liked it (as I liked the Ironman stuff any other popcorn flicks), never thought there was any problem with heads »floating« on suits.
@@33pandagamer That was kind of the point
Constructs were really interesting. There were SO MANY that none were art directed before they got to comp. We would get EVERY energy pass they came up with and everyone would look dev a single construct, then the best design would win. My look of the brick wall was used in the training scene. Might not seem like much, BUT it was the only non-glossy construct so it was fun to create something that still fit in the world but was technically different.
This movie isn't among the best superhero movies of all time, but it certainly isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I think it's fun.
i worked as a 3d animator when i was younger, never thought the cg was bad
Same, dude. I'm an animator now and I feel like an idiot because I can't see what's wrong with the suit.
same here I always thought it was really well done!!
I thought it was amazing
ye
People give it a lot of crap but it's literally the greatest live action Green Lantern movie ever made.
It's the only live action Green Lantern movie ever made.
@@santos8468 😂 I'm not wrong
@@twopintsofmilk But you can't call it the best because there is nothing else to compare it to.
@@santos8468 it's the best because there are none better than it. It's also the worst because there are none worse than it.
My comment was for the algo and the LOLS(small lol in this case 😢)
@@santos8468 you don't say...
never understood the hate it got i thought it was fine and the CGI was fine if not good
This movie is a lot better when you don’t have someone next to you telling you it’s bad.
@@JamesDeanLPyeah i realy enjoy it when watching it the first time, i mean it was cheesy but it had that charm of the early superhero movies
"CGI" is the go-to complaint when people just want to turn off their brains and regurgitate a popular albeit nonsensical sentiment
People who hate on the use of CGI in a freakin SUPERHERO MOVIE are just... Fake comic fans at BEST. CGI is the best way to transfer that comic feel to the big screen when it comes to heroes with actual super powers
None hated the "CGI" (whatever the buzzword means), they hated the portrayal of the suit and the story.
@@IIARROWS No. See my statement because the suit looks straight even for today. Its definitely better than mostly anything from Marvel Phase 4
0:49 Hell no! When it came out, I enjoyed it, (with a minor cringe or two) and spent a few moments in homes, bars explaining why the suit was as it was. WHICH IS NOT THAT FRIGGING BAD IN THE CONTEXT, THAT THEY WENT WITH CGI BECAUSE THE SUITE IS COMPOSED OF LANTERN ENERGY AND NOT A FABRIC AND NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK SOLID!
Yeah, when i first heard they were planning on doing a full CGI suit, I was imagining something more visually interesting like having the lantern logo projected in front of their chest like in the comics. What they gave us could have been accomplished better with practical light-up suits like in Tron Legacy (which came out the year before). Then, even if they needed to touch something up, they would have had better reference footage, and ambient green light on everything in the area.
It definitely wasn't a CGI issue, it was a story and art direction issue
Exactly!
The story. The fucking story. I was sold with Ryan Reynolds’s as Green Lantern, but after leaving OA the movie is just really bad story to a charismatic character.
Why did Hollywood have to keep making the big bad into a fart cloud back in the day? LoL
@@ME-yb2lm CGI budgets. It's always in movies with too much VFX shots elsewhere (like this and Rise of the Silver Surfer)
I 100% agree! Re-watching as an adult now, the bad story direction was what made it a hard watch. Like the toby Spiderman movies, but I'll stop there... 😬
For years I believed I was the only soul that didn't hate this movie. Yes, it had a bad script and the CGI was noticeable, but I always praised their character design and world building. One of the scenes that stuck in my head since I watched it, was when we got to see all the lanterns and see the alien design with their unique suit/armors. But outside from Hal Jordan and Parallax, the concept and consistency with the lanterns was truly enjoyable for me and I respect the ambition and their efforts.
TBH I think this movie became one of those memes that everyone knows they must trash on it because it's fun.
I mean ngl I liked the movie and didnt really mind the CGI
Same. It seems like everyone’s complaints with this movie are them comparing this to what could have been (with the script being leaked earlier into production, or people wanting a physical suit) as opposed to just judging it for what it is.
It’s not a great movie by any means, but everyone treats it like it’s unwatchable, it’s just fine.
I don't know why everyone in the internet hated this particular movie.
Same.
@@basti.9022 I've been a fan of Green Lantern since I was a little kid in the late 80'-90's, not a superfan I just know about the lore and stuff. Reynolds campy acting style ruined the character, good for Deadpool, bad for Green Lantern. Also making the movie an origin story that's pretty hard to fit into a couple hours, especially when they also squeeze in the Parallax character, which was actually the end of the Hal Jordan era before it was rebooted in comics. They made a movie with the origin, the death, and the reboot of Hal Jordan rewritten into one and it's a MESS. On top of that, they used childish elements of the comics as far as his powers and heroic feats. As if making the movie for a demographic that's not even going to be interested in that character. And that's why people say it's bad. As a stand-alone movie it's passable but it got dragged by the fans.
I loved the movie
When you see the CGI quality of The Flash and most MCU Phase 4 and 5 projects... you must give a pardon to Green Lantern
Nope! I'll "die on the hill" that the production design was A++ and it made sense that his suit is a CGI suit because it's a RING CONSTRUCT in the comics.
While you're 100% correct about the fact IT'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK UNCANNY, you have to realize that this film was made in order to bring the hero to WIDER AUDIENCES. What they should have done is have Hal Jordan make a "Human Spider" tier suit, then through sheer willpower alone have that uncanny suit manifest upon him. Would have really helped out on character development, helped the audience see the uncanny suit as an upgrade, as well as being able to sneak in some goofy jokes/references.
Won't lie, I know I just typed the "wider audience" blasphemy spiel. What I'm trying to point out is that they failed at their true intentions.
IMO having at least one character acknowledge the suit/constructs looking weird because they're basically imagination brought to life by the ring would have gone a long way to getting people to have the CGI less.
So many people on the films release complained that the ring constructs didn't look realistic, when of course that was never the goal.
If viewers all heard it in universe that the constructs are supposed to look like they're somehow less than real it'd help with that.
It's 100% a having a nice idea, but lacking the ability to put it across effectively.
And yet in 90% of comics the GL uniform doesn't look any different than any other hero's costume.
@@Cr3zant So what? In 90% of comics ever made Batman and Superman look like they are wearing satin bootyshorts....should they do that on film?
A big thing in Wonderlands favor is the stylization, which is purposefully uncanny, where green lantern is supposed to be set in the “real world”
CGY thirsthing for ryan simply made my day cant blame ya in the slightest
I'm only human 🤤😅
@@CGWHY You don't even need to be a hooman for that.
@@ordinarryalien Even aliens understand the charm of Ryan.
@@mr.zombzo We do. 😏👽💚
@@CGWHY if you complement green lantern in front of Ryan how would he react?
Shoulda had a real suit for reference that was painted over with whatever CGI they needed.
That would have helped...A LOT. Also didn't help that a lot of the blue screen shots were dark and magenta and several of the green screens were yellow. Overall production was less than stellar and gave us more than a few headaches!
Thank you for doing this. I've honestly never understood the hate this film gets. I think it's quite good and the cgi works well imo because the whole green lantern power is making these constructs. It makes perfect sense that the suit would match that, and I've never had a problem suspending disbelief watching this films. And it's one of the few superhero films that I don't mind rewatching many times. Plus the whole Green Lantern theme of conquering fear is great.
I've honestly liked this movie since it came out and even have the art book where you can see ultra HQ images of the different corps members. It's pretty funny to hear people rag on the cgi in it, particularly the suit. I still maintain that the vfx team did an incredible job and people only say it looks terrible because they know it's cgi going in. A really strong case I feel for it was just a personal experience I had where I was watching the deleted scenes that have no finished vfx work on them so it was just Ryan and Mark Strong in the mocap suits talking. My mother happened to walk through the room at the time and said "what are they wearing?" I had to explain that the suits in the film proper were fully cgi and she'd watched that with me in the past. Just never realized.
When i watched this movie, i actually like the details they give to the background and like this dude said the constructs.
Even though it was considered bad at the time, the CGI Suits don't actually look that bad and haven't gotten much worse as time goes on. It was moreso the disconnect between how Ryan's head and the Suit moved. The body actually blends in with the footage fairly well at times and it's really only the Mask that constantly looks horrible. Now I am being loose with the term "blends in" because it's constantly glowing & reminding you that it's fake but the alien GLs do look like they're in the scenes. When they're not attaching a real head to it, the CGI Suits work.
So rather than a full CGI Suit, they should've had a practical suit that was just the dark greens and then add the highlights & glowing with CGI. Even if they'd end up replacing the whole thing with CGI, the animators would've had better reference footage if Ryan wore a tight suit. At least we're able to learn from it, like I never noticed that the movement at the bottom of the neck was why it's easy to tell when a real head is placed on top of CGI. It explains why that part is usually hidden like with Iron Man.
On a side note, was there even an explanation for why his eyes turn Blue when wearing the suit? I'm assuming the character had blue eyes in the comics and this was a way to pay homage but the constant color change looks bad and makes the CGI mask even more unbelievable when Ryan's eyes are being edited too.
Even just having a real collar could have saved so much labor. That said it would have entailed some compromise of not looking as otherwordly, not as much like a perfect second skin.
Yeah I had that thought a few minutes into the video and couldn't not think it. A practical suit with the same effects would look much better. I also don't think the suit looks that bad, my big thing is the mask. It's too small and tight
His eye turn blue to mimick the way he looks in the comic where his eyes are pure white when he wears the domino mask, I guess it was a middle ground because they figured completely white eyes in live action was too creepy for kids or something
@@maximeteppe7627 The neck was a MAJOR pain point. Often we would have to warp it manually to get it to line up with the plate.
I never Hated Green Lantern Movie... better CGI than The Flash movie...
Y'know, looking back at these clips, I genuinely think the biggest visual problem with the suits is the colour grading - the green is *way* too heavily saturated to look tangible next to the live-action elements.
Any shot with a primarily digital environment, the suits look great, but in shots where they're the only digital element (especially darker or backlit ones) the luminance of the green is way too high to look like it fits in with the rest of the shot.
I remember Corridor Crew mentioning a similar issue in the original live action Sonic trailer - his fur's so intensely blue that it doesn't look like it's reacting to the ambient light enough
My uncle who was a huge green lantern fan took me to see this movie before his condition got worse and while it’s not the greatest it has a special place in my heart. Thank you for bringing positivity to this movie!
unironically love this movie. it also gave us possibly the most beautiful Barbie face ever created with the carol ferris doll. Not to mention bringing blake and ryan together. 💜
Very surprised to see so many of my shots in this review. That's rare when someone does a deep dive into one of my shows.
Dude, thank you for doing this. After 13 years this show is finally getting some love. :)
I never had an issue with the suit. I think they did an amazing job
As a result of watching this video, I had a dream last night where Ryan Reynalds became my roommate and I was hanging out with him for a few weeks and the entire time he was kinda rude and didn’t like me but he was also really insecure about being in green lantern so I spent the time trying to convince him that green lantern wasn’t actually THAT bad of a movie and he shouldn’t be so hard on himself especially when the problems with the movie weren’t his fault. Over the time he grew to be a bit kinder to me and to himself
a spandex suit with embedded green leds would've worked wonders, and the compromise on the vision they had would've paid off
5:22 ayo... What??? 🤨🤨🤨
This is the first video I'm watching on your channel and I just wanted to say what a fucking refreshing video this is.
With all the negativity on the internet, being able to pull up something universally hated and being able to see through it and pull out the positives and the effort of the crew from it is amazing!
Thanks for this and if you ever read this, hope you have a great day!
The CG work (suit included) was NOT the problem with that movie. Been saying this for years.
I loved the CGI in this movie, idk why everyone hates it
I liked this Green Lantern movie and its computer graphics. It was cool. 😎
Based. 🌐😎
So I'm in the process of making my first feature length and watching this really did change my opinion of the movie. I appreciate the new perspective and that's a lot of true things to consider in practice. It's not easy. Love the channel, man
Ironically, his super suit is also animated in deadpool. Actually his entire character is animated in deadpool.
So, it's not a stuntman in that suit?
That's how they got his eyes to emote.
@@pingaswingas1 The eyes were actually pretty simple! Rather than using CGI eyes layered on top of the suit, they simply stretched and squashed the eyes of the suit in Photoshop!
yea but like you dont really see his head so its lowk easier to animate
@@santos8468it is?
I always loved the suit design. The glowing emblem with the viens glowing throughout the suit was so cool! Had they lighted the environment and his face better it would have looked better.
Not gonna lie, I've kinda always been okay with the CGI suit.
1) It's the first time they've tried doing the GL suit in live action (to my knowledge)
and
2) How else did you think they were gonna make it. it's a suit made out of energy that's in a CGI world, its gonna look a little weird.
What they should do in the future though, is to have a practical suit that they can use and add CGI effects to in post. A mocap suit can be used when the suit is being put on or taken off.
or adapt Alan Scott's Green Lantern, his suit is literally.. a suit
Saw another one of my shots! I always love when my old shows get revisited :)
Oh, another little bit of insider info. The rooftop scene was a reshoot WAY into post production. Ryan was in Africa shooting another movie that he had to shave his head for. The entire sequence was shot in a hotel room drapped with green fabric. He was wearing a TERRIBLE wig, which was subsequently replaced by CG. I had one shot in that sequence...it looks SO BAD. LOL. In case you didn't know :)
Anytime you don't see Ryan's face he's fully CG. We would have a butt reel every week of all the shots that were from behind to not have to deal with footage.
Gotta remember hal Jordan wasn’t the only character they would have needed to do this for.
This is proof that practical will always be better, just cg over the practical suit for shots like the suit coming on and off
It wasnt even the muscle movements and all that that made the cgi look bad. It was the fact that cgi didnt even look that realistic back then so doing half and half just never looked right. The head looks way to real compared to his suit because it was his real head. It wasnt a bad movie necessarily, it was just way too overambitious for its time. 11:40 is a great example
honestly the suit is the easiest to meme on, but the VFX is probably the best part i love how they made the suits unique ... the actual movie though? yeah it wasn't very good.
& yeah as another person in the comments pointed out, the fact that there's no actual green light makes it blend less; so yeah maybe they could have used physical suits with green LEDs for the filming & add the CGI on top
Similar case with CATS if the movie fails, the VFX gets the blame
It's easier to blame us than production. We've always been the easier punching bag.
Weirdly enough, my problem was never with the CGI of the suit. I was used to the 90's CGI, so I actually found that part somewhat impressive. It was the plot of the movie that I feel was the bigger failure to me. They set up several plot threads that felt like they'd be better served over longer story arcs and instead of doing the pacing to match, decided to squish the entire thing into one movie that felt rushed and didn't have the chance to really grow into itself.
I have a DVD copy of it that I save for nights with friends, usually for MST3K type riffing.
it should be compared with the iron spider suit from infinity war
The Iron Spider suit covers his head mostly of the time, and don't mark his body muscles, so i don't think is comparable. Bcs once they cover Tom Holland's face, it's just 100% CGI body without need to blend with a real person. Ryan's face was always visible.
never understood the hate for the suit, i always liked it!
Think of how much money and how many skilled artists worked in service of this suit, and wonder why the heck they didn't put just a little more time and effort into the script.
We had the entire building in Culver filled with artists AND the building in the culver studios lot next door. We also had a facility in New Mexico. Smurfs was going at the same time so we had to have an additional render farm brought into the parking lot in trucks! Power outages also happened often.
I thought it was genuinely pretty good. Like, when I was a kid I thought it was pretty cool and looking back now, the concept of the idea of the suit and end result was still pretty solid
You could probably make a entire video on the CW flash cgi
The entire defense of CW Flash CGI was that it's a 20+ episode show per year running on a Network Television budget and schedule.
tbh, i rarely actually even noticed the CGI blunders in many of the movies mentioned. i guess a big part of it was that i wasn't exactly looking out for it, but another aspect of it was that i was able to immerse myself into the movies and look past the technical flaws
It's fascinating how they insisted on having the suit be fully CGI instead of just using a real one and using CGI to then add all those energy effects.
Most problems like this shouldn't even be problems. When they are, it means your approach is wrong.
sometimes over budget is problem
I was gonna comment the same thing
That wouldn’t really make the process simpler. In orther to add the light effects, they’d still need to make a full cg suit to match the movements of the practical one. And even if you only render and comp in the lights, it can still feel janky if the cg double doesn’t match well
@@bernnymwamba7522 yeah, you now not only need to perfectly match the head movement, but every other body part as well. if you do the suit full cgi end comp out the mocap, it is way easier and probably cheaper as well.
That was the fault of a bad vfx sup that didn't know what she was doing.
Hal is notorious for being unimaginative with his constructs, so they got that accurate in the film. Constructs are convoluted as hell anyway a bunch of characters construct things they couldnt possibly imagine in detail
I know I'm in the extreme minority here....but I didn't actually dislike the movie. Not gonna be on my list of favorites or anything, but I don't mind it for a casual watch.
Could they really not make a practical translucent suit with controlled green LEDs or fiber optics? That would have been hella amazing. Doesnt have to be as thick as the Superman Lives costume, but in a similar vein?
I think most people would have happily overlooked the CGI shortcomings if the movie had been.. well.. good.
The CGI in this film was great. The problems with the film were the pacing, the writing, the lack of more action showcasing the powers, it's a whole lot of fluff that isn't about Green Lantern doing Green Lantern things.
The cgi of this movie is unironically better than like half the MCU movies in the last 2 years or so
I always genuinely thought the CGI in this movie was truly sick. You can always notice a new detail that you didn't see before with the alien lanterns, in Oa, or with the ligthbuildings.
If the reason they chose the full cgi suit was for an alien look and do interesting things with the lighting effects on the suit, why didn't they just do a cloth suit with a cgi overlay for the effects? As you point out the constructs look really good and they work with the look of the cgi, if the suit was practical and had those effects on it I think you'd still have those connections and would look great
If they had green bulbs of light on the suit as well it'd light up the faces of characters, making it seem more real... O wait. Green suit, greenscreen... I think I get why they didn't have a suit and green light.
Tho bluescreens are a thing. 🤔
Thank you for making this video! It's been 13 years I think since I first watched this movie as a teen and my opinion is still the same. The cgi looked amazing and it still does! Your video proves it without a doupt.
>"Modern movies"
Shows a movie from almost a decade ago and only 5 years older than GL.
So u think it's old😅
1:32 The costume designer's name is Ngila Dickson. Her first name is pronounced "Nyla".
Makes sense, unlike nigilla Dickson
It makes sense to use a cgi suit though. The suit is a construct like all the other ring constructs. It makes sense to have it look consistent with all the effects.
i always liked it. it looks "otherworldly". and i'm actually something of a VFX artist myself :D i just don't think the GL suit is that bad. i think a lot of people see something "different" and their only interpretation is "bad".
I honestly think you missed the (imo) biggest problem: that the suit isnt based in reality. Staynes armor is very grounded, detailed in ways that not only the vfx artists but the audience too were very familiar with. With the energy suit theres nothing to sort of compare it to real life, so it sticks out even more as just being fake
I think the only thing that makes the suit and constructs feel disconnected to people is the lack of green bounced light on the face. They seem to radiate light, but none of the light appears on the actors or environment.
I never thought the cgi looked bad but its nice to see just how ambitious it was in context. Based on the clips, the thing that hurts most is the dull camerawork, likely a consequence of the cg suit and greenscreen.
I promise you that if the movie was actually good and didn't make Parallax a gigantic poop monster, people would have easily overlooked the horrible suit
Don't think that didn't go unnoticed. It was a running joke in the studio that he was a giant poop monster. There was a joke shot when GL flies out of the warehouse and someone animated Mr. Hankey flying after him.
Excellent analysis. Thank you. Might the entire concept be saddled with same challenge that Superman suffers from, namely, when anything thing is possible, there isn't enough tension in the story?
have u not seen them shows on tv with superman n shii 0:10
On a side note. I remember walking away from this movie feeling like the movie they wanted to make was the Yellow Lanterns Vs the Green Lanterns but they needed to make this movie first to set the scene.
The villains make the hero and the villains in this movie feel cobbled together. Vector Hammond felt like he was only there because the audience wouldn't connect with a giant floating CGI head that was Parrallax. Meanwhile, Sinestro was set up to be a sequel villain with real motive and depth.
I, to this day, don’t understand why this movie got so much hate. Maybe it’s because I saw it through the eyes of a child but it was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Maybe I should rewatch it as an adult.
I still can't believe the guy who made Casino Royale and Goldeneye, 2 of my favorite movies, also made this.
Honestly, I appreciate the explanation bc I don't think ppl realize how hard that stuff really is. And like you said, I think it actually captures what the comics were trying to convey. As a fan of the comics it was really cool to see it come to life. I think most of the problem the film sufferS from is more revolved around the writing / casting. I don't think RR was the right choice for the role.
This is better than most marvel films these past few years.
At that time I didn't even think about that, I knew it was animated and just enjoyed it as a kid.
I’ll say, the suit matches up with Robbin’s suit and mask in the 2002 batman. And that impressive to me
0:30 it blows my mind how so much more CHI is used than you would ever imagine in Marvel movies. Like why not just make physical suits for the actors? It would cost WAY less time and money to do that, instead of CGI-ing in the suits. Completely unnecessary for them to do that.
Yeah I never knew so much shit was cgi'd just seems really inefficient
This just explained why book to cartoon is so much better (most of the time) than book/cartoon to irl. Without cgi magical elements of a can feel lacking but with it they can feel awkward.
honestly, i never thought the CGI was that bad, and enjoyed MOST of the movie (though there are certainly issues I missed watching this when I was younger). I also think I always, sort of intrinsically understood WHY the suits were all CGI, it's consistent with the constructs as you said, but maybe it could have benefited from a partial suit being practical, and then have the CGI build on, and overlay on top of that, just to ground it a little, and maybe solve the neck problem by having a real collar
What you say here matches with my impressions when I watched this movie years ago. I felt like they should have taken a Tron approach. Giving Reynolds an actual suit that looks like a lantern suit, but has CSO elements ON it that can be digitally replaced or built on... Instead of a blank suit with mocap. They could have easily incorporated things in a way where most of the body would have been real and only the effects layered on top mattered. And would have been just that - layers. Not a full replace!
Great argument. So, what you're saying is Doctor Strange's third eye and Thor Love and Thunder's floating heads are actually good effects because it's impossible to do in a practical way.
honestyl i think the suit without the weird mask looks good. for me the mask kills it
They did a great job with the VFX on this movie. This is wayyyy better than many movies that came afterwards. I actually enjoyed it!
I think one thing people forget when bashing CGI is that vfx artists don’t want to create something that looks bad, why would they? I’d argue that 9 times out of 10, it’s not a lack of skill or artistry, but a lack of budget or clear art direction.
We put everything into making it as good as was humanly possible in the time we had and the constantly changing script.
Hey, just found your channel and just wanted to say loving your content so far!
Seeing your Spider-Man 2 video compare practical effects and CGI when used in conjunction, I'd love if you did a video on Real Steel
The movie (and this video) is a valuable record of the progress in the art of capturing and reproducing the minute details of the human body movements of a professional actor toward the goal of becoming believably a living human body going through the experiences portrayed in the movie.
I applaud you for defending CG artists, whose work mostly falls short due to decisions made by people not associated with the visual effects companies.
Regardless of the flaws, I never understood the criticism of the suit. There are plenty of elements deserving of criticism for the movie (💩☁), but in my opinion the suit isn't one of them. As you stated it was energy formed into a suit. As such it wasn't physical material clinging to his body, so the justification for the wonky definition is that the suit looked like Hal's mental idea of what it should look like. From your research it seems they actually tried materials and techniques to create a physical suit and simply couldn't make it work.
I’ve never thought it was bad ngl, I quite liked the way this film looked
I think the better solution would have been to have gone with a practical suit and then added VFX touches to it. Because nothing about the CGI suit looks something somebody couldn’t have physically made.
I never thought the movie was terrible, but it was just a hard one to translate for the screen. Being able to create anything with the power of imagination and willpower including your own uniform was an uphill battle to properly depict. I think it worked with surprising consistency, but it wasn't perfect.