r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 4h ago

Article ‘The Odyssey’ Proves It: Audiences Want Movies Made the Hard Way | This year's breakouts like 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Obsession' were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as 'Supergirl,' 'Moana,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' looked lazy.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/odyssey-box-office-2026-practical-effects-1236652219/
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u/Quantum_Quokkas 4h ago

Does this article author not realise that Project Hail Mary was full of CGI?

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u/RulesoftheDada 4h ago

Same with Odyssey and ignores all the practical effects and puppetry of Mando and Grogu.

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u/JamesTheFoxeArt 4h ago

No you see they actually found a Cyclops to film in the movie

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u/ObscureOP 4h ago

On location in hades

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u/farnsw0rth 4h ago

They really buried those people though

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u/PrincipledProphet 3h ago

OMG THEY KILLED ALL THOSE PEOPLE!!!!!

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u/Justhe3guy 3h ago

They actually filmed that in reverse don’t worry

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u/Useful-Soup8161 2h ago

I mean that was outside in Iceland so yeah they actually were on location.

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u/ObscureOP 2h ago

Don't tell Iceland you called it hades

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u/pm_plz_im_lonely 3h ago

The Cyclops guild is ruthlessly hard to deal with too (read: really expensive). It's like they only want to see a deal from one perspective.

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u/Shadow_on_the_Sun 26m ago

Negotiations really lack any depth perception

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u/dlp211 4h ago

The cyclops is a massive puppet doll, probably further enhanced by CG.

CG is fine when you can't tell it's CG. Too much stuff is done with CG today in movies and it's just so blindingly obvious.

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u/Baelorn 4h ago

probably further enhanced by CG.

No. The Cyclops in the movie was entirely CGI. The puppet was only used for reference during filming.

This is what it looked like. It's great to have this as reference for the actors, lighting, and CGI work but people acting like that puppet is in the final movie and was just "touched up" by CG are delusional.

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u/WhimsicalJape 59m ago

The detailed Cyclops was a dude in a suit filmed in a scale recreation of the cave. The guy who voiced TARS in Interstellar played him.

Obviously they used compositing and other VFX for the character but the main assets are real.

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u/had3l 4h ago

The Cyclops isn't just enhanced by CGI, it is completely full CGI. So much misinformation going around. Just because they built a real puppet for the movie, it doesn't mean you get to see any of it on the screen.

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u/NotItemName 3h ago

CG is fine when you can't tell it's CG

It doesn't make it not CG thought.

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u/dlp211 3h ago

Did I say otherwise

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u/ThankGodForYouSon 4h ago

On the other hand the CGI for Scylla was absolute dogshit, and Nolan seems to be keeping up his "No CGI" public stance when his movies are full of it and would benefit from more.

Most people complaining about CGI don't know what they're talking about because they don't see the majority of what it does, it's supposed to be invisible.

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u/NotItemName 3h ago

Nolan seems to be keeping up his "No CGI" public stance when his movies are full of it and would benefit from more

Is he holding that stance?

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u/ColdCruise 3h ago

No he has openly talked for years about CGI and how it is useful when you can't do things practically. What he means is that they put them on an actual ship in the sea and filmed it instead of on a green block in front of a green wall.

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u/ThankGodForYouSon 3h ago

I thought he was from the exposure to The Odyssey I was getting from press releases but it seems not so that's cool.
I think it's moreso actors on his sets that talk about the practical effects that gave me that impression.

Oppenheimer also had the whole "real" nuke hype that got kind of ridiculous and he obviously loves practical effects, but I don't think his rendition of the nuke did it justice.

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u/maeynor 3h ago

You think that was dogshit? You should probably stop commenting on this stuff if you thought that. It was masterfully done according to almost all experts.

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u/ThankGodForYouSon 3h ago

Lmao I work in post-production, show me a single "expert" saying Scylla was well done. Haven't met a coworker that disagrees yet and they actually exist.

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u/capscreen 3h ago

probably further enhanced by CG

Have you seen the puppet doll itself

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u/SquareAdvisor8055 4h ago

The cyclop was actually only partially cgi, they made a giant puppet of the cyclop.

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u/xiaorobear 4h ago

While that's true, the big puppet is pretty clearly a stand-in so that the actors have something to act against, not something that could be used in any final shots. Still a great thing to do, and will get a much better looking performance than if you just have all your actors on greenscreen and say "imagine there's a big cyclops reaching out his arm!" and they don't all look at the same place. But, they still needed the CGI.

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u/SquareAdvisor8055 4h ago

The cyclop is not only a stand in for the actors. It also helps with the CGI as they base themselves on the actual thing.

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u/xiaorobear 4h ago

Yes, that is also true.

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u/GraviZero 2h ago

i mean it was a puppet. obv some cgi touchups to make it actually look like its alive but it was very much there

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u/Elk-Tamer 1h ago

I was especially impressed how Odysseus' men were turned into pigs. Great practical effects.

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u/f0rmality 4h ago

Well it was an animatronic, honestly the Odyssey could have benefited from more CG for a couple of scenes.

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u/Jayrodtremonki 4h ago

It was a mix of a gigantic puppet and Mr Noodle.  

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u/Useful-Soup8161 2h ago

I mean there’s a little bit of cgi in the odyssey but if they could use practical effects and make them look real then they did. Like the island with the giants was forced perspective with really tall 7ft stunt people playing the giants and really short stunt people, under 5ft, playing Odysseus and his men. Also the scene with the pigs was animatronics.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ 3h ago

Yeah, it's absurd to claim that Odyssey doesn't have a huge amount of CGI and special effects.

Yes, it is also heavily filmed on location and whatnot. But that doesn't mean it's not also using a ton of CGI. It's using all the tools available.

That's not what makes it a good or a bad film.

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u/dallascowboys93 3h ago

Odyssey doesn't have that much. The cyclops and witch sculpting was practical affects and camera angles. look it up

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ 2h ago

Having practical effects doesn't mean they don't add CGI on top of that, or still have individual scenes being 100% CGI.

The exact same thing happened to all previous Nolan films, and even he himself is annoyed that people pretend like he's only using practical effects.

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u/dallascowboys93 2h ago

Sure but you said huge amount. I’m arguing it doesn’t

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ 2h ago

Yes. A huge amount. Not just in the cyclops scene. In a ton of "normal" scenes where the background is fully CGI, where armies are duplicated, where safety harnesses are removed from stunt actors, where filming rigs are removed from view, where the ocean is enhanced to look scarier, etc.

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u/dallascowboys93 2h ago

That’s still not huge compared to most other blockbuster fantasy movies. Also 3 hours long!

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ 2h ago

It is absolutely huge and it is absolutely significantly above average.

Just because it's not literally the most special effects of any recent movie doesn't mean it's not a lot.

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u/Atchafalaya7 4h ago

The author calls out both the CGI in PHM and the practical effects in Mando/Grogu.

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u/abstractraj 4h ago

That Grogu puppetry, so hilarious

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u/Lord_Darksong 4h ago

They spent $5 million on that puppetry.

That includes the puppeteers, electronics, multiple puppets, etc.

The movie was fun though not deep. It was a family adventure movie. Grogu was cute. I enjoyed it.

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u/abstractraj 3h ago

I had fun. No regrets

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u/RulesoftheDada 2h ago

Had an edible and a joint. Came out of the theater joyful. Then laughed at the online negativity.

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u/Strachmed 4h ago

Same with odyssey what? In comparison to hail mary it may as well be 0% cgi.

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u/RulesoftheDada 3h ago

The "no CGI" rhetoric does a huge disservice to VFX artists. Nolan's CGI is really just invisible cgi.

So yeah not 0%

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u/Strachmed 3h ago

Not 0%, and i never implied it is. I mean as a comparison to project hail mary, which is all CGI.

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u/Upbeat_Shock_6807 4h ago

The Odyssey was full of CGI? What scenes?

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u/Mahajangasuchus 4h ago

“CGI” is basically meaningless now in mainstream film discussion. All it means is “visual effect I don’t like or noticed”.

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u/brandonct 3h ago

also it's crazy disrespectful to the work of all those visual effects artists when the marketing team trots out all the actors to talk about how the movie is all practical effects and everything on screen is just in-camera

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u/holydude02 3h ago

Yeah; I only caught snippets of the Odyssey promo and saw multiple mentions of "What you see on screen is what was captured in camera" and sorry, not sorry: Bullshit!

I also don't understand why CG is being treated as a second class contribution. It's a tool in the toolbox of filmmakers. If used right it can greatly enhance a story. If used like a bandaid for already bad filmmaking it's probably not the straw that broke the camels back either...

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u/Zalvren 2h ago

Seriously it's so weird too when some movies entirely done in CGI or were it's prominent are so big. Avatar series is literally selling itself on its awesome CGI. The Lion King remake. The Marvel movies. Every animated movie....

And yet some seem to be ashamed of their CGI. People dislike bad CGI but they have no problem with good CGI. And yes sometimes good CGI requires to work in combination with practical effects like what Nolan or Mission Impossible/Top Gun do, it's still weird to act like there's no CGI at all in a movie that has hundreds of people listed for it in the credits lol.

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u/Ver3232 31m ago

Because it’s technically animation and the American film industry has zero respect for animation

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u/PSIwind 2h ago

I think when they say that thing, most people immediately think of heavy CGI use movies like Superhero films where something isn't actually there at all. Visual artists touch up a lot of the scenes, but if the large chunk of the shot is made with practical effects, that's what they mean. 

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u/stupidtreeatemypants 2h ago

if you’re talking about project hail mary, the claim was simply that they didn’t use any green screens, not that there was no vfx. the problem is general audiences don’t understand the difference

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u/brandonct 2h ago

I'm talking about the Odyssey but you see this claim repeated about lots and lots of movies in recent times, because practical effects are a selling point.

the "no CGI is just invisible CGI" series on YouTube covers many movies that make this claim while showing that they all actually use a ton of VFX.

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u/stupidtreeatemypants 1h ago

ah, my mistake then. I’ll check that series out though

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u/N8CCRG 3h ago

Aw, I like to compliment good CGI though when I see it. Like the teleporting spaceship fight in Supergirl, or like the escape sequence in Fantastic Four.

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u/zsynqx 55m ago

I think It’s the difference between trying to do as much practically as possible, while still using cgi when necessary to enhance. As opposed to the fix it in post attitude, which leads to a lot of the “bad cgi” in modern blockbusters. Odyssey and PHM both fit into the former category.

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u/Flexhead 3h ago

yea, had this argument in another thread with "PHM used no green screens!"

Project Hail Mary had over 2000 effects shots.

The issue is the type of movie you are making determines how many effects shots you have.

Superhero movies will have more than something like Obession.

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u/DestrixGunnar 3h ago

No green screen remember? They actually went out to space. Created a big ol' alien spaceship. That green gas planet? Legit. Ryan Gosling? Also legit.

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u/Crecket 4h ago

They watched Odyssey and Project Hail Mary and then called other movies "CG-stuffed" 😂

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u/uponapyre 4h ago

As is the Odyssey.

It's less noticeable sure, but there's a lot of it.

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u/Shadowratenator 4h ago

The author also does not realize that mandalorian was full of puppetry and stop motion.

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u/Deathdy 3h ago

Dummy. It was all practical. Ryan trained as an astronaut and went to Tauceti in our time. Didn't you see the news?

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u/BigTomBombadil 4h ago

The article clearly states “there was plenty of CG to be sure” about project Hail Mary, it was referencing the effort made to not use green screens as well as the puppetry for practical effect.

So yes I think the author realizes this.

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u/Almaironn 4h ago

I guess it's a step in the right direction to not outright deny the existence of CG in a movie, but it's still a misguided comment. Not using green screens doesn't necessarily require more effort, it requires effort in different areas compared to green screens. Certainly requires less effort on set while shooting to not have to set up green screens and light around them.

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u/VegaJuniper 3h ago edited 3h ago

It's not misguided, you simply misunderstood. CGI today still has that immaterial, weightless quality even when it's done well. Nolan uses it to do things that he can't possibly do for real (like the Cyclops), but he uses real, physical sets and props as much as he can. You can tell the horse was real, and that there were real people running around the Troy set.

In Marvel films they often do stuff on green screen that they could do for real, like a regular ass city street is likely created in post. Not only does that physicality suffer, but the narrative suffers as well since they just shoot a bunch of scenes and stitch them up into a narrative later. There's no need to plan stuff, because you can always replace the backgrounds and such later. MCU has had criticism that they have the thinnest of scripts, maybe completely unfinished, when they're already shooting.

CGI can be a great tool, but if it becomes your only tool, then you end up using it in places where its limits become apparent.

EDIT: Also note that the Cyclops stays in shadow a lot. Nolan knows where the seams show, and he works hard to hide them. Compare with a Spider-man movie, where Tom Holland pulls on his mask and suddenly he's a weightless animation bouncing around in broad daylight.

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u/PRSArchon 3h ago edited 3h ago

Nolan also does full CGI street and even city replacements in his movies, just look at his batman movies and Inception. Those movies have very high review scores as well. The whole cgi argument is bullshit.

Actually, your argument against marvel is exactly what Nolan did with Dunkirk. He literally said in an interview he didnt plan ahead and fixed any issues like removing modern buildings in the background, or duplicating ships and soldiers with CGI in post

The difference is just a good story to tell.

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u/VegaJuniper 3h ago

If you can't tell the difference, then I can't help you.

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u/holydude02 3h ago

I can guarantee you there's more CGI in movies than you realize. Even if you do know how it's done, even if you spot plenty of it - there's always more.

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u/VegaJuniper 3h ago

Hence my point that it's a great tool when used correctly. If you can't tell, it works.

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u/holydude02 3h ago

CGI today still has that immaterial, weightless quality even when it's done well.

I was referencing mostly this, because that's clearly not true...

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u/VegaJuniper 3h ago

It's clearly true though.

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u/PRSArchon 3h ago

I can tell the difference but it seems you dont. There is a ton of CGI you never even realise is there and still you pretend all CGI is is inherently bad and you need practical to make it work. That simply isnt true and Nolans movies prove it.

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u/VegaJuniper 2h ago

till you pretend all CGI is is inherently bad

I never said that, I specifically said it's a great tool but needs to be used correctly. Tell me, are you a professional idiot or a just a talented amateur?

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u/PRSArchon 25m ago

You said even CGI done well has an immaterial quality. This is just plain wrong. There are tons of CGI assetts you wouldnt even realise arent practical.

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u/VegaJuniper 5m ago

This is just plain wrong.

No, it's correct. Skillfully used CGI hides that immaterial quality so you don't notice it. If you smear the screen with it, like Marvel does, it becomes impossible to not notice it.

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u/Mastasmoker 4h ago

Full of cgi but had a good story. Whereas the others listed have cgi as the focal point sprinkled with a story

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u/TelltaleHead 4h ago

There's a great YouTube series about this. There's a ton of great CGI that people think is practical. 

However it DOES seem like having real lighting and reference for the CGI artists helps A LOT. It is much easier for them to accent a real frame shot in a real location with actual lighting and have it look real than it is for them to build something out completely that is shot on a blue screen

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u/Datau03 3h ago

yeah the CGI debate is useless. What matters much more is if there is actual care and effort put into a movie because the people who made it did so with their heart. You can tell that this is the case with Project Hail Mary

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u/very-polite-frog 3h ago

Pretty sure they shot on location. Even got a real Eridian to play Rocky

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u/HotPumpkinPies 3h ago

But one of the main characters is a puppet made by Neal Scanlan, the guy who literally made Yoda lol

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u/ArcticCelt 2h ago

You mean they didn't really go on location with a real spaceship to another star system? Filmmakers are getting lazy. :(

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u/dropbluelettuce 2h ago

There is a 6 part series on this. No CGI just means invisible CGI https://youtu.be/7ttG90raCNo

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u/angrytortilla 2h ago

Wait it wasn't filmed in space with real space ships?

Damn you, Hollywood!

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u/redbirdrising 1h ago

Yeah, most of the exterior shots of the Hail Mary were done by ILM. OP is cherry picking. Yes, the movies noted above went out of their way to use practical effects when needed. But even Rocky was part CGI. Yes, informed by the puppetry, but still a lot of VFX.

Hail Mary got praise for a lack of green screens, so the sets felt real, for sure.

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u/jackofslayers 1h ago

The author of this article is a completely vapid idiot. This is literally on the level of just stringing random words together.

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u/JSmellerM 1h ago

Making a space alien movie without CGI sounds near impossible.

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u/USS_Penterprise_1701 1h ago

Yes, but they also sweated.

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u/londener 13m ago

Yeah like a whole lot of it 😂. Do they think the space ships were filmed in space? 

Even the puppet they used was mostly enhanced with vfx. 

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u/Lord_Darksong 4h ago

It was? Amaze amaze amaze!

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u/wvgeekman 4h ago

Did you read the article where they specifically mentioned this?

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u/Sprintzer 3h ago

Story was excellent, they did build an expansive set of the ship, and the CGI was very good - and necessary. Can’t do a lot of what that movie did without CGI, period.

A lot of the movies that people don’t like based on excessive CGI grounds are movies that have weakish scripts, are 90% CGI, and often have lazy CGI - where a sequence used CGI but could’ve easily been done in real life. Not to mention sometimes the CGI just looks lackluster. Project Hail Mary was none of these things.

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u/unboundgaming 3h ago

While the article is disingenous, PHM was not "Full" of CGI. An incredible amount of it, including Rocky, were practical effects/props. The beautiful scene going throught the astrophage was even practical. Interior of the ship was fully built and lighting was mostly legit. Ship exterior was the bulk of the CGI which isn't shown nearly as much as everything else.

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u/xin234 2h ago

Most of the time you see Rocky in the movie, he is CGI. The directors mention this in many interviews/behind-the-scenes.

A kind of a breakdown, and discussion on PHm's CGI: https://youtu.be/l9zqIo8KtjI?t=512

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u/1ndori 2h ago

There were certainly practical elements... that were augmented with CGI.

There were, in fact, thousands of VFX shots in the film (2018!) Green screen is sometimes used in lieu of building sets or figuring out locations/lighting in advance, which can be noticeable if not done carefully, and is something we didn’t want to do. We built the entire interior of the Hail Mary ship - but within the ship, there were still wire and puppeteer removals and ceiling replacements, etc. When Ryan is outside on the hull of the ship, we shot him in front of a black background for space and a shifting hue background when he was up against the aurora of a planet which allowed for truer interactive light on him than a green screen would. The wide space exteriors and spaceship shots were entirely digital and beautifully done by ILM. Rocky was a seamless blend of puppetry and animation from Framestore. And other great work from many more. It really does take a village and we had the best of the best on our side.

https://xcancel.com/chrizmillr/status/2029298230341878108

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u/HoveringGoat 4h ago

there really wasnt that much CGI. almost all of it was practical effects. the ship was real, rocky is a puppet, there were zero green screens at all. The astrophage scene was real, etc.

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u/ThankGodForYouSon 4h ago

That's the glamorous CGI most people think of, the rest is mundane shit like cleaning, extending and recreating whatever suits the directors fancy.