Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 - Beyond Batman: Freeze Frame - The Visual FX of 'Batman & Robin' (2005) (V)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Constantine Nasr

Release Date:

2005 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Cast

Jeff Dawn	...	Himself
Ve Neal	...	Herself
Brian Pennikas	...	Himself
Arnold Schwarzenegger	...	Himself
Uma Thurman	...	Herself

Runtime:

USA:10 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

New Wave Entertainment

It has some to offer

This nine minutes long documentary is featured on the Special Edition DVD release of Batman & Robin, and it details the special effects of said movie. It isn't too bad, and one crew-member explains/details the major change in how special effects are done, and what purpose the creators of them need to serve, what need they fulfill, and this is the absolute high-light of this presentation. Some footage of the behind the scenes people planning and such is featured. Schumacher doesn't sound the most like an idiot here, but he still... really has nothing to say or offer(I shan't subject myself to the feature commentary by him... for anyone who does, I wish you the best of luck, and I am impressed if you make it out with your tolerance of boredom still intact), nor is that smart about saying it(when Arnold can say it better...gosh). There is some material about the miniature shoots, which wasn't too bad. The overall thing to this, though, is... CGI. And person after person saying "see how good we can make this look? You can't even tell" and, well, the problem is, yeah, we kinda can, it didn't look that good in the film. The film had a number of problems, and one of them was overusing a still young technology, that of animation meant to look like real movement(cartoon animation has looked good for a while, but real people animation... well, we're still struggling with it, it's still seldom seen done right, and I tend to lean towards the people who feel that it should only be used to supplement, and/or take over where what we build(come on, you can tell it's not real, sometimes) stops working. I'm not saying we shouldn't use it, we just shouldn't overuse it, either, if more of the footage in a film is CGI than live-action, come on, take that extra step, just go for an all-CGI feature, instead). I recommend this to anyone who follows the evolution of special effects technology, and/or any fans of the film(however, I would guess that the first group is considerably larger than the second). 6/10