FUN FRIDAY: Terminator 2, part 2

So friends, it turns out that I trod over this ground not even a year ago. If you look at this Fun Friday article, you’ll see I already talked about the amazing work done on 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But why shouldn’t I talk about it again? It is a Friday after all, and I’m already ready for 5:00 to come.

It’s impossible to overestimate

This film came out 31 years ago. At the time there was literally nothing like it out there. It’s a cliché to call it groundbreaking, but what other word was there? These were the days when the art of special effects was evolving rapidly. In just a few short years it went from miniatures and film to computers and video editing. The result was a stream of films that showed us worlds we’d never seen before. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was one of the first, and Jurassic Park, Toy Story, and Titanic gave us spectacles we couldn’t have imagined.

I would go so far as to say that there isn’t anything today that could wow us like those films did. It may not even be possible, to be quite honest. We’ve become very jaded from the incredible special effects we see on practically anything now. You can say Avatar 2: The Way of Water is cool, but it’s really not the kind of thing you have to see to believe.

So yes, the effects have aged

You can see Terminator 2: Judgment Day on cable or satellite pretty much any day of the week. It airs surprisingly often. When you watch it, you’ll probably feel like the effects have aged. They look less convincing now than they did, just because we’re used to it.

Let’s be cruelly honest, this shot is one of the ones that has aged the worst. The animation of the floor isn’t terribly convincing and the humanoid form is very blobby. The real impact of this shot comes the first time you see it, but once you have, you know it’s coming and it doesn’t really work.

But considering it’s been 30 years, and considering the brutally primitive tools that they had then, the shot looks surprisingly good. Most of the shots do. If anything, they look too good. They look so good that they don’t look like they belong in the rest of the movie. They’re a bit too perfect.

Trying to recreate

I watch a lot of videos from YouTubers “The Corridor Crew.” These are a group of actual VFX artists who, for whatever reason, don’t get sick of doing what they do all day. (I’ll admit, I probably wouldn’t either.) So, they produce videos where they try to recreate classic movie CGI using today’s tech. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But the result is always interesting. Take a look:

In this video, they start with the idea of the classic “head through bars” shot and try to recreate it two different ways. They try to emulate the way it was done at the time, and also try to do it the way it would likely be done today. You can judge the results for yourself. In some ways, the new shots are better. In others, they just aren’t, surprisingly.

The difference today

In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, creating visual effects was really about inventing new ways to do things. At first, it was motion-control cameras and better optical compositing. Then, it moved to computers and complicated motion matching. So often, a movie’s real distinctiveness came in the fact that no one had ever done something quite that way before. This era lasted all the way until the mid-2000s. I would say 2007’s Transformers was the last time I saw something genuinely new in CGI, unless you count 2009’s Avatar. (I don’t count it, because I was far less impressed than the average person at the time.)

Today’s visual effects are far more about cost than novelty. I don’t want to bash today’s VFX artists, who do so much with so little money. But they are generally called upon to produce something quickly and under budget, and that’s all. When there really is an attempt to do something revolutionary, like 2019’s Cats, it’s much more likely to be a flop than a phenomenon.

So, sit right back and enjoy a trip back to the days when special effects were really special. It’s a time that’s not likely to come again.