12/30/2023 0 Comments Tom cruise motion capture suitĮxcept, of course, neither Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One or Oppenheimer are the pure symphonies to the value and artistry of in-camera effects work that the creators would have you believe, but rather their ‘photographic’ images are riddled with a combination of computer graphics, digital imagery, and post-production processes, not to mention a suite of complex VFX technologies that often fly under the radar in the pursuit and proclamation of persuasive visual illusionism. In the case of his new 3-hour biography starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Florence Pugh, this includes the depiction of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon achieved without the aid of computer-generated techniques as part of its visualisation (see above). So too Nolan, who since Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) has waxed lyrical about his preference for in-camera effects done ‘for real’. More recently, an online piece for Esquire focused on the “famously anti-CG stunts in the Mission Impossible films,” and tellingly opens with the line “In a time of maximal CGI and green screen backdrops, completely practical stunt work has become a relative rarity in film production” (Newland 2023) to once again confirm Cruise’s mythological status as a very real man of very real action. In a 2015 article for The Guardian promoting Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015), he discussed plans for a potential “Top Gun 2” but admitted that he was “keen to star” in the then-mooted sequel “but only if the film avoids relying on CG effects” (Lee 2015). The sidelining of CG is a common refrain for Team Cruise, and he remains a durable poster boy for the power of the practical stunt. Indeed, hot on the heels of the latest Academy Awards furore about animation’s worth as a creative art form and its now-annual dismissal of the medium as anything other than a big-screen plaything for children, it is not hard to find interviews with either director Christopher McQuarrie or Cruise himself that aligns the Mission: Impossible franchise’s heart-in-mouth moments (from Cruise climbing the world’s tallest building the Burj Khalifa to hanging off the side of an airplane as it takes flight) with the absence of computer animated techniques and that pesky digital wizardry (Fig. Given that each feature film is being relentlessly sold on the pleasures and promises of their practical – rather than computer-generated – effects (and in the case of the latest Mission: Impossible, the in-camera stunts of lead star Tom Cruise), it is clear that computer-generated intervention still occupies a fluctuating level of prominence and acceptance in the eyes of those in charge of promoting the bombastic blockbuster feature. Serkis could be using Venom: Let There Be Carnage to establish more about the symbiotes, both in their mythology and in how to portray them for later filmmakers to follow, just as he did for mo-cap technology with his historic motion-capture performances.Judging from both the pre-release marketing materials and industry narratives that have surrounded both Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie, 2023) and Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023), one would be forgiven for thinking that Hollywood still retains something of an aversion to digital VFX. ![]() Marvel Comics has recently delved deep into the symbiote mythology with the introduction of Knull, the creator of the symbiote race, and event series like King in Black hinting that this could be the direction in which Sony's Spider-Man Universe is heading. Films based around Madame Web, Black Cat, and Silver Sable are all in various stages of development but it is unclear exactly what the films are building or connecting to, given that Venom: Let There Be Carnage is only the second film. Sony has many different Marvel films planned, with Morbius already completed and Kraven the Hunter recently being cast. This was played up in the film's subsequent marketing and has helped inform the creative direction of the sequel with Serkis describing Eddie and Venom as " the Odd Couple." Both Eddie Brock and Venom are uniquely Tom Hardy performances, so it makes sense that Serkis would want to give Hardy the creative freedom to imagine Venom's movement without being locked into choices made by an actor in a motion-capture suit. One of the biggest surprises in the first Venom was how audiences seemed to react to the relationship dynamic between Eddie Brock and Venom.
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