Today we will briefly look at the key live-action films that pushed CGI integration forward. Then we will look at how these effects are incorporated into films. Before finally discussing what the rise of CGI has meant for the industry and audiences.

A Brief History

While films using CG images date back quite far (Vertigo’s opening (1958), A Computer Animated Hand (1972), etc.), 1973’s Westworld was the first live-action feature to use CGI within the narrative.

Live-action films made further strides in CGI incorporation throughout the 20th century. Star Wars (1977) featured wireframe computer animation. Tron (1982) put real actors into a CG world for the first time. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) is widely considered to be the first live-action film to feature a computer-generated character. The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) helped to perfect CG liquid textures. And Jurassic Park (1993) blended CGI with practical effects to create realistically textured, moving dinosaurs.

The 2000s, thanks to widening software availability and increasing computer speeds, saw films using much more CGI. Several CGI-intensive franchises like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings (which revolutionised motion capture) debuted. Smaller projects, like District 9 (2009), also used it to realise its alien people and technology. But Avatar (2009) redefined what CGI was capable of. Featuring a vast computer-generated world that blended real actors and effects seamlessly it became the highest-grossing film of all time. Paving the way for other huge effects blockbusters like the MCU.

How CGI Becomes Part Of A Film?

With CGI’s capabilities making huge strides, how do film productions go about integrating the effects? CG elements are mostly created separately alongside filming and are combined with the filmed elements during post-production. Green screens, chroma key suits, motion capture suits, placeholders etc. provide guidelines during production for effects artists and actors as to where the CG elements will go. However, CGI is not just separate work utilised in post-production.

CG pre-visualisation has started to gain prominence. This is where CGI is used to visualise part of a movie prior to production. It gives camera operators, directors etc. an idea of what the film will look like. Allowing them to plan and experiment with how something will be shot.

Advancements now also allow CGI to be visible and filmable during film production. For example, LED Volume and the Unreal Engine have been used to create and visualise realistic CG background elements which can be filmed and edited during planning and production. This technology, which displays CG environments through vast background screens, was recently used during the filming of the short Fireworks and The Mandalorian season 3. Although the technology has some workload and implementation issues this advancement allows workers to create intricate, detailed CG backgrounds. While actors are given more definitive visual aids to perform against. Helping make the drama more believable to audiences.

How CGI Has Changed The Industry?

CGI has completely transformed the movie experience. It has allowed audiences to see incredible creations and has been the basis for many beloved movies. However, with some recent films having a majority of their shots containing visual effects like CGI and many recent articles addressing how bad CGI can negatively affect audience experience, CGI advancement clearly does not automatically produce good art.

CGI is a tool and many factors influence its effectiveness. If VFX artists are not given enough time to complete their work the quality suffers. The oversaturation of effects-heavy blockbusters has also accustomed audiences to a certain level of quality, making subpar CG more noticeable. And if films fail to ground their effects or engage viewers narratively or emotionally the effects can lose their impact. 

These represent the main issues for CGI moving forward. If the industry wants to maintain audience interest in an age of CG oversaturation it must consider these points and not just focus on advancement for its own sake. As George Lucas said, a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

Also Read: A.I Generated Art & Movies: A Collision Course

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Today we will recommend five alien encounter films and look at what their use of extraterrestrial characters mean.

A Trip To The Moon

Georges Méliès early silent short sees a group of scientists venturing to the moon in a rocket. Where they encounter a not-so-friendly race of moon people. While its aliens have simple designs and lack emotional depth as one of the earliest science fiction films this short showcased that films were capable of presenting other worlds as well as showing our own. It represented progress for cinematic imagination and inspired filmmakers to start dreaming of what extraterrestrial life could look like.

2001: A Space Odyssey

This sci-fi masterpiece charts the human race as it evolves and pursues travel to the stars. Each major event in our history (the development of tools, colonisation of the moon and interstellar travel) is marked by the appearance of a monolith that seems to communicate something. Eventually, when one astronaut finds another monolith beyond Jupiter something happens to him. Is it the birth of a new alien being? A way of communicating with beings beyond our understanding? Or something else? 2001 presents a visually arresting but grounded view of humanity’s technological progress. Additionally, it asks us to consider if our first encounter with alien intelligence will be terrifying, liberating or even conventionally understandable.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Cinema’s ultimate friendly alien. When E.T. gets left on earth he is taken in by the young Elliot. Eliott tries to keep E.T. safe from the government and eventually, with help from his family and brother’s friends, gets him home. A classic tale of bonding that through its fantastic direction, score, performances, and effects shows us the wonder of the world from a child’s perspective. But it also promotes the value of kindness by showing how the bonds of friendship and family are common. Even across the stars. It’s a film that by the end makes you want to be a better person.

The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s The Thing took the cinema staple of the hostile alien encounter to its most gruesome conclusion. A dog carrying an alien life form reaches an antarctic research station. After grotesquely transforming its host’s body the research team discovers that the alien can infect people through contact and absorb and imitate other life forms. Was anyone else infected by the alien and worse how can the team tell who is still human? The Thing is a great allegory for how viruses affect the body and human nature. But it also gave us perhaps cinema’s scariest alien. A creature that can hide anywhere and transform life into twisted parodies of itself. The Thing is the pinnacle of cosmic horror films and practical effects work.

District 9

If E.T. uses alien encounters to show humanity at its best District 9 uses them to comment on the worst of humanity. After a ship of aliens lands on Earth they are placed into an apartheid system where they are discriminated against and forced into separate houses and systems to humans. From there we follow Wikus van de Merwe, an agent of the company MNU, who through being exposed to something slowly begins turning into one of the aliens. Similar to E.T. District 9 uses aliens to comment on how we view others but this film focuses more on the at-once banal and other times violent nature of systemic oppression and the ramifications it can have on oppressed people. With some fantastic effects work, a compelling story, and poignant thematic underpinnings District 9 is a hard but rewarding watch.

We could honestly recommend many more alien contact movies. These films have been a staple for years because they represent cinema’s greatest qualities. The ability to visualise new worlds and people while reflecting the most human of experiences. If you have any favourites you want to recommend then please do so.

Also Read: Trains of Events: Great Movies About Trains

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Key Films

Blomkamp’s first feature film was District 9 – a truly great sci-fi film that was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The story of what happens when an alien spaceship arrives but the aliens need our help. The aliens are moved into a slum camp and a deeply suspicious company MNU brought in to run it. The film starts as a mockumentary following Wikus van de Merwe who works for MNU in the camps. Infected by alien technology Wikus begins to slowly transform into one of the aliens, moving from mockumentary to body horror and then the showdown between the various playing making it a huge sci-fi shootout.

Next was Elysium, set in a not quite apocalyptic future, most people toil away in horrible conditions while the elite live off-world in comfort and perfect health. For those on Earth medical care is a rare luxury but off-world they have instant access to care that will seemingly deal with any problem in a few seconds. Matt Damon is one of these Earth workers and after an accident is in desperate need of care and will go to extreme lengths to get it. At the same time, the off-world government are trying to resolve what to do about troublesome Earth who regularly raid and break into their off-world paradise to get what they need. Some are restrained while others advocate extreme force. Damon’s attempt to fix his problem dovetails with the off-world political shenanigans.

Then came Chappie. A hi-tech robotics company’s best-selling product is a series of police robots, effective at stopping crime and popular with the public, but the scientist behind these robots is working on something much bigger – genuine artificial intelligence. After putting his work into one of the decommissioned police robots it works as planned, becoming intelligent. However, the robot soon falls into the hands of criminals who essentially have a police officer robot best friend. Back at the company a rival engineer has been pushing his rival design of an absurdly huge and destructive robot and finding out about his rival’s mistake offers to solve the problem in suitably aggressive style. Blomkamp’s most recent film is Demonic, a film involving demons, mass murderers and entering peoples’ minds in computer simulations

Themes

Of the four feature films Blomkamp has made all of them are science-fiction. Blomkamp seems very concerned with the connection between business, technology and people. In District 9 MNU take on the job of housing the aliens not out of kindness or even what they are being paid but for the chance to access alien technology. Elysium has a society that has virtually eliminated all disease but heavily restricts this technology, ensuring the only wealthy have access. Chappie looks at the idea of using private companies to provide a robot police force (which actually works rather well). In Chappie the inventor of AI. speaks to his boss about what made a robot who could make art and his boss responds with, “Do you realize you just came to the CEO of a publicly-traded weapons corporation and pitched a robot that can write poems?” The great potential and scientific discovery is barely considered when put against profit.

District 9 and Elysium deal with a lot of oppression – the aliens in District 9 seemingly have no rights (or if they do are ignored without consequence by the humans) and are seen purely as a way to make money. In Elysium, the oppressed are most of the population of Earth, with a distant government ignorant and/or indifferent to their suffering.

Perhaps the most recurring thing in Blomkamp’s films is Sharlto Copley who had major roles in his first three feature films. He played the central role of the human who is turned into an alien in District 9, in Elysium he played a mercenary who is used to deal with difficult people on Earth and in Chappie he is the titular character, the AI robot.

Influences

The first thing I thought of when considering Blomkamp’s influences were Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece double of Blade Runner and Alien. In these two films, we have sinister companies doing bad things and artificial intelligence is a central aspect. The dirty, unpleasant surroundings many of Blomkamp’s characters find themselves in are reminiscent of the terribly bleak L.A. of Blade Runner. Despite being very different in tone (and virtually everything else) District 9 and Independence Day both had the iconic image of a giant spaceship floating above a city, of course, in District 9 these are essentially refugees and in Independence Day invaders. The body horror we see in District 9 is very similar to Cronenberg’s The Fly. There is a strong social commentary running through Blomkamp’s films, District 9 on how minority groups in society are treated and exploited, Elysium on the gap between the haves and the have-nots, Chappie (and District 9 and Elysium) on the morality of bringing in for-profit companies into spheres they were normally barred from and this brings in a whole host of influences outside sci-fi.

Blomkamp has established himself as an inventive and visually stunning director but has perhaps not repeated the great work of District 9. Nevertheless, all of his films have had something interesting to say.

Also Read: The Unique Style of Wes Anderson

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