r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/padfoony • 3h ago

Christopher Nolan avoided CGI and used 7ft stuntmen to portray Laestrygonians in The Odyssey. The giant leader, King Antiphates, is portrayed by actor Josh Stewart, while Matt Damon’s stunt double is Devyn Dalton, who is just under 5ft.

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u/CHERNO-B1LL Interested 3h ago

This is why we all still watch Lord of the Rings. You can talk shote about how they achieved the perspective tricks in camera to make the Hobbits look tiny all fucking Christmas. No one talks about anyrhing made with greenscreen or AI ever again if they can avoid it.

There's no magic to it. Movies are supposed to be magic. If the answer to "How the fuck did they do that" is CGI or AI it's just disappointing.

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u/Yargon_Kerman 3h ago

Lord of the rings was majorly influencial with the CGI tools they made for the films, because of how much they used.

People remember them because they're timeless classics, fantastically written, acted and directed, not because they didn't use CGI... Because, they used it all the time.

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u/Worthyness 2h ago

All of the massive armies in those movies are vfx. In fact the vfx tool was so good that they're effectively using the exact same tech for all faceless mass armies in every movie. Gollum is full vfx and very clearly set the base for future performance capture. You can't disparage cgi and vfx while complimenting a movie series that literally created some of the base forms of some of the best vfx technologies that the industry continues to use and improve on. So much disrespect to vfx artists in these threads.

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u/TSP-FriendlyFire 1h ago

Next up people will claim Davy Jones was made all practically or something.

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u/Yargon_Kerman 1h ago

People claim the end of interstellar was practical so... It could be anything

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u/Imakereallyshittyart 2h ago

You’re both right here. Due to limitations, they still had to capture as much as possible in camera, vs The Hobbit films (many of the same on and off screen talent) which were largely filmed on a green screen due to rushed preproduction. Those movies have other problems with story telling, but their big action scenes aren’t nearly as convincing

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u/Neddiggis 2h ago

LOTR used copious green screen and CGI, so much so Weta Digital was born out of the tools they developed for it.

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u/CHERNO-B1LL Interested 2h ago

I know that. I'm not saying no all effects or even AI is bad, but if you don't do the practical stuff where it matters it just starts to look charmless.

Blomkamp just released an all AI short film and it is unwatchable IMO. Marvel let the effects get out of hand and people got work out on the aesthetic by the end.

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u/TSP-FriendlyFire 1h ago

If the answer to "How the fuck did they do that" is CGI

But the answer to most of LOTR's scenes was CGI, so you're contradicting yourself?

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u/nikkitaee 59m ago

This is why we all still watch Lord of the Rings.

I enjoyed The Hobbit trilogy as well and that movie is using CGI for a LOT of scenes and it is obvious too, especially when Elves show up running around and fighting.

A lot of CGI scenes in Hobbit make me cringe and hate it, but you know why I still watch those movies? The storytelling and the characters are well written.

You can use practical effects only or CGI only or mix them both, but if your script is shit, no one is re-watching it down the road.

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u/homer_lives 3h ago

This was my reaction too. This movie will look great in 20 years, too.