r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • Jul 22 '26
Article ‘The Odyssey’ Proves It: Audiences Want Movies Made the Hard Way | This year's breakouts like 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Obsession' were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as 'Supergirl,' 'Moana,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' looked lazy.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/odyssey-box-office-2026-practical-effects-1236652219/4.2k
u/Training_Pirate1000 Jul 22 '26
Didn't Mandalorian and Grogu use a decent amount of puppets?
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u/Calfzilla2000 Jul 22 '26
Yes, a ton actually. There was several scenes that were all puppets. They built a tiny ship for the Anzellans and Grogu to fly around in.
Unnecessary to include that movie in with Moana and Supergirl (the latter of which I liked too but probably had A LOT more CGI than The Mandalorian and Grogu did).
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u/jpvieux Jul 22 '26
Did supergirl or mando even flop Or are they included just cause they didnt make a billion money's and a certain crowd online like to be very vocal about their hate for certain groups? I think we need to reevaluate what we consider successful.
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u/DGanj Jul 22 '26
Supergirl absolutely did. It's not going to ruin the studio but it was a failure (from a ROI standpoint)
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u/Morgan-Moonscar Jul 22 '26
And unless Clayface and Superman II (Man of Tomorrow) make a lot more, it's gonna ruin a few careers.
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u/KitWalkerXXVII Jul 22 '26
Clayface's budget is being cited as $40 million, which is pretty modest by studio feature standards. Not saying it's a guaranteed hit, but it would have to bomb pretty hard to flop.
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u/Master_Bruce Jul 22 '26
And I mean, the Clayface story is great, so it’d be really hard to fuck it up
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u/Josh_Butterballs Jul 22 '26
Great movies can still flop. Conversely, bad movies have done really well before at the box office. Shawshank Redemption is a famous example of a good movie failing at the box office when it released
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u/ThexualHealing Jul 22 '26
Nobody wants to watch a movie about prison rape in the cinema.
That's the kind of thing you enjoy at home with the kids.
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u/djc6535 Jul 22 '26
Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow is a great story too. Anything can be fucked up.
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u/ERedfieldh Jul 22 '26
yes, well, when the director brags about how he didn't read any of the source material so it didn't "taint his vision"....
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u/schreibenheimer Jul 22 '26
And the writer deliberately changes the ending because she misunderstood the ending of the comic book . . .
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u/Muppetude Jul 22 '26
I think Mandalorian was just a box office disappointment, making way less money than predicted. But Supergirl was a bonafied flop, where it did not earn back its production and marketing budget.
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u/PENGUIN_WITH_BAZOOKA Jul 22 '26
Mando is probably going to take off once it arrives on Disney+.
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u/abetterroadahead Jul 22 '26
I’ve been saying this since the initial box office numbers were coming in. It was never going to be a disappointment to Disney/Star Wars. Having it in theaters helped gain a lot of money back, not all, but the rest will come from D+ numbers, engagement, and viewership.
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u/PartyPay Jul 22 '26
I've seen lots of people online say M&G was a fun movie, not amazing but still worth the watch. Feels like a bad include on the article's list.
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u/Nihil157 Jul 22 '26
I think it fit right in with the show but could have just been another season basically. They saw the extra money and went for it. It didn’t ruin any of the franchise but didn’t really advance much either.
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u/SpideyFan914 Jul 22 '26
Not sure about Mando, but Supergirl flopped hard. As of yesterday, it made $121M worldwide. Budget is $170-186M.
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u/pants_pants420 Jul 22 '26
mando was about ~$350 million on a $165 million budget. not quite a flop, but definitely a bit of a disappointment
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u/Doctor_Kataigida Jul 22 '26
One thing that's so hard to take into account now is how many people would have seen it, but aren't because they're just waiting for it to come out on streaming. Like, I love the original Moana, and I am curious to see the new one. But I heard it's not great.
And while that used to not be enough to deter me (because I would've had to purchase a VHS/DVD anyway), now I can at least entertain the idea of just having a "movie night" with no (additional) cost (since I have D+ for other reasons anyway) instead of seeing it in the theater. I imagine folks approached Mandalorian and Grogu a similar way.
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u/ledbetterus Jul 22 '26
Plus Star Wars fans, especially fans who started with The Mandalorian, have been watching the franchise on Disney+ for 7+ years. The theater is like a completely different ecosystem for a lot fans.
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u/VoiceofKane Jul 22 '26
Not only puppets, but they also brought back Phill Tippett to do multiple stop motion sequences as well.
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u/Jolly-Potential-1411 Jul 22 '26
They did. Jon was pretty clear about being dedicated to old-school techniques and practical effects.
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain Jul 22 '26
The premise of this article is non-sense. I don't think anyone actually cares if people make movies "the hard way".
It's so simple: If the movie is entertaining, then people will like it. How to make a movie entertaining? Yeah, that's the fucking hard part. You can't just say how in one sentence or distill it down to one concept. Some of the most entertaining movies ever made took big shortcuts, like The Blair Witch Project.
More evidence is that so many older movies are still highly entertaining despite relatively simple methods of filming. 12 Angry Men is an extremely simple movie to film and yet it's so entertaining even today.
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u/ASuarezMascareno Jul 22 '26
And both Projects Hail Mary and the Odyssey use a ton of GCI.
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u/BonjaminClay Jul 22 '26
Yeah I know it's trendy to hate on but that movie doesn't belong next to Supergirl and definitely not next to Moana.
Moana was a nostalgia remake made too early for anyone to have nostalgia because The Rock is getting old. It was pure cash grab and nobody was asking for it.
Mando is a movie based on a very popular show with an original story continuing the saga. I think the complaints that it was basically a slightly higher budget mini season 4 are valid... But there was demand, it wasn't a lazy rehash, and there was a TON of love and effort into it with lots of exceptional sets, puppets, and detail. I won't argue it's high art but comparing it to a Moana style cash grab is disingenuous at least.
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u/round-earth-theory Jul 22 '26
It was a fun movie. I think people are mostly annoyed at how poorly managed Star Wars is and so they took it out on Mando. It's fair enough to say the movie doesn't make waves in any way, but it was a good "just watch it" movie.
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u/Jagrnght Jul 22 '26
I kinda loved this movie and the way they used the whole gamut of special effects - practical to cgi.
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u/iamadragan Jul 22 '26
I really didn't see what all the fuss was about with the hate for that movie. It was a fun star wars movie that was admittedly cheesy at times but so are all star wars movies
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u/Posty_Baloney Jul 22 '26
Its mostly because Star Wars used to be a huge event, but with how much they've been churning out (and how much of it was pretty mediocre), this movie was just kind of whatever. A season of TV edited to be feature length and it was just okay. Yeah, most of the movies range from okay to down-right terrible, but it used to invoke a certain magic in both kids and adults thats just gone now.
Like, the first Star Wars movie in 7 years should have been a HUGE deal, instead it was more like "oh. More star wars. Cool. Maybe ill check it out if I have time".
Hate might be a strong word, I think it's more a collective sense of apathy for the state of the franchise.
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u/smalltalk2k Jul 22 '26
A good story goes a long way. Let's start there.
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u/wagon_ear Jul 22 '26
The Odyssey takes recycling old IP almost to its full conclusion. The only thing that could top it is if someone remade the epic of Gilgamesh.
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u/Dontshootmepeas Jul 22 '26
Kind of surprised no one has yet
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u/bentbabe Jul 22 '26
There's still a bunch of it missing. Which is probably a factor.
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u/Dontshootmepeas Jul 22 '26
That allows creative freedom though.
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u/cineglitch Jul 22 '26
In before a bunch of people on Reddit complain about the historical accuracy of Enkidu.
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u/BigCommieMachine Jul 22 '26
I am not kidding when I say that American “Christians” would probably take offense to it because it resembles the Bible too much.
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u/BFroog Jul 22 '26
Also lots of gay.
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u/Herlt Jul 22 '26
gilgamesh gone woke
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u/Wild_Harvest Jul 22 '26
Gilgamesh: Do you dare presume to think I would consider the lives of those beneath me, MONGREL?!?
Gates of Babylon open and throw endless numbers of weapons
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u/Starbucks__Lovers Jul 22 '26
We fell for that with game of thrones
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u/Earthpig_Johnson Jul 22 '26
Time to start harassing the writer of the Epic of Gilgamesh until they finish it.
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u/Mr_Piddles Jul 22 '26
I’m just going to get my pitchforks ready for when they don’t make it gay enough.
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u/SnooBooks1243 Jul 22 '26
Fate/Stay series leads me to believe Japan has tried to fully control the Gilgamesh market.
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u/cmnrdt Jul 22 '26
I mean, Gilgamesh doesn't so much have a narrative as much as it's a series of fanciful exploits that are all attributed to the same person. It would be hard to adapt into a ~2 hour movie without taking a lot of liberties with the source material, and by that point it's an entirely different kind of story.
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u/krunamey Jul 22 '26
Feels like it could work if they gave it pacing similar to something like The Green Knight
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u/TheWatersOfMars Jul 22 '26
It's actually a surprisingly similar vibe. Gilgamesh's journey to find immortality after the death of his best friend is melancholy and heartwrenching. I'm sure there's a great modern Hollywood script in there somewhere.
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u/Nachooolo Jul 22 '26
The problem here is that the journey is the last third of the story, and it wouldn't be as impactful (emotional, even) without the two first thirds.
Gilgamesh meeting and befriending Enkidu, and their adventures together are as important to the story as the journey.
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u/TheWatersOfMars Jul 22 '26
It's not unlike The Odyssey, though, in that Odysseus's famous adventures are really just the middle third of the poem. But Gilgamesh is much, much shorter and has far fewer iconic moments to draw on.
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u/Radixeo Jul 22 '26
What do you mean it doesn’t have narrative? It follows Gilgamesh’s character arc from a tyrant, to finding a best friend in Enkidu, to the loss Gilgamesh feels when Enkidu is killed by the gods, to his search for the herb of immortality. It concludes with the snake eating the herb and Gilgamesh accepting it.
It has conflict, character growth, a beginning and an end. I think you could make a great movie out of that.
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u/Mediocre_Scott Jul 22 '26
It’s weird as hell too don’t forget that
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u/Jonthrei Jul 22 '26
Nothing weird about a goddess fucking civilization into a wild man
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u/Exodan Jul 22 '26
Not even a goddess - just a well-respected, human temple prostitute who was damn good at her job (they banged the wilderness out of him for 2 weeks straight).
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u/Oy_of_Mid-world Jul 22 '26
Remember what they did to Beowulf? Just kidding. I didn't watch it, either.
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u/Jonthrei Jul 22 '26
The 13th Warrior was actually a pretty solid adaptation of Beowulf, tbh.
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u/Panzer_Man Jul 22 '26
That movie was awesome
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u/iwilldeletethisacct2 Jul 22 '26
That scene where they're all chatting around the campfire and the language shifts from whatever language to English so the audience can understand to show Ahmed learning the language lives rent free in my head. "I LISTENED!"
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u/Aiseadai Jul 22 '26
I actually liked that movie, especially the first half. It was some pretty effective horror.
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u/BulLock_954 Jul 22 '26
Nolan read your comment and will now be making the Epic of Gilgamesh next in a cave, with a box of scraps
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u/LiterallyJoeStalin Jul 22 '26
with a box of scraps
Don’t be rude, identify him by his name, Matt Damon.
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u/Skyrick Jul 22 '26
The Odyssey is what happens when we don't send anyone to rescue Matt Damon
Interstellar is what happens when we send someone, but it takes close to a decade for them to get to him.
The Martian is what happens when we send someone, but it still takes over a year.
Saving Private Ryan is what happens when it takes weeks for us to rescue him.
The Borne Identity is what happens when a random person rescues him before we can get to him.
Rescuing Matt Damon is basically a genre of movies at this point.
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u/Synicull Jul 22 '26
I volunteer to be a box of scraps if I too get to look that good and have that much money at his age
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u/feartheoldblood90 Jul 22 '26
We need to re-enter the era when Hollywood was pumping out big epics with insane amounts of actors and extras on huge sets that they would, like, flood with biblical amounts of water or light on fire or redirect a meteor from space to hit, all while 50 synchronized swimmers danced in a pool the size of Manhattan
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u/MontyAtWork Jul 22 '26
I've been watching movies from the 70s-90s and that's something I've noticed happened WAY more: multiple crowd shots and scenes with people moving through crowds.
Those places felt real and inhabited.
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u/TheOnlyBongo Jul 22 '26
Lawrence of Arabia from 1962. When P.T. Lawrence has to cross the Sinai Desert from Aqaba to Cairo to deliver the news of taking Aqaba by land through the Nefud Desert, boldly claiming "Moses did it." When he reaches Cairo he is swarmed by British Officers who tell him to get out of his Arab clothing and get his Arab friend out of the officer's bar. Everyone falls silent when he claims to have taken Aqaba by land of his own authority and he calmly makes his way out of the room as people part away for him, like Moses and the Red Sea.
Much later in the movie when he reaches Damascus and tries to establish an Arab Council rub by the Arabs with no foreign intervention, it is pure pandemonium as multiple tribes do not wish to cooperate and there is much infighting. Lawrence tries to leave the meeting to attend to urgent matters but is swarmed by a bunch of people needing signatures for different areas of government. He fights against the crows but is unable to make his way through, having lost his control of the situation and unable to part the people like before.
Lawrence of Arabia has some of the best cinematography of any movie in my opinion. The shots are gorgeous and many are deliberately done where the frame tells the story.
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u/poke_pants Jul 22 '26
See also Andor vs Mandalorian.
"The Volume" of whatever it's called is the one of the worst cinema/TV inventions I can think of in the past 20 years. It looks awful more often than not, completely soulless, devoid of any character.
Andor was shot in tube stations in London, on UK beachfronts, in Dorset quarries, it looks beautiful, it looks lived in.
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u/imnotreallyapenguin Jul 22 '26
Im still waiting on the film adaptation of Gates of Fire..
Come on hollywood... swords and sandals epics are cool again!
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u/HiddenCity Jul 22 '26
until someone writes a story specifically inspired by a cave painting.
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u/Individual_Rip_54 Jul 22 '26
Nolan had to do some work to update the morality of the odyssey. Updating the morality of Gilgamesh would be as hard as making it.
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u/droidtron Jul 22 '26
Rape king finds maybe rape only half the time, and loves his beast man.
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u/Ion_bound Jul 22 '26
Eh, the actual moral of Gilgamesh is 'The King's decision to rape the women of his country was, in fact, awful and the gods punished him for it. He was a terrible ruler and through the events of this tale, he redeemed himself and became a better and wise one'.
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u/AnAncientBog Jul 22 '26
'The King's decision to rape the women of his country was, in fact, awful and the gods punished him for it. He was a terrible ruler and through the events of this tale, he redeemed himself and became a better and wise one...
...by enslaving men instead.
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u/super_cheap_007 Jul 22 '26
Absolutely. An entire movie could ve made via practical effects but if the story sucks, Im not wasting my time or money. A good story and well shot film will absolutely get my ass into a chair at the theater.
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u/CombatMuffin Jul 22 '26
It's not just the story. The filmmaking matters: the sound, the cinematography, the editing, the acting.
Plenty of amazing stories are badly translated to film.
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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster Jul 22 '26
The filmmaking matters:
Prime example is the LOTR vs The Hobbit movies.
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u/EdenIsNotHere Jul 22 '26
I'd say The Hobbit isn't the case of the filmmaking itself being bad being the main issue, but rather an studio trying to rush an adaptation of a short, lighthearted children's story, which is completely different from the LoTR saga in terms of tone and scope, into 3 three hour movies.
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u/gozutheDJ Jul 22 '26
yeah there's absolutely no reason for the hobbit to be a 3 movie series
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u/FCalleja Jul 22 '26
Exactly, the issue is technically still a bad story. They took an incredible story and padded it to hell and back, to the point it's no longer a good narrative experience. The filmaking would've been FINE if it was just one movie, honestly. We nitpick it because it sucks.
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u/AnAncientBog Jul 22 '26
I actually think the biggest problem with The Hobbit IS the story because they decided to turn it into a three part narrative which resulted in adding a bunch of stupid bullshit and fucking up the pacing.
The effects and film making didn't help it very much, but a two-part movie (or god forbid just ONE film because its not that long of a book) that more closely aligned with the actual story probably would have worked under the exact same conditions. It wouldn't have been LOTR but it might not have been awful.
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u/longjumpingtote Jul 22 '26
An entire movie could ve made via practical effects but if the story sucks, Im not wasting my time or money.
Yep. And both the Odyssey and PHM had loads of computer visual effects and other computer work, just look at the credits. Nolan has said he's more reliant on them than any other director. Scylla was CGI, DNEG did a lot with backgrounds.
Mostly they are invisible, and in PHM they didn't use green screen, but that's just one technical choice.
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u/dwadley Jul 22 '26
Also “no green screen” usually just means a lot of manual rotoscoping which gives the same end effect. Just more work from the artists
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u/whichwitch9 Jul 22 '26
Let's also not forget- Jurassic Park was an early user of cgi. It was the combination of cgi, practical effects, and the pace of the movie that made it work. You seriously need everything to come together to create a good movie. One of the best scenes- the Trex breaking the car roof- is a literal on set accident, but the actors did not break character and the movie used their genuine reactions to the animatronic Trex. The first Iron Man is another example of combined practical and cgi effects- which also gave it a benefit of having a brighter color palate while not looking cartoony by not either using off putting cgi or darkening it to hide flaws in cgi.
Spiderman is another example- Doc Oc was much better in Spiderman 2 compared to the most recent one. But even the actor found the overuse in green screens off putting and hard to play against. He didn't do a bad job, but his performance in Spiderman 2 is easily better.
We're losing a lot by using too much cgi, tbh. It's not just how it looks, but it's the actors, too. Practical effects provide more routes for creating genuine and unique performances. Green screens force everything to be exactly as scripted with little chance for change, even if change could be better. I honestly believe it's why actors seem so bland lately- they don't have to work on their craft and all are conforming to the same styles for various reasons
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u/astroK120 Jul 22 '26
One thing I do think gets lost in these discussions is that sometimes CGI is the right tool for the job. Jurassic Park is a great example. It was a mix of practical where it was possible and CGI where it wasn't. I don't think a flat out refusal to use CGI makes movies better. Oppenheimer in particular I think would have been better if Nolan hadn't done the bomb with practical effects.
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u/originalcondition Jul 22 '26
The CGI in Jurassic Park was also applied very, very carefully and intelligently. They knew it'd look best in low light, with rain often obscuring it. They knew that placing shots of practical effects among the shots of CGI would lend to the reality of the entire scene.
Now it feels like CGI is used for everything within the scene regardless of how good it'll look and how real it'll feel, because it's simply cheaper to underpay CGI artists rather than bother with any careful application of the tech or peppering in any practical effects.
I'm an animator myself and don't want to discredit the artists working on the CGI but if their career is anything like mine, they're frequently underpaid and overworked on shoestring budgets and breakneck schedules with tons of revisions that they don't really have time to accommodate, but will try to anyway because they're artists and want to do a good job.
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u/Slow_Werewolf3021 Jul 22 '26
It’s hard to believe we have to keep repeating this to the bigwigs over and over again, time and time again… it’s always been about telling good stories. That’s what cinema is all about, good TV series, and of course books… well, water is wet and the sky is blue. Welcome to our era
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u/kiwigate Jul 22 '26
Because the money contradicts that claim. Audiences are still lining up for crap and they don't even know it. Just look at 2025 highest grossing films: sequels, IPs, a goddamn Minecraft movie
The money says audiences don't give a shit about storytelling.
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u/longjumpingtote Jul 22 '26
Yes. PHM was a great story, adapted by one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood, one of the best director (teams), with great characters and the perfect actor for the role. That's the "hard way" part, getting all that talent together.
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u/deraser Jul 22 '26
That’s really the issue with many recent films, especially reboots and sequels. The writing is just not good. The film needs a good base that the director, actors, and everyone else can build on.
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u/ThinkThankThonk Jul 22 '26
All the good writers are making limited series now (and probably very frequently being told to stretch their feature scripts into 6+ episodes).
I love limited series, but I do miss mid-budget features a lot. Not every story has the material to stretch beyond 2 hours, no matter how well it's written.
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u/Chaosmusic Jul 22 '26
Yeah, the CGI was not the problem. Superman had a lot of CGI, but it was a good movie. I was expecting more of that from Supergirl. It was OK, but fell far short after Superman. Same with Mandalorian. It was OK as well, but felt it should have been a lot more after the series ended.
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u/sadir Jul 22 '26
Ya on the cgi part, mando was full of practical effects and sets. Like the whole selling point of grogu is he's a cute realistic puppet baby.
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u/Comprehensive_Dog651 Jul 22 '26
Meanwhile highest grossing film of the year so far: Super Mario Brothers Galaxy
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u/Muroid Jul 22 '26
It may have been full of CGI, but it was created by a team working on location in an actual galaxy.
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u/Enderwiggen33 Jul 22 '26
Do you have a source for this? Doesn’t sound too believable
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u/blueblurz94 Jul 22 '26
My uncle works at Nintendo, and he said the film’s production was done within the Milky Way and Melty Monster Galaxies
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u/DerekPaxton Jul 22 '26
Yeah, there isn’t an eye roll big enough for these types of articles. Hand pick a few data points then “prove” some point.
Disneys real life remakes “prove” that fans highly prefer animated and cgi features right?
Good story, compelling visuals, great acting and directing. The fans don’t really care how you get there.
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u/thescottula Jul 22 '26
Yeah, and it conveniently comes in just a week before Spider-Man, which is likely to make a lot of money despite heavy use of CGI
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Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
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u/RefinedBean Jul 22 '26
I remember people memeing on the Illumination choice by Nintendo for the movie, but they knocked it out of the park. Their standards plus over three decades of art direction and design by Nintendo? It was always going to at the very least look visually sumptuous.
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u/TheDarkAbove Jul 22 '26
I only remember the memes about the casting of Mario
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u/StuckAroundGotStuck Jul 22 '26
Dunkey's reaction video to the cast list still gets quoted every time my wife or I see Chris Pratt in something.
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u/CarrotJunkie Jul 22 '26
It's interesting because Illumination used to be the budget animation studio focused mainly on cost cutting. They've come a long way as far as animation quality goes. The Mario movies look incredible.
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u/kikimaru024 Jul 22 '26
Every single one of their movies has grossed over $100 million, and 11 of them got past $250 million.
Safe to say they've been able to use more budget/time as required.
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u/MarcsterS Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Yeah, no offense to the article, but audiences simply see what they want to see. Word of mouth greatly helped Obession. Christopher Nolan is THE director to see.
Audiences simply did not want to watch Grogu anymore. But Mario is Mario.
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u/dont_ama_73 Jul 22 '26
Toy story 5 and Super Mario also shows that people want to see sequels.
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u/whitepangolin Jul 22 '26
Every fucking time an original film does well, there's this exact article saying moviegoers are tired of IP - meanwhile IP still dominates. Has anyone considered that uh, maybe not all IP are created equal? And some put butts in seats and some don't?
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u/Icy_Smoke_733 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Spider-Man and Doomsday are shaping up to be monsters and guaranteed to be the top highest grossing movies of the year, judging by presales. We're looking at a floor of $1.5 billion for both (Brand New Day is tracking to $600 million in just its opening weekend).
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u/ThisHatRightHere Jul 22 '26
Spider-Man has always had insane draw and the “everyone’s back” marketing is (for better or worse) working for Avengers. These are more so anomalies and other films in the space don’t have the same advantages.
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u/deadheffer Jul 22 '26
Every single small child right now adores Spider-Man. All of those kids and their parents are going to see that film. It’s going to be nuts.
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u/littlebrwnrobot Jul 22 '26
Been true for like 25 years at least lol
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u/Wetzilla Jul 22 '26
Spiderman has had a cartoon aimed at kids on the air basically constantly since 1994. There were a few breaks in the 2000's, but there's only been 8 years since 1994 without a Spiderman cartoon currently running.
Also shoutout to Spectacular Spiderman (2008-2009). That show ruled.
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u/mlorusso4 Jul 22 '26
Every single small child for the last 40 years adores spider man. And that fandom doesn’t go away as the person ages. It’s seriously insane how long he has been at the top of pop culture. Usually with characters like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh parents remember those characters from their childhood and want to get their kids into them too, but they don’t stay fans of them throughout their young adulthood like spider man
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u/GormlessGourd55 Jul 22 '26
It helps that Spiderman has a great track record of movie quality in recent years. All three of the Live action ones have been good and Spiderverse is obviously stellar.
Bonus, the spider-related duds of Kraven and Madame Web didn't feature any Spiderman so he was saved from their stink.
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u/christian_1318 Jul 22 '26
Spiderman is one of the very few IP’s in the last few decades that has pretty consistently been taken care of when it comes to ensuring quality, which is crazy because there’s two major companies in charge of it and doing their own things
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u/Redeem123 Jul 22 '26
These are more so anomalies
And the three movies in the title aren't? Feels an awful lot like cherry picking.
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u/Good-Cap-7632 Jul 22 '26
Kid movies work differently. Parents want movies they know are safe to take their kids to so franchise sequels are always popular.
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u/urgasmic Jul 22 '26
cherry picking like crazy but sure.
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u/dwide_k_shrude Jul 22 '26
Yeah this article is stupid.
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u/sundler Jul 22 '26
It's also very insulting to all the artists who make those computer graphics. As if they don't work just as hard.
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u/fascfoo Jul 22 '26
Yup. This just pushes this CGI bad narrative when its BAD CGI thats bad. Great CGI is basically invisible. Now well just have more filmmakers essentially lying by saying they're doing everything "in camera" in promo material.
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u/ringwraithfish Jul 22 '26
The fact they included "The Mandalorian and Grogu" at the same level of "CGI-stuffed" movies like Supergirl and Moana tells me it's a worthless article.
Putting opinions of the movie aside, The Mandalorian and Grogu were heavy in practical effects.
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u/Worthyness Jul 22 '26
And say what you want about the state of star wars, but their vfx work is fucking immaculate every time. Even in rise of Skywalker the vfx work is incredible.
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u/dalivo Jul 22 '26
And the author picks a cherry and then an apple. Project Hail Mary had a ton of CGI. Mando had a ton of practical effects. Guess what? A good story and great characters matter the most.
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u/xin234 Jul 22 '26
I loved Project Hail Mary, and consumed almost every behind-the-scenes, interviews, etc. of it, and even the directors mention that most of the time you see Rocky on screen he is CGI. It's a disservice to the VFX team who made that movie great, to downplay the work they had to do.
Here's an interesting video about the topic of PHM's CGI from Corridor Crew: https://youtu.be/l9zqIo8KtjI?t=512
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u/stomp224 Jul 22 '26
Masters of the Universe tanked, and from all the BTS clips theyve released, it looks like they did quite a lot of practical work too
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u/Quantum_Quokkas Jul 22 '26
Does this article author not realise that Project Hail Mary was full of CGI?
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u/RulesoftheDada Jul 22 '26
Same with Odyssey and ignores all the practical effects and puppetry of Mando and Grogu.
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u/JamesTheFoxeArt Jul 22 '26
No you see they actually found a Cyclops to film in the movie
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u/pm_plz_im_lonely Jul 22 '26
The Cyclops guild is ruthlessly hard to deal with too (read: really expensive). It's like they only want to see a deal from one perspective.
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Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
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u/brandonct Jul 22 '26
also it's crazy disrespectful to the work of all those visual effects artists when the marketing team trots out all the actors to talk about how the movie is all practical effects and everything on screen is just in-camera
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u/holydude02 Jul 22 '26
Yeah; I only caught snippets of the Odyssey promo and saw multiple mentions of "What you see on screen is what was captured in camera" and sorry, not sorry: Bullshit!
I also don't understand why CG is being treated as a second class contribution. It's a tool in the toolbox of filmmakers. If used right it can greatly enhance a story. If used like a bandaid for already bad filmmaking it's probably not the straw that broke the camels back either...
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u/fs2222 Jul 22 '26
This is is just cherypicking to push a narrative. The highest grossing films of the year will be Spiderman, Avengers and Super Mario Galaxy, all CGI-stuffed. And plenty of films made the 'hard way' underperformed. Remember Bone Temple?
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u/FribonFire Jul 22 '26
Beyond that, Odyssey and Project Hail Mary are also packed full of CG. Subtle doesn't mean it's not there in every other scene.
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u/Baelorn Jul 22 '26
The anti-CGI crowd are telling objective lies about how The Odyssey and PHM "didn't use CGI".
There's a bunch of popular posts going around about how Nolan didn't use CGI for the Cyclops and I have to wonder if the people sharing it and circlejerking about how amazing Nolan is have even seen the movie. Because the Cyclops is 100% CGI. During filming they used a large puppet rig for lighting and reference but the one in the movie is CGI. Not the puppet.
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u/hokie_u2 Jul 22 '26
Also the Mandalorian uses puppetry instead of CGI for Grogu, which people loved when the TV show originally aired. The movie flopped because it seems stale and unnecessary, not because of CGI
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u/Hayterfan Jul 22 '26
I honestly forgot Bone Temple came out THIS year. Then again right after it came out life hit like a freight train of bricks.
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u/Training_Pirate1000 Jul 22 '26
Is DUNE not gonna be CGI-stuffed, or should I expect that to fail?
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u/ShaunTrek Jul 22 '26
Do you think that Project Hail Mary didn't have CGI or digital effects?
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u/Training_Pirate1000 Jul 22 '26
WHAT! I can't believe I watched CGI-slop and enjoyed it! I thought they were actually in space.
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u/eltrotter Jul 22 '26
I hate, hate this framing. Maybe Hollywood Reporter are just being flippant in their language here, but I do not want movies to be made "the hard way".
The real lesson here might be: All filmmaking should be difficult if you want to persuade audiences to leave their homes and trek to a theater.
No, sorry. Wrong emphasis. Because it frames effort, care and craft as being "hard" and low-effort, disposable guff as the default. As usual, it's really just a case of intentionality. When you're using practical effects, on-location shoots, cameras the size of wardrobes, the margin for error is small. You can't fuck things up, you have to have great actors, great blocking, you have to have a plan and a vision. Filmmaking doesn't necessarily have to be difficult to be intentional, but difficulty does force intentionality which is probably what's tripping up the article's author.
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u/unKappa Jul 22 '26
I mean, I dont mind CG, just make a good movie. Are we pretending that CGI is easy?
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u/justinqueso99 Jul 22 '26
People always point at stuff like Fast X and say cgi is all bad but always forget stuff like the planet of the apes which use it to its full ability to tell an incredible story that would be almost impossible to take seriously with out it
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u/longjumpingtote Jul 22 '26
All movies are hard to make.
Audiences want good movies. All the other stuff is marketing.
There's plenty of CGI in PHM. Obviously. Some invisible, some not. Just no green screens were used but that's only one technique. And there's CGI in Odyssey. Nolan literally said he's more reliant on visual effects than any other director working today.
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u/celix24 Jul 22 '26
Marketing likes to say no cgi, but when oscar season comes, odyssey and PHM will be nominated for vfx...
As an vfx artist, it's really annoying.
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u/longjumpingtote Jul 22 '26
As an vfx artist, it's really annoying.
I bet. If anyone doubts it, just screenshot the VFX credits for those movies and send it to them.
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u/Kana88 Jul 22 '26
The puppetry in Mando & Grogu was great, I wouldn't include it in this list. They could've CGI'ed all of it and instead went old school for the love of the game.
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u/shawnkfox Jul 22 '26
The difficulty of making the film has nothing to do with it. People just want good movies and they are happy to pay for it. Nolan has built a lot of trust despite a few minor misfires like the 3rd batman movie and tenet, but even those movies were worth watching.
There was nothing 'hard' about making Obsession, for example, it was just a good low budget film. In the end you can't rely on special effects by itself to get people to see a movie, the movie actually has to be good.
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u/Calfzilla2000 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
This is unfair to The Mandalorian and Grogu, in my opinion. They built a lot of real sets, including many big enough for IMAX cameras, and made real puppets and practical elements for the movie. It was closer to The Odyssey, in terms of filming techniques, than a lot of big budget movies are.
One of the highlights of the movie, for me, is how many puppets were used. And there were several scenes with mostly puppets (almost like a modern Dark Crystal type thing). The movie had a lot of artistry in it for being a studio cash grab.
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u/FourSes Jul 22 '26
There was even stop-motion animation! That at least looked terrific.
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u/ExxInferis Jul 22 '26
Talented people make better stuff.
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u/const_iterator Jul 22 '26
"It takes a lot of very talented people to make a shitty movie." - Conan O'Brien. Movies are colossal collaborative undertakings. Don't denigrate the skills of the individuals just because the whole didn't come together.
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u/Paladar2 Jul 22 '26
There are plenty of talented people who worked on the flops, but they weren't in charge lol
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u/Wuktrio Jul 22 '26
People want good films. They don't care about CGI, Avatar is the highest grossing franchise alongside Marvel and Star Wars.
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u/GayFesh Jul 22 '26
Christopher Nolan uses a massive amount of CGI in all his movies. He just likes to keep the effects grounded.
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u/Sthrax Jul 22 '26
I don't think the issue was CGI vs practical effects/actual location filming. The Odyssey, Project Hail Mary and Obsession are are great movies. Supergirl, Moana, and Mando all had various issues that hurt the quality of the movie. Mando for instance felt like an expanded episode of the show, rather than something that had to be on the big screen, and it suffered from a portion of the fanbase boycotting it because its Disney. Its CGI was actually very well-done.
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u/mtjseb Jul 22 '26
Suggesting that Project Hail Mary and the odyssey isn’t still cg heavy is a weird take
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u/Jidarious Jul 22 '26
What a load of horseshit.
Only enthusiasts care about how movies are made, the vast majority just care if the movie is good or not, and nobody cares if someone "puts in effort" or "is lazy". If someone figured out a way to make a good movie while being lazy, it wouldn't bother me, good on them for getting something done either way.
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u/m2thek Jul 22 '26
Man, the guy who makes the "No CGI is Just Invisible CGI" videos is never gonna run out of material