Terminator: Dark Fate 4K UHD (2019)

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Enjoyed it a hell of a lot, I'm still thinking about it a day later. Can't wait to revisit it on disc, might even go to the cinema again just to catch that jaw-dropping opening scene.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Geoff!

The first 20 minutes are my favorite part too. Did a lot of work on those shots. Once the movie comes out on home-video maybe I'll post some before/after if you guys would like.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Geoff!

The first 20 minutes are my favorite part too. Did a lot of work on those shots. Once the movie comes out on home-video maybe I'll post some before/after if you guys would like.

That would be awesome to see. Gotta question, it’s in good fun, so please don’t take it as some sort of attack, or anything like that.

Why do modern (2000-present) CG filled movies completely disregard physics or any basic logic? Characters bounce around like cartoons, toss each other 20 feet into the air, crash through things, and in general move and act overly exaggerated, as if they have no weight, and not like someone or something would behave in the real world. This over exaggeration is so severe that it makes the movies look rather dumb.

Are these artistic liberties taken by the graphic designers, or is this specifically requested by the director? I imagine that computer programmers and graphic designers have significant education and understand how our world works and should have no problem in at least getting the basics right.

Look at Cameron’s Avatar. It’s fantasy, but every single detail has a purpose and everything is grounded in basic reality properly. So it obviously can be done. If it’s the director, do you guys (or the CG company) have a say in it? Like as in we have a responsibility in making our work not look so ridiculous?

What’s going on?

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

That would be awesome to see. Gotta question, it’s in good fun, so please don’t take it as some sort of attack, or anything like that.

Why do modern (2000-present) CG filled movies completely disregard physics or any basic logic? Characters bounce around like cartoons, toss each other 20 feet into the air, crash through things, and in general move and act overly exaggerated, as if they have no weight, and not like someone or something would behave in the real world. This over exaggeration is so severe that it makes the movies look rather dumb.

Are these artistic liberties taken by the graphic designers, or is this specifically requested by the director? I imagine that computer programmers and graphic designers have significant education and understand how our world works and should have no problem in at least getting the basics right.

Look at Cameron’s Avatar. It’s fantasy, but every single detail has a purpose and everything is grounded in basic reality properly. So it obviously can be done. If it’s the director, do you guys (or the CG company) have a say in it? Like as in we have a responsibility in making our work not look so ridiculous?

What’s going on?

I'm on the digital compositing side so I can't really tell you why other than this:

the CG animation is always approved first by the animation supervisor of the VFX company (or VFX vendor), then goes through the VFX supervisor of the VFX company, then it gets sent as "presenting for animation approval" to the (main) production VFX supervisor, who in turns shows it to the director during the director's review.

So they both have a saying and they both have to approve it before the animation task can be flagged as complete and the animated CG models can be passed to lighting and rendering. Then the final renders are brought inside the composite and tweaked more or less depending on how good the lighting is. Then again, comp supervisor on vendor side approves the final comp, VFX supervisor on vendor side approves it and sends it over as "presenting for final".

Then once again the production VFX supervisor will review the final comp first, then director and executive producers will have notes or approve it, and the shot gets final'd, or in the picture, pending continuity and final tech-check.

Therefore as you can see there is an extensive chain of command who thoroughly evaluates and addresses each shot. The artists and supervisors on vendor side surely come up with their interpretation for the animation of each shot. But it's those very people up-top the chain of command who are the ones approving and, many times, giving dumb notes that really make each shot look worse.

But I must agree with you that, especially lately with the introduction of all these Marvel movies, gravity and general physics of CGI in movies have given me some weird/non-realistic feeling more than once.

It usually bothers me more in realistic, gritty movies than in superheroes movies, because in superheroes movies you kinda have this narrative agreement (as called in screenwriting), on the basis of which you, as audience, must abstract from the external world and identify yourself with the story, taking part in the lives of the characters that animate it. Therefore it is something like "hey you know what you're getting into it, better don't complain later down the road".

Now, at the same time, take a look at Black Panther: the characters are totally without gravity, they look like they belong more inside a 2D Dragonball episode than inside a movie. That, even it's a superheroes movie, I can't understand. It totally drove me crazy and I considered that a lack of good VFX on the vendor side, and eventually on studio side.

Cameron gets it right because he has the privilege of having years to develop, shoot, craft and retouch one single movie. Others don't. Marvel for example gets a movie like Ant-Man and the Wasp done in 12-14 months. Overall, VFX are a ton of work that require time, and the more finessing the better the result.

I hope this answers your question a bit.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Geoff!

The first 20 minutes are my favorite part too. Did a lot of work on those shots. Once the movie comes out on home-video maybe I'll post some before/after if you guys would like.

I was very sceptical of some of the early footage, like what I believe was a fully CG shot of Luna leaping from the truck and throwing one of those poles, but the editing of that scene in the movie proper is much faster paced so it's a very quick shot now. There are still some rather 'floaty' looking CG doubles throughout the film but that seems to be par for the course these days, I thought the CG was executed rather well overall.

And thanks for the other answer above. As you said at the end - and as I've said over and over and over and over and over again on here - a lot of it hangs on the time they have to do these things, rather than a directive to actually make them look floaty or unrealistic or whatever. Of course every CG artist, compositor etc just wants to get it looking as good as they can but when they've got their share of 2000 or 3000 VFX shots to churn out over a matter of months - not years - which are constantly being nurdled and refined by the key creatives (not always for the better) then it's no wonder it can be as variable as it still is.

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I was very sceptical of some of the early footage, like what I believe was a fully CG shot of Luna leaping from the truck and throwing one of those poles, but the editing of that scene in the movie proper is much faster paced so it's a very quick shot now. There are still some rather 'floaty' looking CG doubles throughout the film but that seems to be par for the course these days, I thought the CG was executed rather well overall.

Yeah those shots of Diego/Rev-9 from the trailer were work-in-progress that we got heavily slammed for when the trailer came out, meanwhile those same shots were heavily improved for the final theatrical version. Many time the studio wants to put cool stuff in the trailer when everyone else is against it because they know they are not at a point of being shown yet.

CG doubles are tough to get to look photorealistic so ILM did what they could. But I know that Eric Barba, the VFX supervisor, put extra-special time and care into making sure that everything looked as correct as possible, in terms of shutter speed, black and white point, color temperature, integration and fx/sim as well.

[ccateni]

This film...
was so forgettable and boring.
I'm never watching this crap again and skipping the 4k release.
Its a waste of time and attempts to ruin T1 and T2.
Too bad my head canon exists.

[Deciazulado]

Terminator: Dark Fate 4K Blu-ray

[haldavidsmith]

it was alright...

[therealjondoe]

Originally Posted by ccateni

This film...
was so forgettable and boring.
I'm never watching this crap again and skipping the 4k release.
Its a waste of time and attempts to ruin T1 and T2.
Too bad my head canon exists.

Agree 100%
Its time for hollywood to step away from this franchise
I cant believe they got the band back together for this

[Quint van der Vaart]

I saw this yesterday and i enjoyed it....went in expecting nothing from it and got a pleasant two hours.
I this wil look nice on 4k but will pick it up after a discount.

[Pieter V]

Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller

https://postperspective.com/terminat...or-tim-miller/

[Vangeli]

Super pumped to see this! Love the design of the new Rev9 terminator too, especially on this poster with it looming in the background. Hope it ends up on a steelbook!

[Colson]

I saw this last night. It was pretty meh.

[Show spoiler]It ignores the moral lessons taught in T2, and it has the worst "excuse that actor is not around" I have ever seen (talking about John's death). It was really frustrating in regards to how it treats T1 and T2. It doesn't seem to respect the lessons learned in those movies at all.

Ignoring all that, though, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill action movie.

[ramzy1]

You weren't kidding. The first 20+ minutes were fantastic.

Was Brett Azar (Arnold's body double) CG enhanced at all? My gosh, never seen a bicep vein quite like that before. It deserves it own credit.

[aetherhole]

Saw it in the Dolby Cinemas last night. Crackin' good time! It also helps that Mackenzie Davis is super nice to look at too!

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by ramzy1

Was Brett Azar (Arnold's body double) CG enhanced at all? My gosh, never seen a bicep vein quite like that before. It deserves it own credit.

Brett Azar from what I remember had just undergone a head/neck replacement and minor adjustments to blend his body with Arnold's CG head (ILM), I believe the bicep vein is Azar's original one, which is a bit bigger than Arnold's one back in the days.

If you look closely enough you can see how he Azar is actually a bit shorter and horizontally wider than how originally Arnold used to look 30 years ago.

I read that the rumored street date is January 28, 2020. Kinda early tbh.

[ramzy1]

Question regarding that same scene with Brett Azar.

[Show spoiler]Was that a Linda Hamilton body double with Linda's face mapped on? I thought the effect, however it was done, was very convincing.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

Brett Azar from what I remember had just undergone a head/neck replacement and minor adjustments to blend his body with Arnold's CG head (ILM), I believe the bicep vein is Azar's original one, which is a bit bigger than Arnold's one back in the days.

If you look closely enough you can see how he Azar is actually a bit shorter and horizontally wider than how originally Arnold used to look 30 years ago.

I read that the rumored street date is January 28, 2020. Kinda early tbh.

I totally called that being mostly Brett Azar due his more 'compact' frame being obvious: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...r#post17002735 so phew, I can have my Armchair Expert™ licence reinstated.

Originally Posted by ramzy1

Question regarding that same scene with Brett Azar.

[Show spoiler]Was that a Linda Hamilton body double with Linda's face mapped on? I thought the effect, however it was done, was very convincing.

Yes, body double with the face mapped on. She said in an interview that the double didn't move anything like her so she didn't like it at all!

[Noremac Mij]

After watching this movie, I think Jim is trolling us.

[Batfreakforever1939]

I watched this last night and it was fantastic. These days we are not allowed to like anything anymore so I'm never suprised to see people complaining about it.

People wanted a good sequel to T2 and that's exactly what we got. Plus Linda back. Cameron back involved with the story and of course Arnold back with a tone and rating like the first two.

So sick of men's complaints about women in their action movies.
Don't give me crap like oh its woke culture movie or Trump bs in your review because you obviously have deep seated issues way beyond the film.
The original Terminator movies stars a strong woman and that is Sarah Conner and this movie was about passing the batton with is exactly what was done.
We finally have a Terminator as scary and frightening and unstoppable as the t-100 with the Rev-9.

I believe people have no @#$ing idea what they want anymore in a movie. All the ingredients in a Terminator movie that people wanted are back and it just gets crapped on.

The movie was fantastic, entertaining and a worthy sequel to T1 and T2. Thats all I've wanted.