I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, rewatching The Thing (probably the 20th time) over the weekend. Somethings about those stupid practical effects always get me…and I feel like we lost something along the way.
Growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, my first exposure to sci-fi came from my dad’s dusty collection of VHS tapes. Ok, they were literally falling apart. You had to constantly adjust the tracking and hope it didn’t tear the entire tape in half as it played. But watching Star Wars on that beat-up VHS copy was magical. Magic that I don’t think anyone who grew up with pristine digital copies will ever understand.
Because it was real. Those space battles felt so grounded because they literally were grounded. There were giant models with articulated joints being lit by huge motors rushing air through them to simulate explosions.
When I first saw the Millennium Falcon glide through space, I knew that thing weighed a lot. It looks and moves like something that was real. Because it was real! It sat on a soundstage somewhere being pushed and pulled by puppeteers that spent months crafting it into perfection. It moves slowly and with purpose, and it leans a little to one side because thats how it was built. CGI spaceships just fly too smoothly.
Which leads me to…
Why does everything have to be perfect? Those practical effects forced creators to actually be creative! John Carpenter didn’t need a single visual effect to film The Thing. Rob Bottin built the sets, created the storyboards, and had to come up with ways for all those nasty transforms to work with real actors responding to grotesque puppets and animatronics. Its stomach churningly disgusting in a way that we’ll never see again with cgi. I remember watching the chestburster scene for the first time (don’t judge me, I was too young.) and hiding behind the couch because WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SEE THAT WAS SO REAL. Those actors didn’t react to tiny poles with tennis balls on the ends. They were completely terrorized by big weird blobs of pale grey goo with googly eyes.
Same with Alien. The xenomorph wasn’t some photo-real rendering passed over a greenscreen. It was a real, physical creation that Ridley Scott could light, shoot from any angle, that cast shadows other actors would actually respond to as if it were in the room with them.
Revisiting so much stop motion recently has reminded me just how stunning Ray Harryhausen’s work is. There’s a quality to his creatures you don’t really get with CGI. They look like sculptures. Beautiful, detailed sculptures that were hand painted. They don’t always move the most realistically but they have such an artist feel to them. Someone actually posed those creatures frame by frame. They were artists that knew how to move their creations, but they also knew how to imbue them with character and personality. CGI monsters often feel like computers programmed them. Bland and generic.
Even just sitting in Los Angeles 2019 and staring at all the miniatures in Blade Runner. They aren’t just buildings, they’re architectural models with enough detail you can see up close. Each story is different, each window has character and texture. Someone actually built that damn city! Those spinner cars are physical props that interact with real light, with real atmosphere that actually cast shadows. So many digital movies look so fake. The characters aren’t even in the same room together. They’re just acting next to blue screens while everyone else prays they didn’t say something that will break the movie down after the fact.
2001: A Space Odyssey is such a feat of scientific and cinematic achievement to me. Not only did Kubrick build such realistic looking spacecraft, they move like actual vehicles. They’ve been designed by engineers as well as artists. Take a look at that model of Discovery One if you haven’t recently. It’s 40 feet long and detailed on the inside and outside. When you watch it rotate in zero gravity, that’s actually it rotating. Its momentum is being captured by the camera. These guys didn’t phone it in.
Don’t get me wrong, I love CGI as much as the next nerd. I’m not anti technology. Jurassic Park is my favorite movie of all time because of how it blended cgi and practical effects. That t-rex was mostly a giant puppet that they couldn’t film wide enough because it was so enormous. Those actors were terrified because they legitimately had a prosthetic dragon staring them down and roaring at them. Sure there was cgi dinosaurs, but they were only used for wide shots or complicated movement that the puppets could not easily achieve.
Then you have something like Star Wars. What made those first films so great was they used models and matte paintings and actual locations. Build sprawling cities where actual actors ran around touching the props that other actors were interacting with. Then Lucas goes and makes the prequels and they’re all cgi. Nothing is real anymore. Everyone’s acting to blue screens and it shows. No wonder the acting is so wooden. What’s the fun in that? Before you could touch things and believe they were real. There was this tangible quality to everything.
Everything is TOO easy these days. Want to build an awesome alien creature? Dont spend months crafting a practical effect, just re-create it digitally. Painting a sunset during film school? Why spend hours mixing your own paint when you can easily do it in Photoshop? Sure it might look good, but it doesn’t feel real.
But then you have movies like Mad Max: Fury Road which gives me hope that maybe practical effects are coming back. Real vehicles were used during that movie. Real explosions, real stunts. Everything was practical and enhanced with digital effects, not the other way around. It just looks and feels more visceral.
Same with The Mandalorian. They had these insane amounts of LED walls the actors could actually react to. That’s bridging the gap between digital and practical and it looks incredible.
Its weird because so many younger filmmakers I know love practical effects. But they’re kids who grew up with CGI, so maybe they just like impractical stuff. It also might have to do with the fact that they’re looking back at a time when actual artists built insane amounts of detail by hand. Those designers and sculptors poured their soul into physical objects. We can still see the fingerprints of those artists all these years later.
Working at the library I cheque out films all day long and I constantly see kids with books on how practical effects were made. They’re studying how Dick Smith used make up to create his legendary creatures, or how Derek Meddings built those crazy miniatures. Students are hungry for that information, and I love it.
Practical effects forced collaboration. Everyone was on set together working problems out in real time. Digital artists are stuck in little rooms months after the fact dreaming up new ways to cheat the audience.
I’m not saying we need to go back to practical-only filmmaking. That would be foolish. But I do think we went too far the other way. Some of my favorite sci-fi movies in recent years have had really awesome blends of cgi and practical. Using each when they shine the most.
Let’s not forget how to craft physical magic.
Kathleen’s a lifelong reader who believes science fiction is literature, full stop. From her book-filled home in Seattle, she writes about thoughtful, character-driven sci-fi that challenges ideas and lingers long after the last page. She’s a champion for under-read authors and timeless storytelling.