Given the popularity and commercial success of CGI-heavy films in recent years, using either Davis or Rombes, discuss this phenomenon in conversation with your own experiences of blockbuster films

I found Rombes’s take on virtual humanism absolutely captivating and there were a few concepts that really struck me. In this Journal entry I will be experimenting with some of his concepts and comparing them to Avatar and other CGI based films.

The first concept that really struck me in Rombes’ piece was how avant-garde art now gains so much popularity that it becomes mainstream, and therefore less appreciated by some. (Rombes) So many of my classmates/friends criticized Avatar due to it’s lack of plot originality, whereas I saw it was an experiment in today’s technological abilities. I admire James Cameron for pushing the boundaries and developing a film along with a new sort of genre. Rombes talked about a certain scenes in X-men and he says “if you freeze a single frame from that scene you will find a surreal visual elegance and a screen composition that scrambles realism” (Rombes, p.152) I think that perhaps that was the whole purpose of the Avatar film, to capture this sense of surrealism by depicting images that human’s in general can be mesmerized, enthralled by but at the same time shake us by the sheer detail of the digital work. Mr. Cameron (and his teams) work indeed seemed to “scramble realism”. Bellow are a few still I found to be absolutely mystifying, elegant and captivating. These were the reasons I enjoyed the film so much!

  Stunning staging, as he discovers this new forest so do we. 

The sheer detail and proportions are mind-blowing when Jake fist enters his Mutant body.

Although the pure elegance and captivating visuals grasped by attention at first, the media started to ruin the picture for me. It wasn’t the criticism but rather the excessive amounts of articles depicting the making of this new film. They completely lifted the veil and I am sure I am not alone in saying that the whole illusion started to crumble. One thing I loved so much about Upstream Color was that in an interview the Carruth mentions how he had no need for special features in the DVD because the film simply…is the way it is (SXSW, 2013). Sometimes I simply watch a movie because I want to escape and be entertained. To have it stripped a few days latter by the making of kind of shatters the glass between what is real and the surreal world depicted in the movie.

My mind when the illusion is broken 

One other heavy CGI movie that I found quite disconcerting was the Great Gatsby, they seemed to have smothered the whole film with heavy glitter and cartoonish setting. When I came out of the movie theater that night I felt uneasy like something wasn’t right and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. My friend on the other hand absolutely loved it she was completely compelled by the whole esthetic. It finally made sense to me when we watched/discussed aspect of the making of the movie in class. When I realized that the film was heavily edited using CGI for practically every single scene I finally understood my distaste for the film. Perhaps I was distraught, because to me such movie shouldn’t have the need to be glazed over by a coat of superficial editing. When I was reading Rombes’ peice the whole esthetic started to make more sense to me. He mentions that “special effect are so seamless, so natural that its very surrealism lies in the fact that it dis-guises itself as reality”(Rombes, p.153) It is one thing to create a new world with elegant ‘avant-guard’ visuals, but to be discussing and masking reality is something I simply cannot get used to.

Since when does Leo look like someone straight out of Jersey shore. 

The excessive editing on his face was irksome. 

sources: 

Carruth, Shane. An Interview with Carruth James Jonathan. Texas, 2013.

Rombes, Nicholas. Cinema in the Digital Age. London: Wallflower Press, 2009.