Dangling Conversations

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Living in Digital

Posted 22 Aug, 2005 at 00:21 by matt in /MovingPictures | Permanent link

Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: have the following things in common: both of them are entirely digital films; both of them use the digital technology to create a very specific mood and aesthetic; both are self-consciously drawing on past movie styles (noir for Sin City, pulp action for Sky Captain) for a lot of their vision.

So why did I find Sin City compelling, and turned off Sky Captain within the first fifteen minutes the first time I tried watching it?

Here's the thing, I think, about digital moviemaking on this scale: eye candy is a good thing, but it can not, should not, must not be the only thing. If you're relying on pretty pictures to carry the day for you, then you've almost certainly lost already. (At least, if we're talking about a feature-length film. Short films based on visual conceits are quite all right: The Mind's Eye was pretty and charming, the Final Fantasy movie not so much.)

Sky Captain has eye candy; in fact, it has nothing but eye candy. The creators did their homework and created a marvelous rendition of pulp style, evoking for me any number of evenings watching Elwie Yost's movie programme on CBC Saturday nights. It's big, it's pretty, but there's this problem with all of the little moving props running around here and there.

To wit: there is no reason at all to care about the characters here. The actors don't even care about their characters; why should we? Gwyneth Platrow bears a lot of the onus here, since for the first main sequence of the film she's really the only character of note... and I don't believe her, partly because she doesn't believe herself. Maybe it's the whole green-screen thing, and the difficulty of pretending that you're about to get crushed by a giant robot when really you're in a mostly empty room with walls the colour of a sugar maple in spring; I don't know.

Sin City doesn't have this problem; despite how nearly every damn scene in this film must have been green-screened and then processed to within a quarter-inch of its life, the actors never ever let it show that they doubt their surroundings. "Hypernoir" was a term used to describe Sin City before its release, and that's about right; even with the heavy stylization and odd visual effects (brief moments in reverse silhouette, spots of colour in an otherwise relelntless monochrome), there's a grittiness here that goes beyond realism somehow.

More than that: every visual effect in Sin City has a reason behind it. Sometimes the reason isn't apparent, and I suspect that occasionally the reason is to echo a particularly cool panel from the original graphic novel (Road to Perdition did this as well, but it didn't flow as well there); but almost never were the visual effects arbitrary. Sky Captain has a bit of a kitchen-sink feel to it: "hey, guys, let's put in some more Kewl Stuff in the background here, we've still got money we haven't spent yet". The effects served mostly to distract from the (dull, hackneyed) story; the effects in Sin City were entirely at the service of the story.

Comments (8 comments so far)
really? i haven't seen sky captain, but i was really disappointed in Sin City. i so WANTED to like it, but i really just thought that only clive owen understood that kind of film noir style. also, why must everyone continually rise and fall in a hail of bullets (no, james already explained it to me)?
Posted 2005/8/21 23:39:24 by uberviolet
Actually, I really liked Sky Captain, but it's exactly for the reasons Matt described: It reminded me of watching Saturday Night at the Movies with Elwie Yost. I've got a soft spot in my heart for that style of pulp movie, although I must admit I was horribly dissappointed by the character portrayals of both Ms. Paltrow & Mr. Law. Both of them could have done much better. I haven't seen Sin City yet, but I suspect I'll like it no matter how bad the characterizations are, for the same reasons as listed above. If Galen's reading this, I'm sure he'll be laughing, because he's made me notorious for loving "bad graphics" computer games, because eye candy in a game doesn't interest me.
Posted 2005/8/22 07:54:20 by Kael
Hmmmm....
After checking out Uberviolet's favourite movies, I'm suddenly worried about the chances that I'll like Sin City. On the otherhand, if Dr. Matt likes it....
Posted 2005/8/22 08:02:02 by Kael
So in a nutshell you are saying that where Sin City succeeds and Sky Captain fails is a matter of personal taste but largely centered around the ability of the director to harness the technology to accentuate the story instead of obliterate it. I think a more interesting discussion is around whether or not true depth can br brought to the film though use of CG. Films like Final Fantasy, and Toy Story are all CG... yet, Final Fantasy didn't draw me in, whereas Toy Story does. Star Wars Ep 1.. I feel no empathy when Gungans and Droids die, yet in Episode 6, you feel sadness as a midget in a furry suit cradles his companion or another stuntman is killed by a collegue. It's because at some level you can feel what is real and what is not. Models are better than CG... if done well. Actors and heros can almost never be replaced. Lord of the Rings shows scenes from far back that are CG and they impress... as long as the close ups are of real people in costume, the effect works. An interesting side note to all of this... the director of Sin City, Rodriguez, was pegged to helm the $100 million sci-fi epic A Princess of Mars, the first book in a series by Edgar Rice Burroughs before bailing to do Sin City. So... at some point we may see yet another mega CG epic come to the screen.
Posted 2005/8/22 09:21:01 by
Anonymous: I'm not quite sure what you're talking about when you ask if "true depth can be brought to a film through the use of CG". CG is a technology, and as such is orthogonal to things like story and character... which are typically where "real depth" come into a film.

For instance, you think that the Ewoks in SW6 evoke more sympathy from the audience than the Gungans in SW1 because one is "more real" than the other; I would propose the alternative hypothesis that the Ewoks were set up to evoke sympathy, while the Gungans were more or less a throwaway alien race. (Recall the scene when C-3PO was telling the story so far to a group of Ewok children; moments like that "humanized" the Ewoks in a way that nobody bothered to for the Gungans. My, that was some interesting grammar there.)

Basically, I think my point still stands: it's not really a question of "depth" when one talks about digital effects, because digital effects are all about presentation: about the surface of things, how they appear. Can that be turned to illuminate themes, enrich characterization? Almost certainly. Can it do so on its own, without story, without character? No, unless you mean something different by "depth" than most people would in a narrative context such as film-making.
Posted 2005/8/22 11:43:30 by
Doh! I made the same rookie mistake. That last one was me.
Posted 2005/8/22 11:43:58 by Matt
Also, Rodriguez stepped down from the Burroughs film as the result of Sin City, but not due to a scheduling problem. Rodriguez insisted that the only way he could make Sin City properly was to have Frank Miller (creator of the comics) as co-director. The Director's Guild of America does not allow dual credits for directors, so Rodriguez resigned from the DGA in order to make Sin City the way he wanted. The studio making the Mars flick, Paramount, has an arrangement with the DGA to not use directors unless they are members, so they were forced to replace him... ironically enough, for this discussion, with the guy who directed Sky Captain.
Posted 2005/8/22 14:16:08 by RobRoy
Glancing only quickly at RobRoy's comment and forgetting a bit of the previous discussion, what lept to mind was Rodriguez directing an adaptation of The Western Lands or some other William S. Burroughs novel. That would be worth good money to see, particularly if they did the smart thing and handy you a small package of hallucinogens as you walked in the door.
Posted 2005/8/22 17:30:56 by Matt
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