If you often mix the network, whenever a movie like "God War" is released, you will definitely hear a sentence: this kind of movie is nothing more than looking at the special effects, don't care about the plot. Having said that, what makes the special effects good? Can the special effects and plot really be separated? These are the places I've always wanted to discuss, and God Wars provides a great template.
"Good special effects" is a very general concept, if it refers to the picture is exquisite and flawless, pleasing to the eye, then the special effects of "Jupiter Up" can not be described as excellent, but it is even the play is also sleepy, obviously just throwing money can not create "good" special effects. In today's world where as long as there is money, CG can be used to imitate everything with fake truth, exquisite, grand, intense... These indices of scale and fidelity have lost their former significance. Some people think that the director of special effects popcorn is the best, the script is thrown to the screenwriter to be altered, the picture is thrown to the special effects artist, the actors are compared in front of the green screen, and the pieces can be pieced together - this is too underestimated the role of the director. To tell the truth, the theme of "God War" is in the hands of the mediocre director, I am not optimistic, and I am not optimistic about it, and I am dead on the ancient Egyptian version of "War of the Gods" (talking about the new version of 2010, but not the 1981 version of the masterpiece), and even lazy to run to the theater many kilometers away from home to see the screening. But with director Alex Proyas, everything was different.
Proyas is a director I greatly admire, known for his unparalleled visual imagination. First-class visual effects, in addition to giving people a drug-like sense of hi, but also have a sense of intuitive beauty. This freed it from the virtual identity composed of 0 and 1, and feathered Dengxian into the temple of art. Proyas's talent, in his Australian debut "Air Soul, Cloud Spirit" on the beginning of the scene, the first Step Hollywood "Crow" with a gothic atmosphere to package a simple revenge story, live to define the definition of live-action comics, after the "Soul Shifter City" has been ranked among my top ten science fiction films, the dark night staged a big shift in the city, the first time to see the shock can not speak, and "Mechanical Public Enemy", I ask how many 2004 blockbuster special effects are still outdated today? Even if 2009's "Mystery Code" is slightly mediocre, don't forget that it is Cage starring, and the fact that "the bad film emperor did not pounce" is enough to worship him. In terms of investment, these works are only medium to high, but their unforgettable visual impressions are not comparable to many astronomical blockbusters.
I insist that reproducing existing world landscapes, no matter how exquisite, is also the work of craftsmen, creative filmmakers, must create something unprecedented and make the audience believe in its existence. The aforementioned "Jupiter Up" is because the visual impression is too conformist, which will make people feel bored. The budget announced by "God Wars" is 140 million US dollars, and today, when making a movie with 200 million + often, it is not a luxury, and it is more necessary to fight for imagination. Proyas, who is also the choreographer, obviously does not care about the existing impressions of ancient Egypt, and drastically subverts the three worlds of ancient Egypt, gods, and underworld according to his own preferences, and is willful to the point of being full of wind and water, the completeness of the worldview, and the richness and diversity of details, which amaze me to the knees. If you watch more Egyptian historical films and mythological films like me, you will find for the first time that Sphinx can also make this ghost (literally), the god of light Ra can be the unique work of Odin and Gandalf, and the image of Anubis is too deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so that he has the attributes of a land duke. The most crucial god fight is to transform into the Golden Saint Seiya X-Men in the air, cast the classic Japanese comic image and the American comic fighting mode together, and then move to the ancient battlefield to perform, this sense of mixing and matching itself is quite brain hole, not to mention the degree of completion is quite high.
There are a lot of destruction scenes in the film, not always blurred like "Transformers", nor like "Saint Seiya", which is full of smoke and dust, and we really see tons of stones being smashed. In addition, as a mild obsessive-compulsive disorder, those military formations that are tight to the point of not being able to splash water are always organs that start work at the same time, cemeteries that are all in all directions, and pyramids with large stones moving, all of which give my psychological knots a perfect massage. In order to emphasize the sense of solemn ceremony, the camera does not hesitate to linger in various symmetrical compositions, which is really comforting.
Let's talk about the relationship between special effects and plot. I don't want to give an example of how each action scene in the film contains an undulating plot, just imagine, without the participation of the plot, just let the two gods dance for 10 minutes with iron poles, or fly in the air for 10 minutes, even if the special effects are flawless, the yawn in the theater will be overshadowed by the sound. So, again, don't say that special effects films don't need a plot, when you watch a certain action flip, it's because it's very dramatic.
At the moment when the two male protagonist films are all characterized as base films and there is no mistake in killing, this film is very rare without a trace of basic taste. On the one hand, they each have opposite-sex partners who want to live and die together (in other words, the ancient Egyptian gods are really more dedicated than the ancient Greek gods who use mana to go around), and their encounter and cooperation model refers to the popular partner police film model in the eighties and nineties, a pair of black and white or fat and thin policemen forced to form a team, and both faces are written with "Lao Tzu looks down on you if you don't want to save the world and cripple you long ago", but they have to rely on each other, and the joy also follows. This film extends this tone to the most cute combination of height difference between man and God, the essence is the same, to put it bluntly, it is a process of mutual understanding and trust. This Hollywood-style "main theme" can reflect the spirit of the melting pot of the United States, you and I come from the north and south of the world, at first we don't look at each other well, but in the end we will find that we have similar characters and can play happily together.
And the combination of people and gods in this film is really... They are not so much gods as mutants with longer lifespans and superpowers, and the level of superpowers is basically equivalent to that of Thor. The seven passions and six desires are richer than human beings, and the thickness of the family enmity is comparable to any Taiwanese bitter drama. Whether it is Horus, Seth or the mortal Baker, they are tirelessly inserted into a love scene with a bumpy fate, with different directions, the ending is sad and happy, each paragraph is taken out individually, it can be written for tens of minutes, and in the mythological background, you don't have to worry that the yin and yang barriers will become insurmountable obstacles for lovers, but become a clear proof of courage and true love. Of course, the film does not linger in this sad atmosphere, and has always been filled with a faint sense of joy, whether it is man or god, as if adventurers are born with scribbles. If ancient Egypt had social networks, you would have seen them running through collapsed temples and tweeting: Linen material is not fireproof at all, guess how I know? Add a selfie.
Because it is not basic or cold, "God Wars" has a purer emotional relationship between men in old Hollywood, and does not do it. In fact, from the perspective of the script doctor, I really hope that Horus can drink the water from the stream with saliva. In this way, if the sequel makes them tear up, you can take this paragraph out, one more language stem: "You scheming little bastard, I will choose you as a consultant when I am dizzy, just a few seconds before saving your life, you are still tempting me to drink that dirty saliva without pulling..." In short, super regretful.