SLASH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! FIGHTO!!
He should imagine some kittens in a bucket
Okay, there’s my summary 
I kid, I kid! I will say that this is great action flick. Grab your candy and coke (obviously not bought at the outrageous candy bar prices) and slide into a chair for a big-screen movie.
As you probably know, and as was discussed on this site here, there was an awful lot of hype surrounding the film, possibly due to a leak of a full workprint of the film. Insanely bone-headed career ending move or marketing genius? I will let you decide. Either way it certainly didn’t hurt the box office with Wolverine hosing it in.
One thing I will say about the film that a lot of people have mentioned is that the VFX are quite patchy. Some quite excellent stuff next to some quite dodgy stuff. The entire scene in the countryside and the helicopter/motorcycle fight had an awful lot of dodgy greenscreen shots and soft looking CG and there was some insanely average stuff at the end when the children were walking towards the helicopter to escape. We were also confused when Wolverine was checking out his new claws at the old couples homestead as they looked very flat and unconvincing.
The only other thing that left me a bit unfulfilled was the lack of Gambit action. I will admit right now that I haven’t read the comics and don’t really know all the characters that well, but even I know that Gambit is hella cool and the trailer led me to believe that we would see more of him in the movie. Oh well, I am sure he will get his own deal, seeing that Deadpool has just been given his own movie!
There is a very nice, if brief, production focus with Luma pictures over at CGTalk at the moment that is well worth a read. It is interesting to note that Luma, and others, have noted that the time for completing their shots was quite limited, which possibly resulted in the dodgy FX.
I can only assume that lack of time was the reason as the budget was somewhere around $130million which is not exactly chump change. This is another in a long line of similar complaints about movie productions with studios wanting AAA VFX in ridiculous timeframes. I recall reading an interview with the guys at ILM who did the car escape destruction sequence for the War of the Worlds trailer. They pulled out all stops for Spielberg and after they actually managed to pull it off, it somehow become expected that VFX studios could do that kind of work in those kind of time frames as a matter of course.
Overall, I give it 7/10. It is what it is, an enjoyable big blockbuster action movie.
Tags: Review
I have seen the movie last week. I think the worst was, that the ugliest compositing seen in recent years was within the last minutes. That moment I also thought, that it seemed, like there was not enough time, to finish it properly.
I have to agree Knut! A couple of the last scenes I was like, WHOA! Must have reached the deadline
Im yet to see it, been working flat out. The thing that really tells you how bad some of the shots were is that my mate picked up on it (who is an engineer, not a compositor) and commented on the two things that you mentioned Matt, that the old homestead scene and helicopter scene screamed fake to him.
Will hopefully get out to see it on wednesday.. by the way I recommend ‘The boy in Striped Pyjamas’ stand out movie.. a must see.
Right on. Don’t get me wrong, great action popcorn movie! I have heard very good things about The Boy in Sriped Pyjamas, so I might have to go check it out.