Movies - TV
Why These 12 CG Monsters Missed The Mark
By LUKE Y. THOMPSON
Dinosaurs
Releasing 12 years after “Jurassic Park,” 2005’s “A Sound of Thunder” was also based on a literary source of humans encountering dinosaurs, but this is where the similarities end. “A Sound of Thunder” faced many problems and budget issues during production, leaving an insufficient amount of money for the VFX team and resulting in unfinished effects.
Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf, the alien villain of “Justice League,” underwent many changes from his original shadowy menace design seen at the end of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” to merely a tall, gray-skinned person with a winged helmet. These changes came after the studio rejected his appearance, possibly due to the character being deemed too scary.
The Zombie-vampires
The 2007 film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend” included the savage zombie-vampire hybrids and used digital doubles rather than actors to make the creatures seem less human. This decision had an understandable reason for using CGI monsters, and while the monsters seemed abnormal, they came off as too unrealistic.
Werewolf
While director Anthony Waller was convinced the special effects for “An American Werewolf in Paris” were groundbreaking and would stand the test of time, this was far from the truth. The cracking and contorting limbs of the werewolf transformation process may have been unusual and interesting-looking, but it was far from realistic.
The Langoliers
Stephen King’s description of the eponymous creatures of his novella “The Langoliers” is inherently a type of thing that works better through words rather than a physical representation. The CGI artists working on the 1995 TV adaptation translated King’s prose into objects that appeared like torn-open passion fruits.