VFX Summer Preview: 10 Movies to Watch
Amid the usual explosive mayhem you'd expect for summer popcorn fare, we take a peek at lots of robots, dinosaurs and origin stories as we offer our top 10 summer picks. 1. Star Trek (Paramount, May 8)
J.J. Abrams' fast and furious re-imagining of Star Trek is definitely the summer's hottest movie, supported by bar raising vfx from ILM (supervisor Roger Guyett also served as second unit director) and great support from Digital Domain, Lola, Svengali and others. Not surprisingly, realism was the mandate for traveling on the sleeker and speedier Enterprise, the space battles, creature chases and planetary catastrophes. The origin story introduces a young Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and McCoy (Karl Urban) in their first adventure aboard the Enterprise, as they combat a time-tripping Romulan (Eric Bana) on planetary rampage. We can't wait to see the exploits of the Enterprise in IMAX.
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount, June 24)
Talk about upping the ante: Michael Bay goes to the Egyptian pyramids to unearth some more secrets of the Transformers. And he's kept ILM (supervised by Scott Farrar) and Digital Domain (supervised by Matthew Butler) very busy. There are more 'bots (60) with greater complexity and moodier lighting in fancier environments to raise the level of eye candy. Plus, with three action set pieces shot with large-format IMAX cameras (a la The Dark Knight), greater resolution challenges and longer render times will be a challenge for the CG work.
3. Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros., May 21)
In this origin story directed by McG, Salvation follows John Connor (Christian Bale) and the human resistance battle against Skynet and its army of Terminators in a post-apocalyptic 2018. ILM does much of the heavy lifting on this (under the supervision of Ben Snow) with Asylum contributing as well. According to Charles Gibson (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End), overall visual effects supervisor, "… McG's take is to weave science-fiction elements into a state-of-the-art action film: The camera always moves, the imagery is raw and kinetic, the pace is insane. The creative challenge for me will be to bury the effects into the photography but to still protect our big visual moments… We've been waiting to see this world for years -- it's only been glimpsed and hinted at in the previous Terminator movies. We're able to revisit the elements that have been established, but we're going to be adding a whole lot more."
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros. July 15)
Lord Voldermort is tightening his grip and the vfx look creepier than ever by Double Negative, MPC, Cinesite, Rising Sun Pictures, ILM and Luma Pictures. Plus, as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) begins his sixth year at Hogwarts and discovers a mysterious old book that helps him learn more about Voldemort's dark past, we will be treated to 25 minutes in IMAX 3-D, split between the opening and finale.
5. Drag Me to Hell (Universal, May 29)
Sam Raimi takes a break from Spider-Man by returning to his horror roots in a film that's getting great buzz. L.A. loan officer Alison Lohman is cursed by an elderly woman after refusing an extension on her mortgage payment (talk about timely). Tippett Studio apparently does some hellish vfx. But, for this one, Raimi has pulled back on the CG and has rooted his story more in the real world than his previous Evil Dead films.
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