Dehumanizing Hollywood
May 22nd 2007 14:07
Dehumanizing Hollywood
The recent film 300, a fictionalised account of the ancient Greek myth of the Battle Of Themopylae, caused a sensation in more ways than one. The film was shot almost entirely in front of a green screen, with all backgrounds edited in digitally, and heavy film filters give the film a bronzed, stark, striking appearance. Aside from causing controversy for its graphic violence, its unflattering depiction of Persians as inhuman barbarians, and its rather heavy-handed glorification of the Spartans, it was lamented by film purists as the first of a new generation of movies movies that look like videogames. Its striking appearance, the demonisation of the film's villains as they were mercilessly butchered, the over-the-top violence for violence's sake, the saturation of slow-motion and bullet-time techniques, the identical gym-trained six-pack bodies of all 300 Spartans...the parallel is easy to draw. While it looks spectacular, it does not look real. Movies, it seems, are being dehumanized.
But is 300 really the first? The Matrix films were probably the first to portray action in such a manner. The visual aspect has the same stark, slick aesthetic, and the audience is encouraged to feel no sympathy for the victims they are seen as no more than apparitions, robots in a computer program.
There is more to this trend than might be noticed at first glance. The advent of ever more powerful videogame platforms has lent developers the technology to make their computer games increasingly cinematic hiring high-profile screen actors to voice characters and stuffing games with literally hours of non-interactive video footage, portraying intricate storylines and character development. It seems that movies are not merely becoming more like videogames videogames are becoming, increasingly, like movies, as computer technology lends more and more power to each medium.
Where does this lead? The two media seem to be not just evolving but merging, technologically and stylistically. Today's videogames are no longer esoteric, special-interest pastimes for geeks and fanboys it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Halo 2, for Microsoft's Xbox platform, made $150 million (US) in its first 24 hours of release. By comparison, Grindhouse, the new Tarantino film, made only $23 million after three whole weeks of release in American theaters. While Grindhouse was admittedly something of a box-office disaster, it is still a blockbuster title from one of the most popular cult directors in the world. The numbers show that the financial market is no longer as one-sided as it was when Tetris and Super Mario Brothers were at the forefront of videogame technology.
It seems as though entertainment is heading inexorably toward some sort of interactive-film amalgamation. Spy-thriller games such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell already play much like watching a Tom Clancy film (minus the cheese and cliches), with convoluted storylines, hours of dialogue, and memorable characters. Watching The Matrix or 300 feels much like watching a videogame, both in its visual effects and its trivialisation of violence. Blockbuster movies involving a lot of trick photography and acrobatic stunts such as the latest Sam Raimi abomination, Spiderman 3 - seem to utilise computer animation as much as old-fashioned celluloid. Look at the tendency for big-budget films to portray scenes which are simply impossible to film by traditional means the duelling pirate ships in Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 is a good example. It is now expected of every blockbuster to feature camerawork and stunts that are physically impossible to shoot. These sort of scenes were mind-blowing upon the release of the first Matrix film; now, any movie without them looks somewhat dated.
It seems likely that before long, all videogame characters will be computer-modelled on real actors, scanned in photographically as technology develops to allow the requisite picture resolution. Increasingly high-profile stars will lend not only their voices but also faces, bodies and mannerisms to videogame characters. All animation will be replaced by motion-capture, a process whereby sensors are placed on a human model's body and transmit their movements to a computer to be transferred to a digital model.
The Nintendo Wii console has introduced something of a control-revolution in home entertainment infrared sensors detect the player's movements with the hand control, enabling them to use it as a golf club, nunchucks, a steering wheel, a pilot's yoke, or whatever the game in question requires. This ingenious system is another level of immersion and realism it's one thing to use a certain sequence of button presses to execute a perfect right uppercut in a boxing simulator, but quite another to perform the movement yourself and see your digital avatar execute it on-screen.
The line between the media of film and videogames seems to be blurring more with every technological innovation in both fields. It is unlikely that we will ever reach a stage where all entertainment is interactive, if only for the simple reason that sometimes you cannot be bothered mashing buttons...or even waving an infra-red control about in your loungeroom, like a conductor in some kind of amphetamine frenzy (some Nintendo Wii players can come across as quite overstimulated). But it would seem that we are entering an age where all our idle home entertainment will involve the interaction of the viewer. And I don't think this need be the death knell of acting as an art form. As entertainment becomes increasingly digitized, actors will simply need to adapt to the new medium, as did the first stage actors to be shot on film, back around the beginning of the twentieth century. As a wise man once said, "The opposite of evolution is stagnation and death".
The recent film 300, a fictionalised account of the ancient Greek myth of the Battle Of Themopylae, caused a sensation in more ways than one. The film was shot almost entirely in front of a green screen, with all backgrounds edited in digitally, and heavy film filters give the film a bronzed, stark, striking appearance. Aside from causing controversy for its graphic violence, its unflattering depiction of Persians as inhuman barbarians, and its rather heavy-handed glorification of the Spartans, it was lamented by film purists as the first of a new generation of movies movies that look like videogames. Its striking appearance, the demonisation of the film's villains as they were mercilessly butchered, the over-the-top violence for violence's sake, the saturation of slow-motion and bullet-time techniques, the identical gym-trained six-pack bodies of all 300 Spartans...the parallel is easy to draw. While it looks spectacular, it does not look real. Movies, it seems, are being dehumanized.
But is 300 really the first? The Matrix films were probably the first to portray action in such a manner. The visual aspect has the same stark, slick aesthetic, and the audience is encouraged to feel no sympathy for the victims they are seen as no more than apparitions, robots in a computer program.
There is more to this trend than might be noticed at first glance. The advent of ever more powerful videogame platforms has lent developers the technology to make their computer games increasingly cinematic hiring high-profile screen actors to voice characters and stuffing games with literally hours of non-interactive video footage, portraying intricate storylines and character development. It seems that movies are not merely becoming more like videogames videogames are becoming, increasingly, like movies, as computer technology lends more and more power to each medium.
Where does this lead? The two media seem to be not just evolving but merging, technologically and stylistically. Today's videogames are no longer esoteric, special-interest pastimes for geeks and fanboys it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Halo 2, for Microsoft's Xbox platform, made $150 million (US) in its first 24 hours of release. By comparison, Grindhouse, the new Tarantino film, made only $23 million after three whole weeks of release in American theaters. While Grindhouse was admittedly something of a box-office disaster, it is still a blockbuster title from one of the most popular cult directors in the world. The numbers show that the financial market is no longer as one-sided as it was when Tetris and Super Mario Brothers were at the forefront of videogame technology.
It seems as though entertainment is heading inexorably toward some sort of interactive-film amalgamation. Spy-thriller games such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell already play much like watching a Tom Clancy film (minus the cheese and cliches), with convoluted storylines, hours of dialogue, and memorable characters. Watching The Matrix or 300 feels much like watching a videogame, both in its visual effects and its trivialisation of violence. Blockbuster movies involving a lot of trick photography and acrobatic stunts such as the latest Sam Raimi abomination, Spiderman 3 - seem to utilise computer animation as much as old-fashioned celluloid. Look at the tendency for big-budget films to portray scenes which are simply impossible to film by traditional means the duelling pirate ships in Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 is a good example. It is now expected of every blockbuster to feature camerawork and stunts that are physically impossible to shoot. These sort of scenes were mind-blowing upon the release of the first Matrix film; now, any movie without them looks somewhat dated.
It seems likely that before long, all videogame characters will be computer-modelled on real actors, scanned in photographically as technology develops to allow the requisite picture resolution. Increasingly high-profile stars will lend not only their voices but also faces, bodies and mannerisms to videogame characters. All animation will be replaced by motion-capture, a process whereby sensors are placed on a human model's body and transmit their movements to a computer to be transferred to a digital model.
The Nintendo Wii console has introduced something of a control-revolution in home entertainment infrared sensors detect the player's movements with the hand control, enabling them to use it as a golf club, nunchucks, a steering wheel, a pilot's yoke, or whatever the game in question requires. This ingenious system is another level of immersion and realism it's one thing to use a certain sequence of button presses to execute a perfect right uppercut in a boxing simulator, but quite another to perform the movement yourself and see your digital avatar execute it on-screen.
The line between the media of film and videogames seems to be blurring more with every technological innovation in both fields. It is unlikely that we will ever reach a stage where all entertainment is interactive, if only for the simple reason that sometimes you cannot be bothered mashing buttons...or even waving an infra-red control about in your loungeroom, like a conductor in some kind of amphetamine frenzy (some Nintendo Wii players can come across as quite overstimulated). But it would seem that we are entering an age where all our idle home entertainment will involve the interaction of the viewer. And I don't think this need be the death knell of acting as an art form. As entertainment becomes increasingly digitized, actors will simply need to adapt to the new medium, as did the first stage actors to be shot on film, back around the beginning of the twentieth century. As a wise man once said, "The opposite of evolution is stagnation and death".
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