Fury Road - Crash & Smash

This effects video from Mad Max: Fury Road has been making the rounds, so you may have already seen it. When Mad Max hit theaters people couldn't stop talking about how much of it was shot using practical effects as opposed to CGI. This video definitely showcases those practical effects.

I thought Fury Road was a really good movie but I'm not quite as in love with it as some were. Maybe it's because all the hype led to some really unreasonable expectations. Maybe I just need to watch it again without having to stop it every 15 minutes because my kids need something like food or attention.

Deadpool Special Effects Were No Joke

This 4 minute sizzle reel on the visual effects behind Deadpool is really interesting. Some of the CGI is really obvious, frankly Colossus looks fake, but some of these action sequences really look like practical effects. I mean when you really break it down like 99% of the movie is computers. Ryan Reynolds doesn't even exist, he's just a personality they had to load up on Zip disk. This is why he'll never be a real movie star.

By the by, I still haven't seen Deadpool. My wife really wants to go and our free babysitting (ie her parents) have been in Costa Rica for a month and now are headed to California for 2 weeks. I like deadpool and all but I don't like him enough to pay $50 for a babysitter. Especially when they're all horned up oxy addicts that will rob you blind while you're gone. I'm on to you Sally!

Messy Links

The Messy, True Story Behind The Making Of Destiny. Woof, this look at the development of Destiny isn't very flattering to Bungie. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I was posting videos and screenshots eagerly anticipating Bungies newest megahit. Of course once I found out it would be console exclusive my interest dropped to zero. There's pretty much no point in picking up another game on the 360 (unless it's for the kiddos) and I'm all in on PC gaming right now to the point where I'll probably skip this current generation of consoles (again unless it's for the kiddos).

Anyhoo, the point is Destiny was built around a story line that was scrapped at sort of the last minute. What gamers were left with is a game that from all accounts looks good and is fun to play, but is missing any sort of coherent storyline. Some people say the original story was terrible some say it was good. Either way the team at Bungie had been working on it for nearly a decade when they decided to scrap it at the last minute, that is not ideal.

Paul Walker Furious 7 VFX shots. I'll give it to the guys behind The 7ast And The 7urious, I had no idea they had to CGI Paul Walker into so many scenes. The end scene where he's racing Dom through the hills it was pretty obvious but all these other scenes looked pretty natural.

Ron Howard’s Willow is still raucous and ridiculous 27 years later. Willow came out during a time period where I was reading a lot of movie novelizations. Not sure what the deal was but I remember there was a period of time in the late 80s early 90s where I was reading novelizations because I couldn't go to the theater and see the movie. I'm not sure if it was just that my parents didn't want to take me or if I had no friends or no money or what. I distinctly remember reading Dick Tracy, Batman, and Willow all before I eventually saw them on videotape. I'm sure there were more.

I think I didn't understand that there was a difference between reading a book that had a movie and a movie that had a book because I remember reading a lot of both.

I don't know what my point is other than Willow is a rad movie. I'm going to try and watch it with my son this weekend.

The New Star Wars Droid is NOT CGI

So if there's one thing all us Star Wars fans can agree on its that the new droid, BB-8, looks awesome. Most assumed from the first trailer that he was all CGI, but it turns out we all assumed wrong. This is BB-8 making his first public apperance at the big Star Wars celebration event. He is very much a real robot.

The mechanics of this are pretty amazing. I'm guessing either a lot of magnets are involved or they put a little person on a uni-cycle inside the big ball. Either way it's cool that they're using more practical effects in this movie. Fancy computer graphics have their time and place but they simply never look as good a real practical effects. It's why the Orcs in the Hobbit movies look so much worse than they do in the Lord of the Ring films.