Over on the Patreon there's an 8 minute bonus video looking at the role of cinematopgraphy and editing in making real stunts look real, using Fast Five, Baby Driver, Bourne and The Dark Knight as examples - www.patreon.com/pentexproductions
Hold up a second, you're telling me that Hollywood learned the wrong lesson from customer feedback and made a bad decision to start doing things worse than they were before? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.
I went and saw a movie that had a CGI character in it. It was of a previous character in the series brought back to life. The thing is though it didn't need to be THAT character, they could have just used a regular actor. Instead every time the CGI face shows up on screen, you're pulled out of the movie. So what's the point then?
@@TotallyOKaYProductions That's how all the mission impossible movies have been done for a while. MI6 started filming before they even finished the script.
@@TotallyOKaYProductionsThe movies were always about the impossible missions and not the story. I remember MI5 for the Kreml Scene, the Underwater Vault etc. Not for the Story
Dune II is a great example of not just using CGI to enhance practical effects, _but using real sets to enhance CGI set pieces._ Take Paul riding his first worm: of course the worm is CGI, no one is going to think they really filmed everything on a real worm (despite Villeneuve joking they did just that, and that they only used CGI to turn a normal sandworm in the largest one ever). Rather, they made a large-scale shaking set, placed Chalamet and cameras on it, and captured the whole thing shaking while he found his footing. Then they composed those shots on top of VFX elements like the flowing sand, worm, dust, etc... The aim isn't to make us thing it's real and that they filmed it all using practical effects, it's to make the CGI (and, especially, the human presence within CGI-heavy shots) grounded enough that we're not yanked out of our suspension of disbelief.
Yeah. The whole point of the movie using sand-screens was to get light reflecting at the right colors where they added in the CG for the backgrounds. A similar idea to the Volume they made for Mandalorian but less multi-colored things reflecting off of a shiny surface so sand-colored screens worked
I'm gonna be honest, I think if the CG landscape was just shapped differently, this wouldn't be nearly as weird looking. They should've just made it look like the entire cliff slopped upwards at the edge, rather than making it look like he found one conveniently ramp-shaped piece of natural land for him to jump off of. The "aha!" moment of him searching for a place to jump from could've just been him looking for a spot with enough of a run-up.
Honestly adding one element would fix the stunt. Add bumps and texture to the ramp! He’s driving over uneven terrain but the there is no jostling or shake to the bike. The physics are wrong so the stunt feels wrong.
You can't add bumps to the real ramp due to the safety of the base jump. What you need to do is make the ramp part of the scenery. Make it an abandoned incomplete highway or a building fallen on its side, something like that, like the bridge example Pentex gave us. That si the real solution. Trying to make the ramp look like mountain was the problem.
@@thevikingbear2343 This is a great summary of what I was thinking, but I would never have been able to word it as perfectly as you did. So thank you for that!
Yeah exactly. The problem is not that audiences knew that the ramp was there. The physics are not good enough and your brain knows sth is not right. The ride is too smooth.
There's a 'we'll fix it in post' element to these scenes that I think audiences pick up on and don't like. The marketing angle ends up making it seem a bit deceitful like 'hang on. I signed up to watch this for the train crash so what's this CGI version of it?'. Maverick did it subtly and expertly. Still floored by it a bit to be honest though they marketed that falsely as well
The gap between the marketing material and the final movie was so big it was honestly surprising, especially compared to the previous MI movies, and indeed Maverick as you say. For all the CGI Maverick used, the movie and the 'behind the scenes' marketing still looked and felt very similar compared to Dead Reckoning.
And frankly, most stunts use safety equipment and tricks, making them "less real" Your explanation rings the most true, it's not the possibility of a rope ruining it... It's the unbelievable nature of the "we'll fix it in post" style edits that contrasts with the marketed expectations I see tom cruise hanging onto a plane, and I'm too lost in the CG surrounding him hiding the harness and rope 😂 it's not even a bad stunt, it's really cool... It's just jarring and not impressive, and it WOULD be impressive if it wasn't over hyped as something else
You nailed it with your final statement. I 100% don't care whether a scene is entirely practical or entirely computer-generated. If it feels believable, works within the style and diegetic rules established by the rest of the film, and most importantly tells a good story, I'm happy. Two things really made the bike jump in Dead Reckoning feel fake to me. First, the geology of the cliff's shape really didn't make sense, and second, the bike was running WAY too smoothly to look like it was actually traveling over ground that rough. I can understand a lot of folks probably don't spend as much time climbing around on cliff faces as I do, but how hard would it have been to replace the bike's wheels & suspension in post and have them bounce around more convincingly?
The thing that pulled me out of it was the basic moonlogic of barely missing a train, and rather than following it and taking a more direct course while it meanders around a mountain valley at grade, he instead rides all the way up a mountain in a different direction in order to jump off it. Literally the most complicated solution to a simple problem, obviously done for the sake of ultimately a not very impressive stunt. I heard nothing but praise for this film prior to seeing it, but I was quite underwhelmed in the end: they kill off the best character in a shockingly badly choreographed fight, retcon some bullshit never-before-mentioned antagonist into earlier films, and to cap it all off, the big setpiece stunts are mostly a letdown. And where is part two?
@@Josh_Quillan Yeah I am with you. I enjoyed the film overall, but it had a ton of issues. The stunts weren't as good as previous movies (with the ending train scene being the exception) and the story is way too slow paced. The movie is almost 3 hours long which is a crime, and the retconning of Hunts history is atrocious just to bring some kind of emotional weight into the villain.
Regarding the comparison of the train crash in Dead Reckoning vs the plane crash in Tenant: I think a good way of looking at the difference is that it's a case of marketing influencing production as opposed to production influencing marketing.
In Oppenheimer, Nolan did the exact same mistake as dead reckoning. He marketed oppenheimer mostly on the one big set piece «the explosion», and that it was real. That was obviously the wrong choice since it looked bad in the final product. There was no scale, no mushroom shape or anything like what a nuclear bomb is supposed to look like. Nolan of course knew this because in the beginning of the movie we get a short CGI shot of the bomb and it looked way better, and like you said in 33:56 he must have looked at all the alternatives for the «money shot». I feel that he must have concluded that CGI was better but chose to do it for real just for the marketing, the same as dead reckoning, and not because it was what was best for the movie. It was interesting that two big blockbusters in resent time both fucked up the climax moment of the movie with the same mistake.
Everybody knew the ramp would be painted over with CGI. My theater audience was still in awe of the stunt. You could hear a pin drop when he went off the edge.
While I'm with the video's argument and I could clearly tell that the mountain was CGI, it was still effective for me too. There's still a sense that he's actually going over that ledge. …crashing the train though, I don't see the point. That did not register for me in the movie.
@@PauLtus_B Yes the train crash looked entirely CGI in the theater. It did nothing for me. The hopping between train cars as they fell though was pretty good.
That swanee whistle sound in the Bond film has got to be the worst example of patronising your audience, the stunt driver, and basically ruining an amazing stunt in the whole of cinema history.
Beside the CGI, my biggest problem with the last movie of my favorite frachise (MI) is that most of the stunt if not all feel like they are just happening for the sake of having a stunt, you can't help but feel like everything is coming together to just have a stunt, like with the clif scene, or after the train crash and Cruise jump with the parachutte, I couldn't figure out the geography of that place.
Fun fact the Burj Khalifa climb is still for me the biggest stunt ever made by Tom Cruise. And it is because it was an incredibly tense scene with great scriptwritting, blocking and editing. The ramp stunt just exists, but the Burj Khalifa Climb took its time to be a whole scene on its own.
I feel the same way about the helicopter chase in Fallout, or even the escape from the falling train carriages in Dead Reckoning. There are whole scenes and story moments built around these stunts which allow them to tell a story. As impressive as the bike jimp is, it feel reverse engineered - they came up with the idea for the stunt first, then wrote the scene around it. Which makes it all the more frustrating they didn't contrive a reason to include the ramp in the story!
@@OrdinaryLatvian Fun fact about @thevikingbear2343 : They've gone on record to state that their favourite stunt by Tom Cruise was the Burj Khalifa Climb. They cited the tension of the scene and great scriptwriting, blocking, and editing as part of their justification. They said they appreciate that the climb took it's time to be a whole scene on it's own, unlike the ramp stunt (which just exists).
That's not CGI's problem. No one below the line, including VFX supervisors, make those decisions...and apparently everyone above the line is just ok with people labeling it as "the problem with CGI". This literally hurts the vfx field and allows people to continue to marginalize and abuse the artists.
@@3nertia Um...wut. Misrepresenting the roles and responsibilities of production artists on a film and the mechanics of filmmaking is an element of capitalism? You're changing the issue. That's like saying "sexual harassment happens all the time in businesses meetings, and that usually involves a power dynamic. Welcome to capitalism!"
That stunt looked SO much worse in the movie than in the marketing material. From the convoluted reason for him to ride up the cliff to the jump itself, it was just so underwhelming.
I found a lot of the last MI film too fake. Like when they were falling through the hanging train just seemed off and those silly masks that somehow changed their hands too.
So disappointing considering how impressive it was, and how it stacks up against earlier MI stunts. I'm really curious to see how they approach marketing MI8 - I suspect we might see less of the big stunts getting spoiled in the trailers.
23:31 I think one of the reasons the scene feels fake. Happens to be that they forgot a simple bit of physics. When it come to riding a bike on rocky terrain, that even though a bike has shocks, it's going to jitter and bounce a bit regardless how fast a person is driving. If you watch the scene again, that is what's absent. It's just a smooth ride, which takes you out of reality because it no longer feels grounded in our world. It no longer feels right.
True. But they also could not have replicated that without adding 2 Dozen or more effects shots, no, very difficult effects shots. Because it would have been too dangerous for Tom to simulate that on the ramp. Heck that would have been risky for a Pro. Given the position of the cliff walls it likely would have been impossible to insure a stunt driver from serious harm if it went wrong. The problem is that the only way to have prevented it would have been all the way back at the script and pre-production choosing a distinctly different location that was flatter and not rocky at all. But there's no way a writer would forsee this, and I'm guessing the location of the story limited the shooting locations. Heck, even stunt planning probably wouldn't have predicted an issue. The digital effects levels we have today are still relatively new enough that stunt coordinators don't yet know what DVE can't do effectively. Again, it's possible for them to have attempted to fix it, but that alone would have Spiked the Effects Budget halfway thru Post-preduction. Just to note: I paused the video short of 2 mins in to come say this, without realizing it posted 2 weeks ago. So if he covers a lot of my thoughts later in please forgive me. If you can't then please reframe from commenting. If you're not willing to do that either be aware I will be ignoring you, possibly for the rest of my life. 😁🤣
It all comes down to how "real" it looks and where that line is drawn can be really tough. I imagine after working on the scene for so long, the film makers lose their ability to see it anymore (and most of the audience won't anyways). The CG on that bike ramp looks "bad" in that it looks blurry and like it's hiding something. There's an uncanny valley that needs to be accounted for. The CG water in Nyad for example was excellent, and I completely didn't notice it even once and I knew it was there. The cloud section during the Mission Impossible halo jump was too uncanny and ruined a great stunt.
10:10 I never really liked Rebel Wilson (I mostly just found her annoying), but knowing that she actually injured herself filming her own stunt is extremely impressive. I had no idea she did her own stunts.
One significant reason for the Dead Reckoning jump looking the way it did was, well, COVID. Initial planning for the stunt happened in 2019, and - IIRC - involved constructing a physical fake cliff on location, but the late 2020 filming was extremely limited in terms of how much crew they could reasonably have on set. As a result, they could build the ramp, but the initially planned set dressing around it couldn’t happen. Thus moving it all over to computer generation. Could they have gone back and redesigned the stunt? Sure, but that would be months of new location permitting, previz, and so forth, and even then nobody really knew if and when COVID would allow for a more comprehensive shoot.
Video could have been half as long, but yes, you hit the nail on the head as to why I haven't been enamored with McQuarrie's run on Mission: Impossible.
I already knew most of the things in this video but I'm really glad to see more people talking about this subject! I love that you directly quoted Corridor Digital and The Movie Rabbit Hole! I will always defend good CGI and criticize bad practical effects, for the same reason that I would also criticize bad CGI and defend good practical effects. It doesn't matter whether it's real, it matters whether it's believable and entertaining.
I like the Mission Impossible stunts but it does get pretty pretentious the way its marketed as if Tom Cruise is doing stunts never done or seen before, when I think any cool thing he’s done has already been done in a Jackie Chan or James Bond to a much more impressive degree. Especially the fighting on a train stunt in Dead Reckoning, Octopussy did that. Or what about Tom Cruise on the side of a plane in Rogue Nation, in Octopussy two people fight on the side of a prop plane while it does rolls, and in The Living Daylights two people dangle off a rope at the back of a cargo plane.
I mean it's marketing, they are kind of forced to lie like that, it's how the world runs lmao, just let them market whatever they want as long as the movie is good idc
Something I came across in my research that didn't make it into the video is the fact that for most of Cruise's big stunts, they are rehearsed and refined by professional stunt performers, then Tom steps in for the final version once all of the details have been worked out. Which is how a lot of film production happens (e.g. stand-ins for lighting and so on), but itheir efforts often go unacknowledged in the marketing. I am fine with Tom Cruise doing the stunts himself and playing that up in the marketing because it is genuinely impressive, but I agree it shouldn't be done in a way that minimises the achievements of other stunt performers (like Jacques Malnuit who did the cliff bike/BASE jump literally 25 years earlier in Goldeneye). P.S - I could have gone on a whole tangent about the 'Bond did it first' thing but restrained myself!
The HALO jump drives me nuts. You mean you actually did one of the most insane things humans ever do, that only a few people in the world are properly certified to do, with an actual actor....and then you covered the whole things in CG??? What is wrong with you?! The stunt was bloody amazing! Why did you need to make it silly?? And who the hell skydives through a thundercloud??
When I watched Jackie Chans 1996 Supercop with Michelle Yeoh, I was amazed seeing her hanging on the side of a truck and jumping off it onto a car. I could clearly see her face, seeing it was her and not a stunt double. Watching this movie in the late 90's on VHS tape, seeing her do all the stunts herself (just like chan) made me a big fan of her way back before she got as famous as she is now.
For the Dead Reckoning film I think it would've been better if they released some other promo material and saved the BTS of the jump for *after* the film was released. Maybe didn't show the ramp in the original promo, just Tom Cruise flying off a bike into a skydive, kept it minimal. Then it wouldn't have been as big of a deal when we saw the jump in the film.
In my opinion good CGI is CGI that aids a practical stunt or element. The main focus is the practical stunt and the CGI is just there to hide wires, safety harnesses, or a ramp. Bad CGI is when too much is added and it takes away from the practical element. Like the jungle scene from Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull. The CGI for the T-1000 from Terminator 2, MOSTLY is a bit dated now. But it still great because it's a combination of practical and CGI. It has a healthy balance which makes it believable.
One of the best points you brought up was the lightning strike in the halo jump scene. I remember being extremely excited going into MI6 knowing the halo jump was captured in camera and was actually real, and also remember being hugely disappointed when the lightning strike occurred, the feeling of which carried through till basically the end of that sequence. Obviously thematically, that had to occur, but what a shame to include that in the same sequence. Similar feelings with the cliff jump and train de-rail in Dead Reckoning. Yes we know it was mostly done for real, but when you add a bunch of very obvious CGI, it makes the audience almost start to question their excitement. In fact, I'd say if someone didn't see any behind the scenes and wasn't aware it was done for real, they would have no reaction to the sequences, as if they were watching any other CGI scene. Great video!
25:45 can't think of any reason why anything man-made a resort or ski-resort on top of a mountain would have a giant ramp that faces such a steep drop 😂
I actually never knew about the whole stunt marketing for Dead Reckoning, so I completely believed he was actually riding off the mountain at the time. (I assumed there WERE safety measures in place ofc, not 100% genuine, but yeah.) Seeing the behind the scenes for the first time NOW though... yeah, I probably should've wondered why that mountain peak was so perfectly ramp-shaped, lmao
Awesome video. Ever since dead reckoning came out I've noticed more and more movies hopping on the band wagon of doing things or real. It's really obnoxious when the marketing is centered on that and it's pretty much not true. I really hope the producers learn their lesson from dead reckoning and go back to what made the previous movies so great.
Also some of the behind the scenes marketing shots are cleaned up before release. Tom Cruise jumping off the building when he breaks his ankle. The marketing shot has erased the safety wires. There were 2 huge cranes holding him on wires from either side. The realised shot is what we see in this video. Good video mate .
MI:7 was so thinly plotted that it was embarrassing. Listen to all the previous interviews with Cruise and McQ. They got lazier with the plotting because they just plotted the story around the "stunts". Compared to MI:5 which was a masterpiece, and MI:6 which was also good but they had already started to use the "Stunt first, Story second" process. So by the time they got to MI:7, they went full blown, and possibly too much: relying on stunts to carry the film rather than characterization and plotting.
I think the story has always revolved around the stunts. I recall an interview for MI5 where they filmed that underwater scene before the script was even done for it! But I do agree that it was thinly plotted this time around.
14:11 I agree with this so much. I remember feeling underwhelmed with the bike jump - and I did my best to stay away from trailers and BTS footage before going to see it. But then we got to the train scene, and it totally took my breath away; watching it on a massive 100 ft screen, I've never felt like I was going to fall out of my seat like that before.
The VFX in MI has always undercut the stunts. The storm in the HALO jump. The VFX in the diving sequence. The mountain in the motorcycle jump. That plus Rob Hardy didn’t come back as DP really sealed the nail in the coffin for Dead Reckoning’s spectacle.
Regarding _Fallout_ and in defense of that movie, HALO jumps maybe cool, but seeing it in a movie with a plot going on maybe a little boring if nothing happens and disrupting the pacing. Also, the digitally recreated Paris itself looks seamless (the French government did not let them shoot over the real Paris).
Great video! I love the MI movies, but agree that ramp stunt in Dead Reckoning 1 felt odd with all the marketing behind it vs how it looked and felt in the movie itself. I remember feeling very excited when I saw all the BTS leading up to the movie, but then the scene felt flat as part of the film itself. We knew how it was done and because of that, knew the ramp had been hidden. It kinda ruined that part of the film for me, and as you mentioned, the whole lead up to it felt extra contrived in order to get to where we all knew they needed to be. I already believe Tom Cruise is doing something impressive and dangerous, even if some of it is artificial, and that's enough for me. I'd prefer not to see that much BTS before a movie is released. I think like Top Gun, some of this marketing approach was down to trying to kick-start cinema-going after COVID, and maybe they won't do it like that again. I still really enjoyed Dead Reckoning Part 1, but didn't it underperform in the cinema? If so, maybe they'll do things differently for the last one.
Peter Lyon is an absolute legend. It's hard to find clips showing rubber swords that don't make them just look like real ones - which is the whole point of them, I guess!
as someone who watches a lot of older movies, if i watch something current thats horror or action and something looks digital or i can spot cgi that "WOAH" feeling is just gone for me. ill even take very obvious miniatures or practical effects over high quality but visible cgi. those melting heads from indiana jones still look very fun and charming to me
Great video! I’m surprised you didn’t mention the ski jump from The Spy Who Loved Me: similar stunt, no CGI, and despite the fact it’s clearly not Roger Moore, it is absolutely breathtaking…
The Bond series has loads of instances of even better stunt work: the bungee jump from Goldeneye, the acrostar jet and plane climax from Octopussy, the corkscrew jump from The Man with the Golden Gun, the boat jump from Live and Let Die, freefalling in the opening of Moonraker, etc. All impressive and all done for real, even though the stuntmen are usually really obvious.
I was never a hater of CGI, especially growing up with the Star Wars Prequels. But some studios overuses the tool. The Corridor guys taught me a lot about VFX and how blending in-camera footage and digital effects can do amazing stuff if done right. That's where you get invisible CGI. The Movie Rabbit Hole is also a great channel, I wish he posted more videos. We need more people like you and them to show stubborn anti-CGI people that there's nothing wrong with digital effects. The tool just needs to be used right. As you repeat in the end, it's about creating an illusion on screen. If the tools are used right, it will work. If used wrong, it's gonna suck. But it won't be the falt of the tool but how it's been used. Anyways, I'll stop rambling. Thank you and cheers from France! 🍻
When they first showed that jump on line and were talking about what a feat it will be, I was wondering if they knew about the GoPro & RedBull channels.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I watch House of Dragons. I unfortunately know how they shoot the scenes in a green screen room, so every big scene makes me think of that and I start to imagine the scene without all the details, which is exactly the opposite of the intent. For stunts, too - CGI is so good that I basically don’t believe anything I see. With new AI video capabilities coming up, this is only going to get worse. I like The Captain America running effect. It’s good and “believable”.
This is a tough grey area and the video properly addresses practical vs digi-double CGI to capture better gravity and body physics... yet the final result can often be made or panned if the "invisible" CGI that stitches the background or hides the safety rigging can dilute the final edit. I appreciate the ever-increasing dialogue over stunt workers getting more recognition and lobbying for stunt jobs to have Oscar categories. When petitioning for Stunt Oscars one must think about some of the most iconic moments in Hollywood history... Butch and Sundance jump, Indiana Jones, and of course the Harold Lloyd clock scene, which made me smile to see included here. 😁
I find the contrast between this dedication to “realism” in film and live theatre. Live theatre has at most very minimal cgi (the cyc and in some rarer fancier things) but is often “unrealistic” but no one thinks “that’s not a bus stop, that’s a glass cube” I guess it’s just different expectations.
I was underwhelmed when the cliff jump came up in Dead Reckoning but couldn’t put my finger on why-and you answered it! When I saw the promotional content, my only thought was, how are they going to explain the ramp? The CG cliff therefore didn’t look real when I saw it in the movie. It also felt the same way hanging onto the plane in Rogue Nation felt. As impressive as the plane stunt was, it could have just as easily been done on green screen so it didn’t “feel real”. Compare that to Fallout when Cruise slips on the rope beneath the helicopter and plummets down the payload-my stomach drops every time I see it.
Great video, normally I get frustrated with discussion of these issues as the discussion is overly simplistic about real v fake, but this is spot on throughout. I also really appreciated you using No Time to Die as an example, those effects are so seamless. While your points about shot design are all valid, I do think a couple of those Dead Reckoning shots (the train, the ramp) are just not very good. If the landscape replacement was as good as those No Time to Die Shots I think there’d be much less issue. That is partly a design issue, yes - the ramp, in particular, asks a lot of the effects as the whole landscape needs replacing and the shape of the ramp is very fake. I do think the train shots, however, could have been a lot better. I’m not quite sure why they weren’t.
My favourite part of the mission imposible stunt is when we see tom Cruise free falling while talking on the phone, i laughed so hard in the cinema i was clapping like a seal
This is a true stunt. The stunts depicted took place in [location] in [year]. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been shown exactly as they occurred.
You kind of missed the point - double spend on stunts is CHEAPER than spending on marketing. Modern marketing budget are enormous. So Such tricks save a lot of money actually
As an audience membre, I agree, the train crash would've look like as real (or as fake) with miniatures or full CG. But, marketing aside, as the director, if I had the budget, I definitely would crash the train for real, just because it's so much fun! (Also, I think those two Dead Reckoning's stunts are poorly shot and edited.)
Most times I hear someone say, "This (insert movie title) used 'no' cgi..." I just don't understand that AT ALL! Why is the MAIN ASPECT of movie making that has made these impossibly dangerous scenes and actions. CGI is the ONLY reason we ever got movies like Jurassic park, star wars and so on is BECAUSE of CGI! If movies didn't have any CGI then a lot of movies would be in a much much smaller scope. The ability to create LITERALLY ANYTHING from a dinosaur, a plane that doesn't exist, cars, alien planets and land scapes. None of that would be at the scope it is today without CGI. Most opinions I can understand at least where you would get that opinion eveb if it's wrong. But the hiding of CGI is just insane and ridiculous as VFX Artists are the literal back bone of Hollywood. Every single movie out of Hollywood uses CGI in some form with most of it just being set extensions or adding building or cars. Wires and pads and jump pads and pistons. I just don't understand what the point of trying to hide the ONE THING holding movies together. VFX artists are the ones making the movies work and look real and is what is making the movies of the past 3 decades so large in scope with crazy otherworldly planets and animals and creatures. CGI is important and VFX artists deserve WAAAAYYYYYY MORE RESPECT and ACKNOWLEDGEMENT as they are the glue that without them, Hollywood would die.
If you go to a play, CGI will not look so bad. If you only watch TV and movies then CGI will look absolutely stupid. You’re supposed to suspend disbelief when watching movies just like you do when you watch a play. If you look at old-school movies, you can see cables, wires, and all sorts of weird shit but they are still absolutely awesome. Stop being weird and just wasting time watching movies. I used voice to text so if this doesn’t make sense oh well, I’m also too high to spellcheck
Have to disagree about the Marvel Magic Carpet. It felt very real given the stunts context. I understand assuming Cap and Tchalla are cg models but I never did because it looks so good and we as the audience can assume that’s what super humans would look like running. One of my favorite new practical effects
The question I would have is if it actually ends up saving the money from marketing. You referred to it as free advertising a few times but I'd say the choices to do things this way is a calculated cost that is done to reduce the traditional advertising budget.
Fantastic video. Underwhelming was exactly what I thought when I saw Dead Reckoning (which by the way, I love that we aren’t even acknowledging the “Part One” in the title), and I’m also glad you included clips from Ferrari. That awful looking shot completely undercut the most dramatic moment in the movie.
I find it irrationally annoying when movies have subtitles AND a 'part one' in them. And from the looks of things, even the makers of Dead Reckoning have decided not to acknowledge the 'part one' anymore - www.ign.com/articles/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-streaming-release-date-announced-part-one-dropped-from-title
The HALO jump works for me, because they're still actually falling during the thunderstorm part. But also, while we'd seen the astonishing leap out the back of the plane repeatedly in the trailers and marketing, and it looks like the real elements, the CG-heavy lightning scene was a big surprise complication when I was already immersed in the excitement. In Dead Reckoning, the air in the scene is all there for us to stare in wonder at their CG cliff as they set up the stakes - despite doing the big jump for real, from the moment the ramp is out of the picture it cuts away, the actual falling part isn't given time to add any tension or focus or anything. The stunt doesn't sell because the camera doesn't seem to care. What you give time to, what you point the camera at, is what you tell an audience is important. And what Dead Reckoning says in the cliff scene is that the cliff is important, not the fall. Which is a problem when your cliff's that dodgily lit.
@@clays1507 over the desert, so there’s CG lights below, but they did it at dusk, as you can see on all the behind the scenes stuff. The daytime clips are practice jumps.
Amazing observation that stunts feel more real when physically possible, I've never thought about it like that. I felt that same disappointment after seeing the final edit of the MI cliff jump.
It's funny how Hollywood is so reliant on both vfx artists and stunt workers alike while simultaneously villainizing them to the general public. It's to the point where the main time you hear them mentioned by the industry is to take credit away from them, push blame onto them, or to praise themselves for not resorting to using them. Honestly, does it really matter if an actor does their own stunts, especially when the audience wouldn't be able to tell either way? Does it matter if it's a completely "real" stunt or not, or if they use vfx to polish up a scene? I'm definitely not thinking about any of that when watching these movies.
Interesting creative choice to have that large jagged outcropping for a ramp instead of just an even slope. I’m not digital effects artist but I feel like with perspective tricks and the like, it didn’t have to look like a ramp at all. I feel the same way about the train crash. It looked amazing in the bts footage, but there was so much cgi water and dust added into the crash it totally covers up all the natural elements of the shot.
Like seriously, I need to know why they thought the bridge should blow up moments before the train gets there. It could have blown up 5 minutes earlier, and the tension could have been mounting and we wouldn’t need 5 passes of particle effects obscuring the real stunt.
VFX artists really need to unionize already, they deserve so much more. Anyway I think on one hand audiences should extend their suspension of disbelief more, especially when dealing with high concept scenarios where you know it's just not very realistic. Like when dealing with superhero stories, you are dealing with very impossible superhuman situations. And if the style and tone overall matches - ex the spider-man trilogy - than it's much easier to accept. Like yeah it's a bit cartoonish at times but that's how this world works. It's the vibe the films are going for. Incidentally I miss behind the scene material that really go over every aspect of the production like for the lord of the rigns extended editions instead of theses promo shorts.
@@RealBLAlley If you want to blame people who take in excess, look at CEOs, look at those who hold power and make a filthy amount of money instead of coming after creatives just because you don't respect their work.
I think you need to consider that Dead Reckoning was the first major film to restart production during COVID. It makes sense why it is toned down, as it would have been very difficult to film.
Extremely good video, well narrated, all the points you share hits like they should, and i am happy to see that i am not the only one that start to hate the way the marketing seems to focus on this one big stunt tom cruise did, while ignoring the work of the stunts actors who worked their ass off to prepare the stunt, and also i feel like the story of the movie is also in the background, they didn't give us some reason to watch the movie for the story but only "came watch this huge stunt, and if you are lucky you will may see a movie around it". And i also hate that tom cruise doesn't take heat from being the scientology pr guy with how much damage they do to people life, he should at least be considered persona non grata, and at best in jail from being active part of this cult as all the other higher up in the cult of course.
Nowadays, all of this "Real" Stunt crap doesn't have as much impact as it used to anymore because "Real" Life has literally become so much more fake than the movies.
While having the shot look believable is vital, I think of Buster Keaton. He was the definition of "done for real" with all the broken bones and mistakes used in the film. He was a god
It blows my mind how no one outside the VFX industry is willing to criticize him for this: his stunts aren't even interesting enough to justify the lies.
Great video. I especially like the marketing section. The train stunt felt like the most egregious example. The fact that Tom Cruise is on the scene for the BTS featurettes and 95% of the shot being digitally replaced anyway really makes the whole thing look like a cynical marketing gimmick. WETA and ILM and other big VFX studios are magicians that can create photorealistic fully animated shots. Sometimes the simplest way to do a scene is just to let those guys digitally create the whole thing. And other times doing the stunt for "real" and digitally enhancing is the right way. But to claim that one is superior because lives were actually in danger seems silly.
I really think the marketing hurt the actually Mission Impossible movies, We saw so much marketing and specifically for that stunt, we simply can't help but think ok this is Tom Cruise on a motorbike on a white ramp, it's not Ethan Hunt on a real cliff edge, regardless of how realistic the final image looks. It just breaks the illusion and immersion. I always disliked the existence of celebrities and the same actors showing up in different movies, and also outside of movies because they break the illusion of movies. But this kind of marketing for behind the scene material even before the movies comes out, is just another level of immersion breaking, it's awful.
I'm really curious to see how they market MI8. I suspect we'll see a bit less of the 'look at this big stunt we did for real' approach, since I think going overboard on that hurt Dead Reckoning.
If you look at the bike's wheels in the side shots, not only is there incorrect and missing dirt, rock, and debris kicked up from the wheels' contact patch, but the bottom sidewalls and tread are either morphed into the ground or covered up by the cgi pasted in front of/on top of the real wheel.😮😮
What I also hated about the bike jump is we don't get to see the end of the stunt, it cuts back to events on the train just for a "haha" moment when Ethan crashes through the side knocking someone out. I want to see him land on the train since that's what he's meant to be doing
22:10 I think a realistic stunt shouldn't be tainted by the vanity of the self-awareness that makes compromises in all other departments just to rub a particular meta fact in the audience's faces. Stunts in Nolan movies are pretty cool - they mostly feel like they came up with what they wanted to do and then asked "how much of this can we do practically" and then shot what they wanted to shoot, rather than making it a point to prove anything in the final version which completely takes you out of the story. Contact shadows might very well be among the hardest things to do between CG and real elements. That motorbike stunt was "doomed" when they decided to replace the ramp entirely (rather than "decorating" it so they only need to replace the environment, not the very surface the bike is on).
24:42 A lot of those earlier stunts were designed that way precisely because they didn't have the luxury of digital replacement. All stunts are designed around existing capability, and are thusly enhanced by advancements in tech and method.
The other problem is now the studios frequently have actors and even directors claiming a scene was totally done for real, when it clearly wasn't, and the actors are the last people to know how a scene was put together and sometimes even the directors don't know. If you ever hear an actor claim something like that, don't believe them, unless they're a producer or someone with behind the scenes knowledge.
Over on the Patreon there's an 8 minute bonus video looking at the role of cinematopgraphy and editing in making real stunts look real, using Fast Five, Baby Driver, Bourne and The Dark Knight as examples - www.patreon.com/pentexproductions
7:52 ayeeeee Wren my man
Hold up a second, you're telling me that Hollywood learned the wrong lesson from customer feedback and made a bad decision to start doing things worse than they were before? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.
SHOCKED!
Im appalled...appalled!
No, that's not true... That's impossible.... Noooooo!
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Cheers from France! 🍻
I went and saw a movie that had a CGI character in it. It was of a previous character in the series brought back to life. The thing is though it didn't need to be THAT character, they could have just used a regular actor. Instead every time the CGI face shows up on screen, you're pulled out of the movie. So what's the point then?
That's literally never happened in the history of cinema.
Before the movie came out I was thinking "How are they gonna work a perfectly setup white scaffolding into the story! 😂😂😂
Same
Tbh knowing about the stunt took me out of the movie because it felt like they came up with the stunt then worked their way backwards from there
@@TotallyOKaYProductions That's how all the mission impossible movies have been done for a while. MI6 started filming before they even finished the script.
@@TotallyOKaYProductionsThe movies were always about the impossible missions and not the story. I remember MI5 for the Kreml Scene, the Underwater Vault etc. Not for the Story
Dune II is a great example of not just using CGI to enhance practical effects, _but using real sets to enhance CGI set pieces._ Take Paul riding his first worm: of course the worm is CGI, no one is going to think they really filmed everything on a real worm (despite Villeneuve joking they did just that, and that they only used CGI to turn a normal sandworm in the largest one ever). Rather, they made a large-scale shaking set, placed Chalamet and cameras on it, and captured the whole thing shaking while he found his footing. Then they composed those shots on top of VFX elements like the flowing sand, worm, dust, etc...
The aim isn't to make us thing it's real and that they filmed it all using practical effects, it's to make the CGI (and, especially, the human presence within CGI-heavy shots) grounded enough that we're not yanked out of our suspension of disbelief.
Yeah. The whole point of the movie using sand-screens was to get light reflecting at the right colors where they added in the CG for the backgrounds. A similar idea to the Volume they made for Mandalorian but less multi-colored things reflecting off of a shiny surface so sand-colored screens worked
Looks like The Movie Rabbit Hole posted his "NO CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI 5/4" on the wrong channel.
9:06. Jonas made an excellent series.
@@PentexProductions I am aware of this, and this video serves as a nice adendum to that series
I'm gonna be honest, I think if the CG landscape was just shapped differently, this wouldn't be nearly as weird looking.
They should've just made it look like the entire cliff slopped upwards at the edge, rather than making it look like he found one conveniently ramp-shaped piece of natural land for him to jump off of. The "aha!" moment of him searching for a place to jump from could've just been him looking for a spot with enough of a run-up.
Honestly adding one element would fix the stunt.
Add bumps and texture to the ramp!
He’s driving over uneven terrain but the there is no jostling or shake to the bike.
The physics are wrong so the stunt feels wrong.
You can't add bumps to the real ramp due to the safety of the base jump. What you need to do is make the ramp part of the scenery. Make it an abandoned incomplete highway or a building fallen on its side, something like that, like the bridge example Pentex gave us. That si the real solution. Trying to make the ramp look like mountain was the problem.
all the CGI ruins it.
@@thevikingbear2343 This is a great summary of what I was thinking, but I would never have been able to word it as perfectly as you did. So thank you for that!
Yeah exactly. The problem is not that audiences knew that the ramp was there. The physics are not good enough and your brain knows sth is not right. The ride is too smooth.
@@mormegil231 it ruins the stunt
There's a 'we'll fix it in post' element to these scenes that I think audiences pick up on and don't like. The marketing angle ends up making it seem a bit deceitful like 'hang on. I signed up to watch this for the train crash so what's this CGI version of it?'. Maverick did it subtly and expertly. Still floored by it a bit to be honest though they marketed that falsely as well
Nailed it.
The gap between the marketing material and the final movie was so big it was honestly surprising, especially compared to the previous MI movies, and indeed Maverick as you say. For all the CGI Maverick used, the movie and the 'behind the scenes' marketing still looked and felt very similar compared to Dead Reckoning.
And frankly, most stunts use safety equipment and tricks, making them "less real"
Your explanation rings the most true, it's not the possibility of a rope ruining it... It's the unbelievable nature of the "we'll fix it in post" style edits that contrasts with the marketed expectations
I see tom cruise hanging onto a plane, and I'm too lost in the CG surrounding him hiding the harness and rope 😂 it's not even a bad stunt, it's really cool... It's just jarring and not impressive, and it WOULD be impressive if it wasn't over hyped as something else
You nailed it with your final statement. I 100% don't care whether a scene is entirely practical or entirely computer-generated. If it feels believable, works within the style and diegetic rules established by the rest of the film, and most importantly tells a good story, I'm happy.
Two things really made the bike jump in Dead Reckoning feel fake to me. First, the geology of the cliff's shape really didn't make sense, and second, the bike was running WAY too smoothly to look like it was actually traveling over ground that rough. I can understand a lot of folks probably don't spend as much time climbing around on cliff faces as I do, but how hard would it have been to replace the bike's wheels & suspension in post and have them bounce around more convincingly?
The lengths I went to not to use the word 'verisimilitude' in this video....
@@PentexProductions You should have done, it's a great word. Fun to say too.
The thing that pulled me out of it was the basic moonlogic of barely missing a train, and rather than following it and taking a more direct course while it meanders around a mountain valley at grade, he instead rides all the way up a mountain in a different direction in order to jump off it. Literally the most complicated solution to a simple problem, obviously done for the sake of ultimately a not very impressive stunt. I heard nothing but praise for this film prior to seeing it, but I was quite underwhelmed in the end: they kill off the best character in a shockingly badly choreographed fight, retcon some bullshit never-before-mentioned antagonist into earlier films, and to cap it all off, the big setpiece stunts are mostly a letdown. And where is part two?
@@Josh_Quillan Yeah I am with you. I enjoyed the film overall, but it had a ton of issues. The stunts weren't as good as previous movies (with the ending train scene being the exception) and the story is way too slow paced. The movie is almost 3 hours long which is a crime, and the retconning of Hunts history is atrocious just to bring some kind of emotional weight into the villain.
@@QuantumHistorian It might've been appropriate but he runs the risk of sounding like a pretentious asshole if he uses it. 😂
I quite dislike hearing people complain about CGI. It's nice to see more videos like this one that educate people.
Regarding the comparison of the train crash in Dead Reckoning vs the plane crash in Tenant: I think a good way of looking at the difference is that it's a case of marketing influencing production as opposed to production influencing marketing.
In Oppenheimer, Nolan did the exact same mistake as dead reckoning. He marketed oppenheimer mostly on the one big set piece «the explosion», and that it was real. That was obviously the wrong choice since it looked bad in the final product. There was no scale, no mushroom shape or anything like what a nuclear bomb is supposed to look like. Nolan of course knew this because in the beginning of the movie we get a short CGI shot of the bomb and it looked way better, and like you said in 33:56 he must have looked at all the alternatives for the «money shot». I feel that he must have concluded that CGI was better but chose to do it for real just for the marketing, the same as dead reckoning, and not because it was what was best for the movie. It was interesting that two big blockbusters in resent time both fucked up the climax moment of the movie with the same mistake.
Everybody knew the ramp would be painted over with CGI. My theater audience was still in awe of the stunt. You could hear a pin drop when he went off the edge.
While I'm with the video's argument and I could clearly tell that the mountain was CGI, it was still effective for me too. There's still a sense that he's actually going over that ledge.
…crashing the train though, I don't see the point. That did not register for me in the movie.
@@PauLtus_B Yes the train crash looked entirely CGI in the theater. It did nothing for me. The hopping between train cars as they fell though was pretty good.
@@nebulousy I liked the train hopping too! It's also a kind of goofy very relatable setpiece, even though most of it came out of a computer.
That swanee whistle sound in the Bond film has got to be the worst example of patronising your audience, the stunt driver, and basically ruining an amazing stunt in the whole of cinema history.
Glad I saw no promotional material for Dead Reckoning lol. That motorcycle jump blew me away. I didn't even know it was done for real
Beside the CGI, my biggest problem with the last movie of my favorite frachise (MI) is that most of the stunt if not all feel like they are just happening for the sake of having a stunt, you can't help but feel like everything is coming together to just have a stunt, like with the clif scene, or after the train crash and Cruise jump with the parachutte, I couldn't figure out the geography of that place.
Fun fact the Burj Khalifa climb is still for me the biggest stunt ever made by Tom Cruise. And it is because it was an incredibly tense scene with great scriptwritting, blocking and editing. The ramp stunt just exists, but the Burj Khalifa Climb took its time to be a whole scene on its own.
I feel the same way about the helicopter chase in Fallout, or even the escape from the falling train carriages in Dead Reckoning. There are whole scenes and story moments built around these stunts which allow them to tell a story. As impressive as the bike jimp is, it feel reverse engineered - they came up with the idea for the stunt first, then wrote the scene around it. Which makes it all the more frustrating they didn't contrive a reason to include the ramp in the story!
An opinion is not a "fun fact".
@@OrdinaryLatvian Fun fact about @thevikingbear2343 : They've gone on record to state that their favourite stunt by Tom Cruise was the Burj Khalifa Climb. They cited the tension of the scene and great scriptwriting, blocking, and editing as part of their justification. They said they appreciate that the climb took it's time to be a whole scene on it's own, unlike the ramp stunt (which just exists).
Fun fact, @@nlovelldev made some observations and they were funny because they were true.
I watched the film for the first time recently and thought that action was amazing. Superb tension.
I'll just repeat myself: The problem with CGI is bad shot composition and empowering people that doesn't know how to make good composition.
That's not CGI's problem. No one below the line, including VFX supervisors, make those decisions...and apparently everyone above the line is just ok with people labeling it as "the problem with CGI".
This literally hurts the vfx field and allows people to continue to marginalize and abuse the artists.
If you shield people from the costs of bad decisions they will continue making those bad decisions.
CGI is the "bail out" of movies.
Technology making things easier means that nearly any idiot can make a movie - and maybe that's not a good thing heh
@@johntnguyen1976 Welcome to capitalism!
@@3nertia Um...wut. Misrepresenting the roles and responsibilities of production artists on a film and the mechanics of filmmaking is an element of capitalism? You're changing the issue. That's like saying "sexual harassment happens all the time in businesses meetings, and that usually involves a power dynamic. Welcome to capitalism!"
That stunt looked SO much worse in the movie than in the marketing material. From the convoluted reason for him to ride up the cliff to the jump itself, it was just so underwhelming.
I found a lot of the last MI film too fake. Like when they were falling through the hanging train just seemed off and those silly masks that somehow changed their hands too.
Yeah they thought of the stunt first then they wrote the script around it
So disappointing considering how impressive it was, and how it stacks up against earlier MI stunts. I'm really curious to see how they approach marketing MI8 - I suspect we might see less of the big stunts getting spoiled in the trailers.
I hope so.
23:31 I think one of the reasons the scene feels fake. Happens to be that they forgot a simple bit of physics. When it come to riding a bike on rocky terrain, that even though a bike has shocks, it's going to jitter and bounce a bit regardless how fast a person is driving. If you watch the scene again, that is what's absent. It's just a smooth ride, which takes you out of reality because it no longer feels grounded in our world. It no longer feels right.
True. But they also could not have replicated that without adding 2 Dozen or more effects shots, no, very difficult effects shots. Because it would have been too dangerous for Tom to simulate that on the ramp. Heck that would have been risky for a Pro. Given the position of the cliff walls it likely would have been impossible to insure a stunt driver from serious harm if it went wrong.
The problem is that the only way to have prevented it would have been all the way back at the script and pre-production choosing a distinctly different location that was flatter and not rocky at all. But there's no way a writer would forsee this, and I'm guessing the location of the story limited the shooting locations. Heck, even stunt planning probably wouldn't have predicted an issue. The digital effects levels we have today are still relatively new enough that stunt coordinators don't yet know what DVE can't do effectively. Again, it's possible for them to have attempted to fix it, but that alone would have Spiked the Effects Budget halfway thru Post-preduction.
Just to note: I paused the video short of 2 mins in to come say this, without realizing it posted 2 weeks ago. So if he covers a lot of my thoughts later in please forgive me. If you can't then please reframe from commenting. If you're not willing to do that either be aware I will be ignoring you, possibly for the rest of my life. 😁🤣
It all comes down to how "real" it looks and where that line is drawn can be really tough. I imagine after working on the scene for so long, the film makers lose their ability to see it anymore (and most of the audience won't anyways).
The CG on that bike ramp looks "bad" in that it looks blurry and like it's hiding something. There's an uncanny valley that needs to be accounted for.
The CG water in Nyad for example was excellent, and I completely didn't notice it even once and I knew it was there. The cloud section during the Mission Impossible halo jump was too uncanny and ruined a great stunt.
10:10 I never really liked Rebel Wilson (I mostly just found her annoying), but knowing that she actually injured herself filming her own stunt is extremely impressive. I had no idea she did her own stunts.
One significant reason for the Dead Reckoning jump looking the way it did was, well, COVID. Initial planning for the stunt happened in 2019, and - IIRC - involved constructing a physical fake cliff on location, but the late 2020 filming was extremely limited in terms of how much crew they could reasonably have on set.
As a result, they could build the ramp, but the initially planned set dressing around it couldn’t happen. Thus moving it all over to computer generation.
Could they have gone back and redesigned the stunt? Sure, but that would be months of new location permitting, previz, and so forth, and even then nobody really knew if and when COVID would allow for a more comprehensive shoot.
True ❤
Video could have been half as long, but yes, you hit the nail on the head as to why I haven't been enamored with McQuarrie's run on Mission: Impossible.
12:12 I just assumed the rest of the guys ran slower, and the 'Fast guys' ran at normal full speed.
I already knew most of the things in this video but I'm really glad to see more people talking about this subject! I love that you directly quoted Corridor Digital and The Movie Rabbit Hole! I will always defend good CGI and criticize bad practical effects, for the same reason that I would also criticize bad CGI and defend good practical effects. It doesn't matter whether it's real, it matters whether it's believable and entertaining.
I like the Mission Impossible stunts but it does get pretty pretentious the way its marketed as if Tom Cruise is doing stunts never done or seen before, when I think any cool thing he’s done has already been done in a Jackie Chan or James Bond to a much more impressive degree. Especially the fighting on a train stunt in Dead Reckoning, Octopussy did that. Or what about Tom Cruise on the side of a plane in Rogue Nation, in Octopussy two people fight on the side of a prop plane while it does rolls, and in The Living Daylights two people dangle off a rope at the back of a cargo plane.
I mean it's marketing, they are kind of forced to lie like that, it's how the world runs lmao, just let them market whatever they want as long as the movie is good idc
@@xenio8736 The problem is that marketing gets asses in seats to watch bad movies and then they profit either way ...
Something I came across in my research that didn't make it into the video is the fact that for most of Cruise's big stunts, they are rehearsed and refined by professional stunt performers, then Tom steps in for the final version once all of the details have been worked out. Which is how a lot of film production happens (e.g. stand-ins for lighting and so on), but itheir efforts often go unacknowledged in the marketing.
I am fine with Tom Cruise doing the stunts himself and playing that up in the marketing because it is genuinely impressive, but I agree it shouldn't be done in a way that minimises the achievements of other stunt performers (like Jacques Malnuit who did the cliff bike/BASE jump literally 25 years earlier in Goldeneye).
P.S - I could have gone on a whole tangent about the 'Bond did it first' thing but restrained myself!
The HALO jump drives me nuts. You mean you actually did one of the most insane things humans ever do, that only a few people in the world are properly certified to do, with an actual actor....and then you covered the whole things in CG??? What is wrong with you?! The stunt was bloody amazing! Why did you need to make it silly??
And who the hell skydives through a thundercloud??
The last question is answered in the movie itself.
When I watched Jackie Chans 1996 Supercop with Michelle Yeoh, I was amazed seeing her hanging on the side of a truck and jumping off it onto a car. I could clearly see her face, seeing it was her and not a stunt double. Watching this movie in the late 90's on VHS tape, seeing her do all the stunts herself (just like chan) made me a big fan of her way back before she got as famous as she is now.
For the Dead Reckoning film I think it would've been better if they released some other promo material and saved the BTS of the jump for *after* the film was released. Maybe didn't show the ramp in the original promo, just Tom Cruise flying off a bike into a skydive, kept it minimal. Then it wouldn't have been as big of a deal when we saw the jump in the film.
In my opinion good CGI is CGI that aids a practical stunt or element. The main focus is the practical stunt and the CGI is just there to hide wires, safety harnesses, or a ramp.
Bad CGI is when too much is added and it takes away from the practical element. Like the jungle scene from Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull.
The CGI for the T-1000 from Terminator 2, MOSTLY is a bit dated now. But it still great because it's a combination of practical and CGI. It has a healthy balance which makes it believable.
One of the best points you brought up was the lightning strike in the halo jump scene. I remember being extremely excited going into MI6 knowing the halo jump was captured in camera and was actually real, and also remember being hugely disappointed when the lightning strike occurred, the feeling of which carried through till basically the end of that sequence. Obviously thematically, that had to occur, but what a shame to include that in the same sequence. Similar feelings with the cliff jump and train de-rail in Dead Reckoning. Yes we know it was mostly done for real, but when you add a bunch of very obvious CGI, it makes the audience almost start to question their excitement. In fact, I'd say if someone didn't see any behind the scenes and wasn't aware it was done for real, they would have no reaction to the sequences, as if they were watching any other CGI scene. Great video!
That final line gives you away as a Jago Hazzard enthusiast
I'll work Charles Tyson Yerkes into one of the videos some day....
25:45 can't think of any reason why anything man-made a resort or ski-resort on top of a mountain would have a giant ramp that faces such a steep drop 😂
Hah, just watched this the other day and I thought the train was 100% CGI (hadn't seen the ads before). Great analysis, thanks for the insight!
I actually never knew about the whole stunt marketing for Dead Reckoning, so I completely believed he was actually riding off the mountain at the time. (I assumed there WERE safety measures in place ofc, not 100% genuine, but yeah.)
Seeing the behind the scenes for the first time NOW though... yeah, I probably should've wondered why that mountain peak was so perfectly ramp-shaped, lmao
Awesome video. Ever since dead reckoning came out I've noticed more and more movies hopping on the band wagon of doing things or real. It's really obnoxious when the marketing is centered on that and it's pretty much not true. I really hope the producers learn their lesson from dead reckoning and go back to what made the previous movies so great.
audiences will believe the impossible but reject the implausible
Great video, I completely agree, especially on Dead Reckoning.
I love the Mission Impossible series and this makes so much sense.
Also some of the behind the scenes marketing shots are cleaned up before release. Tom Cruise jumping off the building when he breaks his ankle. The marketing shot has erased the safety wires. There were 2 huge cranes holding him on wires from either side. The realised shot is what we see in this video. Good video mate .
MI:7 was so thinly plotted that it was embarrassing. Listen to all the previous interviews with Cruise and McQ. They got lazier with the plotting because they just plotted the story around the "stunts". Compared to MI:5 which was a masterpiece, and MI:6 which was also good but they had already started to use the "Stunt first, Story second" process. So by the time they got to MI:7, they went full blown, and possibly too much: relying on stunts to carry the film rather than characterization and plotting.
I think the story has always revolved around the stunts. I recall an interview for MI5 where they filmed that underwater scene before the script was even done for it! But I do agree that it was thinly plotted this time around.
14:11 I agree with this so much. I remember feeling underwhelmed with the bike jump - and I did my best to stay away from trailers and BTS footage before going to see it. But then we got to the train scene, and it totally took my breath away; watching it on a massive 100 ft screen, I've never felt like I was going to fall out of my seat like that before.
The VFX in MI has always undercut the stunts. The storm in the HALO jump. The VFX in the diving sequence. The mountain in the motorcycle jump. That plus Rob Hardy didn’t come back as DP really sealed the nail in the coffin for Dead Reckoning’s spectacle.
Regarding _Fallout_ and in defense of that movie, HALO jumps maybe cool, but seeing it in a movie with a plot going on maybe a little boring if nothing happens and disrupting the pacing. Also, the digitally recreated Paris itself looks seamless (the French government did not let them shoot over the real Paris).
Very interesting idea, but the idea can be presented in 5 minutes instead of 40 minutes saying the same thing again, again and again.
I agree, feels like hes just repeating himself
Yup.
I do like the call out to Jackie Chan that you did.
Great video! I love the MI movies, but agree that ramp stunt in Dead Reckoning 1 felt odd with all the marketing behind it vs how it looked and felt in the movie itself. I remember feeling very excited when I saw all the BTS leading up to the movie, but then the scene felt flat as part of the film itself. We knew how it was done and because of that, knew the ramp had been hidden. It kinda ruined that part of the film for me, and as you mentioned, the whole lead up to it felt extra contrived in order to get to where we all knew they needed to be. I already believe Tom Cruise is doing something impressive and dangerous, even if some of it is artificial, and that's enough for me. I'd prefer not to see that much BTS before a movie is released. I think like Top Gun, some of this marketing approach was down to trying to kick-start cinema-going after COVID, and maybe they won't do it like that again. I still really enjoyed Dead Reckoning Part 1, but didn't it underperform in the cinema? If so, maybe they'll do things differently for the last one.
3:25 tom cruise promotional youtube poop
I love that you showed a clip of Peter Lyon holding an actual spring steel sword while talking about rubber swords. That dude has talent.
Peter Lyon is an absolute legend. It's hard to find clips showing rubber swords that don't make them just look like real ones - which is the whole point of them, I guess!
as someone who watches a lot of older movies, if i watch something current thats horror or action and something looks digital or i can spot cgi that "WOAH" feeling is just gone for me. ill even take very obvious miniatures or practical effects over high quality but visible cgi. those melting heads from indiana jones still look very fun and charming to me
Great video! I’m surprised you didn’t mention the ski jump from The Spy Who Loved Me: similar stunt, no CGI, and despite the fact it’s clearly not Roger Moore, it is absolutely breathtaking…
The Bond series has loads of instances of even better stunt work: the bungee jump from Goldeneye, the acrostar jet and plane climax from Octopussy, the corkscrew jump from The Man with the Golden Gun, the boat jump from Live and Let Die, freefalling in the opening of Moonraker, etc. All impressive and all done for real, even though the stuntmen are usually really obvious.
I was never a hater of CGI, especially growing up with the Star Wars Prequels.
But some studios overuses the tool.
The Corridor guys taught me a lot about VFX and how blending in-camera footage and digital effects can do amazing stuff if done right. That's where you get invisible CGI.
The Movie Rabbit Hole is also a great channel, I wish he posted more videos.
We need more people like you and them to show stubborn anti-CGI people that there's nothing wrong with digital effects. The tool just needs to be used right.
As you repeat in the end, it's about creating an illusion on screen. If the tools are used right, it will work.
If used wrong, it's gonna suck. But it won't be the falt of the tool but how it's been used.
Anyways, I'll stop rambling.
Thank you and cheers from France! 🍻
When they first showed that jump on line and were talking about what a feat it will be, I was wondering if they knew about the GoPro & RedBull channels.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I watch House of Dragons. I unfortunately know how they shoot the scenes in a green screen room, so every big scene makes me think of that and I start to imagine the scene without all the details, which is exactly the opposite of the intent. For stunts, too - CGI is so good that I basically don’t believe anything I see. With new AI video capabilities coming up, this is only going to get worse. I like The Captain America running effect. It’s good and “believable”.
This is a tough grey area and the video properly addresses practical vs digi-double CGI to capture better gravity and body physics... yet the final result can often be made or panned if the "invisible" CGI that stitches the background or hides the safety rigging can dilute the final edit. I appreciate the ever-increasing dialogue over stunt workers getting more recognition and lobbying for stunt jobs to have Oscar categories. When petitioning for Stunt Oscars one must think about some of the most iconic moments in Hollywood history... Butch and Sundance jump, Indiana Jones, and of course the Harold Lloyd clock scene, which made me smile to see included here. 😁
I find the contrast between this dedication to “realism” in film and live theatre.
Live theatre has at most very minimal cgi (the cyc and in some rarer fancier things) but is often “unrealistic” but no one thinks “that’s not a bus stop, that’s a glass cube”
I guess it’s just different expectations.
I also like it when the entire set is just some chairs the actors move around to create the scene.
I was underwhelmed when the cliff jump came up in Dead Reckoning but couldn’t put my finger on why-and you answered it! When I saw the promotional content, my only thought was, how are they going to explain the ramp? The CG cliff therefore didn’t look real when I saw it in the movie. It also felt the same way hanging onto the plane in Rogue Nation felt. As impressive as the plane stunt was, it could have just as easily been done on green screen so it didn’t “feel real”. Compare that to Fallout when Cruise slips on the rope beneath the helicopter and plummets down the payload-my stomach drops every time I see it.
Great video, normally I get frustrated with discussion of these issues as the discussion is overly simplistic about real v fake, but this is spot on throughout. I also really appreciated you using No Time to Die as an example, those effects are so seamless.
While your points about shot design are all valid, I do think a couple of those Dead Reckoning shots (the train, the ramp) are just not very good. If the landscape replacement was as good as those No Time to Die Shots I think there’d be much less issue. That is partly a design issue, yes - the ramp, in particular, asks a lot of the effects as the whole landscape needs replacing and the shape of the ramp is very fake. I do think the train shots, however, could have been a lot better. I’m not quite sure why they weren’t.
My favourite part of the mission imposible stunt is when we see tom Cruise free falling while talking on the phone, i laughed so hard in the cinema i was clapping like a seal
16:01 I was an Extra in that Movie!!!
This is a true stunt. The stunts depicted took place in [location] in [year]. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been shown exactly as they occurred.
Mission Impossible: Operation Fargo
You made a very good video my friend and should be proud!
Thank you so much for doing this video! It's excellent.
A worthy addition on this subject.
You kind of missed the point - double spend on stunts is CHEAPER than spending on marketing. Modern marketing budget are enormous. So Such tricks save a lot of money actually
As an audience membre, I agree, the train crash would've look like as real (or as fake) with miniatures or full CG.
But, marketing aside, as the director, if I had the budget, I definitely would crash the train for real, just because it's so much fun!
(Also, I think those two Dead Reckoning's stunts are poorly shot and edited.)
great video mate
This is really excellent - you deserve more subscribers so I’ll at least tick you up by one!
Most times I hear someone say, "This (insert movie title) used 'no' cgi..." I just don't understand that AT ALL! Why is the MAIN ASPECT of movie making that has made these impossibly dangerous scenes and actions. CGI is the ONLY reason we ever got movies like Jurassic park, star wars and so on is BECAUSE of CGI! If movies didn't have any CGI then a lot of movies would be in a much much smaller scope. The ability to create LITERALLY ANYTHING from a dinosaur, a plane that doesn't exist, cars, alien planets and land scapes. None of that would be at the scope it is today without CGI. Most opinions I can understand at least where you would get that opinion eveb if it's wrong. But the hiding of CGI is just insane and ridiculous as VFX Artists are the literal back bone of Hollywood. Every single movie out of Hollywood uses CGI in some form with most of it just being set extensions or adding building or cars. Wires and pads and jump pads and pistons. I just don't understand what the point of trying to hide the ONE THING holding movies together. VFX artists are the ones making the movies work and look real and is what is making the movies of the past 3 decades so large in scope with crazy otherworldly planets and animals and creatures. CGI is important and VFX artists deserve WAAAAYYYYYY MORE RESPECT and ACKNOWLEDGEMENT as they are the glue that without them, Hollywood would die.
If you go to a play, CGI will not look so bad. If you only watch TV and movies then CGI will look absolutely stupid. You’re supposed to suspend disbelief when watching movies just like you do when you watch a play. If you look at old-school movies, you can see cables, wires, and all sorts of weird shit but they are still absolutely awesome. Stop being weird and just wasting time watching movies. I used voice to text so if this doesn’t make sense oh well, I’m also too high to spellcheck
This is such a nuanced argument. I will return to this video again and again. It made a great point in a great way.
Have to disagree about the Marvel Magic Carpet. It felt very real given the stunts context. I understand assuming Cap and Tchalla are cg models but I never did because it looks so good and we as the audience can assume that’s what super humans would look like running.
One of my favorite new practical effects
The question I would have is if it actually ends up saving the money from marketing. You referred to it as free advertising a few times but I'd say the choices to do things this way is a calculated cost that is done to reduce the traditional advertising budget.
Fantastic video. Underwhelming was exactly what I thought when I saw Dead Reckoning (which by the way, I love that we aren’t even acknowledging the “Part One” in the title), and I’m also glad you included clips from Ferrari. That awful looking shot completely undercut the most dramatic moment in the movie.
I find it irrationally annoying when movies have subtitles AND a 'part one' in them. And from the looks of things, even the makers of Dead Reckoning have decided not to acknowledge the 'part one' anymore - www.ign.com/articles/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-streaming-release-date-announced-part-one-dropped-from-title
Thank you so much for making this video♥️
I clicked on the video expecting it to be a gatekeeppy, but I actually really liked it!
The HALO jump works for me, because they're still actually falling during the thunderstorm part. But also, while we'd seen the astonishing leap out the back of the plane repeatedly in the trailers and marketing, and it looks like the real elements, the CG-heavy lightning scene was a big surprise complication when I was already immersed in the excitement.
In Dead Reckoning, the air in the scene is all there for us to stare in wonder at their CG cliff as they set up the stakes - despite doing the big jump for real, from the moment the ramp is out of the picture it cuts away, the actual falling part isn't given time to add any tension or focus or anything. The stunt doesn't sell because the camera doesn't seem to care.
What you give time to, what you point the camera at, is what you tell an audience is important. And what Dead Reckoning says in the cliff scene is that the cliff is important, not the fall. Which is a problem when your cliff's that dodgily lit.
The HALO jump was in the desert during the day. In post production they made it twilight over Europe
@@clays1507 over the desert, so there’s CG lights below, but they did it at dusk, as you can see on all the behind the scenes stuff. The daytime clips are practice jumps.
13:41 there. sums up the how I feel verbatim.
Amazing observation that stunts feel more real when physically possible, I've never thought about it like that. I felt that same disappointment after seeing the final edit of the MI cliff jump.
All I know is when I saw MI in the theater the entire theater was holding its breath. It was one of the coolest things I've seen in a movie.
It's funny how Hollywood is so reliant on both vfx artists and stunt workers alike while simultaneously villainizing them to the general public. It's to the point where the main time you hear them mentioned by the industry is to take credit away from them, push blame onto them, or to praise themselves for not resorting to using them.
Honestly, does it really matter if an actor does their own stunts, especially when the audience wouldn't be able to tell either way? Does it matter if it's a completely "real" stunt or not, or if they use vfx to polish up a scene? I'm definitely not thinking about any of that when watching these movies.
Interesting creative choice to have that large jagged outcropping for a ramp instead of just an even slope. I’m not digital effects artist but I feel like with perspective tricks and the like, it didn’t have to look like a ramp at all.
I feel the same way about the train crash. It looked amazing in the bts footage, but there was so much cgi water and dust added into the crash it totally covers up all the natural elements of the shot.
Like seriously, I need to know why they thought the bridge should blow up moments before the train gets there. It could have blown up 5 minutes earlier, and the tension could have been mounting and we wouldn’t need 5 passes of particle effects obscuring the real stunt.
Safety first!
VFX artists really need to unionize already, they deserve so much more. Anyway I think on one hand audiences should extend their suspension of disbelief more, especially when dealing with high concept scenarios where you know it's just not very realistic. Like when dealing with superhero stories, you are dealing with very impossible superhuman situations. And if the style and tone overall matches - ex the spider-man trilogy - than it's much easier to accept. Like yeah it's a bit cartoonish at times but that's how this world works. It's the vibe the films are going for.
Incidentally I miss behind the scene material that really go over every aspect of the production like for the lord of the rigns extended editions instead of theses promo shorts.
@@RealBLAlley the people who went on strike were not overpaid wtf. Writers are underpaid, and not all actors are tom cruise.
@@RealBLAlley Yes I do because they are public about it. If you think they don
@@RealBLAlley If you want to blame people who take in excess, look at CEOs, look at those who hold power and make a filthy amount of money instead of coming after creatives just because you don't respect their work.
If Jackie Chan hasn’t already done it, then it can’t be done without CGI.
After this video, I can understand why there hasn't been an Oscars Stunt Category.
I think you need to consider that Dead Reckoning was the first major film to restart production during COVID.
It makes sense why it is toned down, as it would have been very difficult to film.
Extremely good video, well narrated, all the points you share hits like they should, and i am happy to see that i am not the only one that start to hate the way the marketing seems to focus on this one big stunt tom cruise did, while ignoring the work of the stunts actors who worked their ass off to prepare the stunt, and also i feel like the story of the movie is also in the background, they didn't give us some reason to watch the movie for the story but only "came watch this huge stunt, and if you are lucky you will may see a movie around it".
And i also hate that tom cruise doesn't take heat from being the scientology pr guy with how much damage they do to people life, he should at least be considered persona non grata, and at best in jail from being active part of this cult as all the other higher up in the cult of course.
this is so properly made , I love it
Nowadays, all of this "Real" Stunt crap doesn't have as much impact as it used to anymore because "Real" Life has literally become so much more fake than the movies.
While having the shot look believable is vital, I think of Buster Keaton. He was the definition of "done for real" with all the broken bones and mistakes used in the film. He was a god
I am fucking burned up by the Tom Cruise fake stunt marketing gimmick. Thanks for making this video.
It blows my mind how no one outside the VFX industry is willing to criticize him for this: his stunts aren't even interesting enough to justify the lies.
for the record, i never even thought that captain america or black panther was cgi or fake. i just assumed some people can run faster than others.
Great video. I especially like the marketing section. The train stunt felt like the most egregious example. The fact that Tom Cruise is on the scene for the BTS featurettes and 95% of the shot being digitally replaced anyway really makes the whole thing look like a cynical marketing gimmick.
WETA and ILM and other big VFX studios are magicians that can create photorealistic fully animated shots. Sometimes the simplest way to do a scene is just to let those guys digitally create the whole thing. And other times doing the stunt for "real" and digitally enhancing is the right way. But to claim that one is superior because lives were actually in danger seems silly.
I really think the marketing hurt the actually Mission Impossible movies, We saw so much marketing and specifically for that stunt, we simply can't help but think ok this is Tom Cruise on a motorbike on a white ramp, it's not Ethan Hunt on a real cliff edge, regardless of how realistic the final image looks. It just breaks the illusion and immersion.
I always disliked the existence of celebrities and the same actors showing up in different movies, and also outside of movies because they break the illusion of movies. But this kind of marketing for behind the scene material even before the movies comes out, is just another level of immersion breaking, it's awful.
I'm really curious to see how they market MI8. I suspect we'll see a bit less of the 'look at this big stunt we did for real' approach, since I think going overboard on that hurt Dead Reckoning.
If you look at the bike's wheels in the side shots, not only is there incorrect and missing dirt, rock, and debris kicked up from the wheels' contact patch, but the bottom sidewalls and tread are either morphed into the ground or covered up by the cgi pasted in front of/on top of the real wheel.😮😮
What I also hated about the bike jump is we don't get to see the end of the stunt, it cuts back to events on the train just for a "haha" moment when Ethan crashes through the side knocking someone out. I want to see him land on the train since that's what he's meant to be doing
22:10 I think a realistic stunt shouldn't be tainted by the vanity of the self-awareness that makes compromises in all other departments just to rub a particular meta fact in the audience's faces. Stunts in Nolan movies are pretty cool - they mostly feel like they came up with what they wanted to do and then asked "how much of this can we do practically" and then shot what they wanted to shoot, rather than making it a point to prove anything in the final version which completely takes you out of the story.
Contact shadows might very well be among the hardest things to do between CG and real elements. That motorbike stunt was "doomed" when they decided to replace the ramp entirely (rather than "decorating" it so they only need to replace the environment, not the very surface the bike is on).
24:42 A lot of those earlier stunts were designed that way precisely because they didn't have the luxury of digital replacement. All stunts are designed around existing capability, and are thusly enhanced by advancements in tech and method.
The other problem is now the studios frequently have actors and even directors claiming a scene was totally done for real, when it clearly wasn't, and the actors are the last people to know how a scene was put together and sometimes even the directors don't know. If you ever hear an actor claim something like that, don't believe them, unless they're a producer or someone with behind the scenes knowledge.
My problem with the MI base jump was that we didn’t see Cruise approaching the train to next proximity- the cut killed it for me.