History Quotes / SpecialEffectFailure

-> In the 1933 ''[[Film/KingKong1933 King Kong]]'', the islanders’ capture of Anne Darrow led to 30 solid minutes of chases, dinosaur fights, and monster rampages, all realized by Willis O’Brien’s groundbreaking stop-motion animation and some of the best image-compositing work in cinema history. This version, on the other hand, gives us a man in a gorilla suit. Okay, so it’s a Creator/RickBaker gorilla suit, and Baker’s gorilla suits have always been the finest in the world, ''but it’s still a goddamned gorilla suit, and at no point is that ever not obvious!'' And the incredibly exciting pursuit of Kong through the jungle has been truncated to two incredibly lame set-pieces: the log-bridge scene, and a battle between Kong and one of the worst rubber snakes ever built by a professional special effects crew. These two scenes show up the technical deficiencies of the Di Laurentiis ''King Kong'' like nothing else does. In the log scene, the effects team mainly shows the three elements of the action— Kong, the men on the log, and Prescott taking cover in the crevice on the cliff-face a few yards below— individually, rather than go through the effort expended by O’Brien 43 years before, and present all three in a single amazing shot. The snake fight scene is this ''King Kong''’s surrogate for all of O’Brien’s awe-inspiring monster battles, and falls even flatter than the log scene. The snake itself is outright embarrassing; I bought equally convincing rubber snakes from the Kresgie’s toy department when I was eight years old. And what’s more, the interaction between it and Kong is in the vein of ''Creator/BelaLugosi’s climactic grapple with the octopus in Film/''BrideOfTheMonster''. Rick Baker (inside the monkey suit) just holds onto the snake and waves it around, pretending to struggle with it!

-->--'''Ira Behr''' on ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "[[Recap/StarTrekS07E09Covenant Covenant]]"

->''Due to a salary dispute with the {{Creator/BBC}}, actor Creator/AnthonyAinley has been fired from the role of The Master. Thankfully, we were able to [[FakeShemp complete his remaining scenes with a suitable replacement.]] A cardboard cutout.''

-->--'''''Smallvillains''''' [[http://http://comicsalliance.com/recap-smallville-episode-4-8-spell/ on]] ''{{Series/Smallville}}'' ("Spell")

->"And, ''wow'', do you need to scene where butterflies save her from falling off of a church. I looks like watching someone get saved by ''a screen saver''."

-->--'''Ira Behr''' on ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "Covenant"

->''That’s a green screen.\\

-->--'''Creator/BradJones''' on ''Film/SecretSocietyOfSecondBornRoyals

-->-- '''[[http://www.philipsandifer.com/2012/04/300-million-years-out-of-your-comfort.html El Sandifer]]''' ''Series/DoctorWho'' on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep "Warriors of the Deep"]]

->''Michael Grade, responsible for pulling the trigger on the [[{{Cancellation}} 1985 hiatus]], has apparently cited this story as the one that persuaded him that ''Series/DoctorWho'' was crap, a claim that Eric Saward took issue with, pointing out that Grade was in a position to give the program more money. But the flip side of this is what possible reason Michael Grade would have for giving more money to a program that’s blowing what it has on a {{pantomime}} horse]. I mean, it’s tough to point at this and call it a compelling case for giving the program more money.''

->'''Chorus:''' ... can this cockpit hold\\

O, pardon!...
-->-- ''Theatre/HenryV''

->''So, post-production ''[[Film/JusticeLeague2017 Justice League]]'' tried to remove Creator/HenryCavill's mustache with CGI and he looks like fucking Human Franchise/{{Shrek}}''

-->--'''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAPSjt6TqCo on]] ''Film/{{Spawn}}''

[[AC:Fan Works]]

[[AC:Literature]]

->''"As it was... disbelief had not so much to be suspended as hanged, drawn, and quartered."''
-->-- '''Creator/JRRTolkien''' ''Literature/OnFairyStories''

[[AC:Live-Action Films]]

->''"[[Franchise/{{Jaws}} Shark]] still looks fake."''
-->-- '''Marty [=McFly=]''', ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartII''

[[AC:Live-Action TV]]

->''"Now he's eating stop-motion cartoons! I've got to do something!"''

->''"It seems like lawmakers should exhibit a little more awareness of what they're releasing than the makers of [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020 the Sonic the Hedgehog movie]]. Look, I dunno, I just had the CGI team mock up [[UncannyValley a furry potato with a corpse's face]]; someone smarter than me can figure out if that's nostalgic for people."''
-->-- '''Creator/JohnOliver''', comparing a poorly thought out anti-abortion bill to the movie's infamous rendition of Sonic, ''Series/LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver''

[[AC:Newspapers]]

->''"The owner of the ship makes several speeches boasting about how stable it is; it can stay level even during a raging tempest. I wonder if those speeches were inserted after the filmmakers realized how phony their special effects look. Every time we see the ship, it's absolutely immobile in the midst of churning waves."''

[[AC:Podcasts]]

->''"Kirk loses his grip and slips off the mountain. We then see [[StuntDouble an unrelated man wearing the same clothes]] ''also'' falling off a mountain. Then, Kirk is hanging upside-down in front of a rear screen projection of a moving rock face; Spock as well. The scene awkwardly ends seconds before Kirk touches the ground while Spock floats above him, suspended by movie studio cables. I'm not sure I understand the meaning of this abstract sequence. Perhaps someday, movie scholars will be able to [[MistakenForProfound decipher how these bizarre images relate to one another]], but I'm not smart enough to decipher the meaning of these seemingly unrelated shots."''

[[AC:Tabletop Games]]

[[AC:Theatre]]

[[AC:Web Original]]

->''"This airplane looks like the kind of present your grandmother gives you for your birthday when you're a toddler and she figures, 'Hey, he's only three. I could give him a stale dog turd and he'd be happy.' The effect is just amazingly bad, and the models will only get worse from here on in. (The upcoming submarine models look shockingly like bathtub toys. If, in fact, [[NoBudget they aren't just that.]])"''

->''"I don’t need to see a fake bullet in the opening gun barrel sequence, I doubt anybody did. The fake Hong Kong backdrop as Bond climbs out of the ocean looks like it came from a dodgy cartoon. The laser effects actually somehow look worse than they did back in ''{{Film/Goldfinger}}''."''

->''"We’ve had three credits sequences so far in this series. One of them was the iconic ''Superman'' credits sequence from [[Film/SupermanTheMovie the first film]], which was beautifully animated if basically the same idea. [[Film/SupermanII The second one]] was similar, but overlaid over a recap of the first film. [[Film/SupermanIII The third]] was the utterly hilarious Richard-Lester-goes-crazy-with-slapstick citywide Rube Goldberg machine, and this time it’s just movingearth.mov downloaded from a government website with some text that looks like it was overlaid on it on an UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}."''
-->--'''Chris Sims''' and '''David Uzumeri''' [[http://comicsalliance.com/comicsalliance-reviews-superman-iv-the-quest-for-peace-1987-2/ on]] ''[[Film/SupermanIVTheQuestForPeace Superman IV: The Quest For A F*** to Give]]''

->''"Jo would have suffered severe brain damage from a rock that size hitting her on the head. Luckily it bounces."''

->''"Michael Grade, responsible for pulling the trigger on the [[{{Cancellation}} 1985 hiatus]], has apparently cited this story as the one that persuaded him that ''Series/DoctorWho'' was crap, a claim that Eric Saward took issue with, pointing out that Grade was in a position to give the program more money. But the flip side of this is what possible reason Michael Grade would have for giving more money to a program that’s blowing what it has on a [[{{Panto}} pantomime horse]]. I mean, it’s tough to point at this and call it a compelling case for [[NotHelpingYourCase giving the program more money.]]"''

->''"Note to the costume designers: go look at a tiger or other mammal with a long tail. [[SomewhereAMammalogistIsCrying It doesn't just hang straight down.]] A tail that hangs straight down (with a kink at the end) is blatantly cloth wrapped onto wire. Please don't give a main character a tail unless you're prepared to use CGI in every scene she's in."''

->''"Clark arrives there, where he proceeds to deflect their magical [[RakeTake throwing of rakes]] at him with his heat vision in a scene that can best be described as looking like a UsefulNotes/SegaCD game."''

->'''Trillaphon:''' ''"...how about that magical talking-cat mouth? You could have made a more realistic talking-cat effect 80 years ago with scissors and hand puppetry."''
->'''Hydrogen:''' ''"There are probably 99-cent smartphone apps that could do that effect better than this movie did. And they come with 10 varieties of pre-recorded fart sounds at no extra charge."''
-->--'''[[http://www.somethingawful.com/movie-reviews/a-talking-cat/2/ Garrett "Hydrogen" Neil and Sean "Trillaphon" Neil]]''' on ''Film/ATalkingCat''

->''"Due to a salary dispute with the BBC, actor Anthony Ainley has been fired from the role of TheMaster. Thankfully, we were able to [[FakeShemp complete his remaining scenes with a suitable replacement.]] A cardboard cutout."''
-->-- ''Doctor Who: The Abridged Series''

->''"So, post-production [[Film/JusticeLeague2017 Justice League]] tried to remove [[spoiler:Creator/HenryCavill's]] [[BadassMustache mustache]] with CGI and he looks like fucking Human Franchise/{{Shrek}}"''
-->-- '''Lorenzoni Repeater''', [[https://twitter.com/_nadsat/status/931357427974492163 Twitter]]

->''"That is the fakest background that has ever faked being a background."''
-->-- '''Webvideo/CinemaSins''', about the rooftop scene in ''Film/SpiderManHomecoming''

[[AC:Web Video]]

->''"When you're doing worse composite shots than [[SelfDeprecation me]], ''stop making movies!!''."''
-->-- '''[[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment Spoony]]''', reviewing ''Film/HighlanderTheSource''

'''Chick:''' The soundstage is quite desolate!

->''"Is it possible for a movie to embody a Geocities page? Because somehow this film does it, complete with shitty [=GIFs=], blinky text, and low-res pictures of your favorite bands."''

->''"That's clearly just a cheap plastic container that we just slapped a hologram on top of. But when you're making a sci-fi movie, you'd rather have too many holograms than not enough."''

->''"There's a shot in this movie in which Reed Richards, after he becomes the stretchy guy, warps his face to look like someone else to be in disguise. When he warps back into Reed Richards, it looked like a movie that came out in 1993 that was trying to use CGI effects that weren't invented yet. I'm not exaggerating, there wasn't a single thing convincing about it."''

->''"The visuals are a lazy, unfinished mess, cobbled together [[TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup by no less than five separate effects companies]], resulting in a cartoony, CGI fakeness to the picture's most important moments."''

->''"Before we go any further, I have to address the abysmal quality of this picture's visuals. The sheer ineptitude of [[Creator/ThresholdEntertainment Threshold Animation Studios]] cannot be overstated. The facial expressions are unsynchronized, the textures are boring, and [[UncannyValley the character designs are ugly]]. The animation here is so terrible it resembles one of those quick and dirty South Korean news reports, if it were rendered with a UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 - sans Expansion Pak."''

->''"It's weird, you've got this big budget sci-fi movie with giant spectacle and grand space battles... and then you've got a scene with a naff snake in it that looks like it's out of an Creator/EdWood movie."''
-->-- '''WebVideo/BadMovieBeatdown''' on ''Film/{{Moonraker}}''

->''"Oh God, these are making the spider from ''[[Film/It1990 IT]]'' look real!"''
-->--'''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''', on ''Film/TheLangoliers''

->''"This is one of the lamest Hells ever designed. Not only does it look beyond fake for a big budget movie, not only is it some of the laziest layout work for something that could be creative in its sleep, but this is the shittiest devil ever! Literally! He looks like a giant piece of shit! If somebody sculpted a turd to look like a hyena with sea turtle dicks for ears covered in [[Franchise/HarryPotter Ron Weasley's]] pubes and the voice of [[WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget Dr. Claw]] parading as the Lord of Darkness, I'd say, "[[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs What are you smoking? Give me some!]] [[GetOut And you're fired]]". I'd call it a cheap CGI puppet, except it's not even a functioning puppet; the lips don't even move when he talks! (plays clip of the devil talking) This means that, technically, the [[Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles Ninja Turtle]] Christmas Special had better effects, because they at least made an attempt to have their lips move! This looks like [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Sauron's]] pet chihuahua!"''
-->--'''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAPSjt6TqCo on]] ''Film/{{Spawn}}''


->''"There's no splash, instead he (Walker) disappears. But, he doesn't disappear, he, like, ''implodes'' into himself. I'm really stunned, like, why did they do this? They couldn't do a special effect for a splash? But what they ''could'' do is make him implode! Now, if you couldn't make a splash, why couldn't you just cut away and then just leave the sound of the splash? That would've actually been more effective. I can re-edit it right now, watch. ''(Plays Walker's death scene, with the scene cutting to the turtles as soon the splash sound plays)'' See? That's '''all''' they had to do. So, why make the weird imploding effect? What were they thinking?!"''
-->--'''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd''', on Walker's DisneyVillainDeath in ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIII''

[[AC:RealLife]]

->''"Beautiful-looking picture, but the whole thing fell apart because the effect of the snakes on Megaera's head was not sufficiently well done for the climax of the film. Not a memorable film, but it could have been terrific."''

->''"This animatronic baby was moving its head, and Marc [Alaimo] was holding it up for the camera, playing the scene for all it's worth... It looked as if he were proclaiming to the world, 'Take a look! This is a phony baby! You can get one at Toys "R" Us! Thirty-five dollars and ninety-five cents!' We were howling with laughter and crying in frustration at the same time. The day will live in infamy."''

->''"Shark still looks fake."''

-->-- '''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'''

->''"It seems like lawmakers should exhibit a little more awareness of what they're releasing than the makers of [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog2019 the Sonic the Hedgehog movie]]. Look, I dunno, I just had the CGI team mock up [[UncannyValley a furry potato with a corpse's face]]; someone smarter than me can figure out if that's nostalgic for people."''

-->-- '''Creator/ChrisStuckmann''', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo5NETEV0S0 on]] ''Film/FantasticFour2015''.

-->-- ''' ''TabletopGames/ChezGeek'' "Z-Movie" card.'''

->''"It seems like lawmakers should exhibit a little more awareness of what they're releasing than the makers of [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog2019 the Sonic the Hedgehog movie]]. Look, I dunno, I just had the CGI team mock up a furry potato with a corpse's face; someone smarter than me can figure out if that's nostalgic for people."''
-->-- '''John Oliver''', ''Series/LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver''

->''"We’ve had three credits sequences so far in this series. One of them was the iconic ''Superman'' credits sequence from [[{{Film/Superman}} the first film]], which was beautifully animated if basically the same idea. [[Film/SupermanII The second one]] was similar, but overlaid over a recap of the first film. [[Film/SupermanIII The third]] was the utterly hilarious Richard-Lester-goes-crazy-with-slapstick citywide Rube Goldberg machine, and this time it’s just movingearth.mov downloaded from a government website with some text that looks like it was overlaid on it on an UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}."''

-->-- "Doctor Who: The Abridged Series"

-->-- '''[[http://www.philipsandifer.com/2012/04/300-million-years-out-of-your-comfort.html Phil Sandifer]]''' ''Series/DoctorWho'' on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep "Warriors of the Deep"]]

->''"So, post-production [[Film/JusticeLeague2017 Justice League]] tried to remove [[spoiler:Creator/HenryCavill's]] mustache with CGI and he looks like fucking Human Franchise/{{Shrek}}"''

"Doctor Who: The Abridged Series"