second on Jackson's Kong.
I didn't like Return of the King either.
I've always thought the key to making not so good special effects look great was the quick cut. It seems that in the case of these movies, though, the key to maiking adequate effects look bad is to do shot after lingering shot of them. Return of the king actually made me feel a bit sick while i was watching it in the theatre.

You also need to see the 1961 version of Mysterious Island: http://imdb.com/title/tt0055207/?fr=...c=1;ft=20;fm=1

Effects by Ray Harryhausen - the giant crab is my favorite ;-) All the same, I actually own this DVD and enjoy watching it from time to time purely from nostalgia after watching the original as a kid...

Here ya go - click on the "crab" link: http://www.chinesejetpilot.com/index.php?ID=202#

Sound of Thunder
 

Dude,.....Sound of Thunder was awful. There are scenes where they are obviously walking on treadmills in front of greenscreen,....and they didn't even match up the speed of the people walking to passing background. the rest of the movie was pretty awful as well.

The first film version of "Dune". Terrible!

The giant sandworm looks like a modified vacuum hose being dragged through the sand.

And in one of the scenes where the highliner is in orbit around a planet, there's a huge clot of dust flying in formation with it. Of course these spaceships look a lot like pictures of spaceships being moved around like flat animation cels -- which is exactly what they are.

Overall the movie absolutely sucked.

On the other hand, the best space effects I've ever seen is in Kubrick's "2001". Even the scene in which Bowman blows himself into the airlock there's absolutely no sound as the exploding bolts go off -- because there's no air to conduct sound waves!

Boyd: that's pretty bad indeed. On the 2005 version I often had a feeling they
used paper cut-outs or something....

Jumanji! Great movie, one of my favorites, but the animals look terrible to the point of laughability.

Escape from LA anyone? The surfing scene was incredibly cliche and awful looking.

the trouble with cg effects is that their always looking better cause of advancements in technoligy, well technicly they are (i don't much care for most cg)

I guess budget plays into this big time, cause a movie like "the black hole" is truely awful effects, but it's not a big budget flix. Where as the latest star wars films are big buget, but the effects are #1 lame-o. The effects really weren't really any better then the first 2 1/2 movies (i don't coun't the ewok battle). (Ok look fights the green screen in jabbas palace is a bit dated, but so what).

Oh yeah, 1970's king kong, a man in a gorilla outfit looks like a man in a gorilla oufit, you might as well watch "mighty peaking man", it looks to be the same level of effects, but cheaper budget

What? You didn't like the production values in Escape from LA???

I agree that the new Star Wars films were terrible. I admire what they were able to acheive with CGI, but it gives the whole film a comic book, phony appearance. And the theory that "more is better" wears thin very quickly.

Michael Bay's "The Island" and that stupid two person flying motorcycle thing. What makes me laugh is when I listened to the director's comments, there's Mr. Bay himself saying the studio thought the thing was cheesy. He goes on to defend the thing and there it is, right in your face cheese.

escape form la was a crappy movie all around. Shows what happens when you take a b movie director (and lest face it, carpenter made much better low "b" movies) and give them alot of money. Escape from l.a had to of been what, 20x the budget of escape from n.y, and with out a doubt, escape from n.y is the better movie.

so budget does not dertimin effects value. I hate this new green screne background thing, not because it's cg, but because it always looks like the actors are on a stage4 with a picture behind them. I saw sin city, that was not very enjoyable, and didn't do anything to impress me.

Anyway, put me down for "final fantasy the spirit within" it;s all cg and it's horrible. Wnat good special effects on a budget, get Avalon by mamoru oshii

Actually, I laughed and laughed. It made it seem worth it to watch Snake and Peter Fonda surfing.

I referenced Escape from LA in the first post....as a sort of inspiration to start this whole thread in the first place. Something about the surfing scene that was so disastrously comical made it look like Kurt and Peter were inches away from breaking out into some type of Frankie and Annette duet. It was just too freakin' funny.
-Jon

Whoops, I skipped right over your post! Sorry about that.
10 years ago when I first saw it in the theaters, I was actually impressed by the effects! How about that? Anyway, not too long ago, I actually read somewhere that Carpenter actually didn't want to do a sequel, but the studio was kinda forcing him into it, so he made it almost like a parody of itself. I'm not sure about the credibility of that, but that's what I heard.

I greatly disliked the Scorpion King in the Mummy Returns.

I dont like dissing movie effects because much of the time the FX people have to work on tight deadlines--with little money. In the last 25 years--a huge reason for the existence of the blockbuster is because of the injection of A budget money into fx budgets and set piece sequences.

Very few people could do even 10 percent of the work a Ray Harryhausen did.

It also requires a great deal of artistic skill and knowledge to create something as simple as a foam creature suit. Stan Winston was able to direct a decent movie Pumpkinhead, but could Lucas or Spielberg sculpt and mold a predator costume? The results would be scary.

Jurassic Park's effects hold up in terms of dinosaur movement--but some sequences have a "gamish" look-especially the daylight stampede sequence. Very digital. Plus--in the final scene--the blur effects are not consistent with animals that would be so large. But in 93, no one would have noticed it, just as in 33 no one thought King Kong was jerky.

Terminator 3 had great effects--and as a sequel to a sequel I thought it was pretty solid--I expected much worse. The acting was good(except for the TX girl--but she wasnt supposed to be Meryl Streep), the plot took interesting turns. The Terminator was a lot less cutesy than he was in T2. But the movie didnt have the epic feel one would expect. Poor Cameron though--he does all that work to have a happy ending and it gets blown to bits--just like in Alien 3.