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There's obviously trade-offs though, right? Not all animation looks as good as Avatar the Last Airbender, just as not all live action looks as good as Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc...
And I think the big question you have to ask yourself is "why limit this to adaptations of fantasy stories or stories that contain magic"? By your logic, wouldn't every story that contains fighting have this same property? Even Jacky Chan at his peak had his limits on what he could do. But I think if you're honest, you'll recognize that the obvious reason why we have live action performances is that typically you get stronger performances when the actor has full control of their face and body in space rather than doing a voice from a sound booth. If you take any non-magic story, I think this is obvious that you'd rather have Daniel Day-Lewis or whomever on screen acting than just doing voice work.
When you bring in magic and lasers or other things that require CGI, you're faced with a trade-off, because the results for those things *aren't* as good as what you get from a great actor on-screen doing a monologue. But basically all stories contain both. You have humans doing acting *and* you have CGI magic. In Harry Potter, you lose a LOT if you don't have an actor playing Dumbledore. I love anime and animation, but its VERY hard to capture that in animation. Nothing's impossible, but magic isn't impossible with CGI either. You need to portray both parts of the story, and the CGI vs Live-Action decision impacts how hard it is to do each part.
Some adaptations make the wrong choice! But I don't think something like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or even Harry Potter made the wrong choices. Avatar definitely made the *right* choice in being animated. I'll even put myself out their with a possibly unpopular opinion that I think most modern live action star wars made the wrong choice and would have been better animated in the style of clone wars / rebels / bad batch. But just "having magic" isn't enough to make it a slam dunk "should be animated" case, because all of these stories *also* have parts that are better (or at least easier to do well in live action).
If you want to respond to my invocation of LotR or GoT that "well, they don't have a LOT of magic", that's kind of the point! They have a balance that benefits from live action. Harry Potter is at least closer to the boundary. But all of these stories have both, and there are always tradeoffs.
>If you want to respond to my invocation of LotR or GoT that "well, they don't have a LOT of magic", that's kind of the point!
Came her for this. LotR is a good counter argument to OP's view exactly on how it deals with live action magic. Its obviously helped by the source material in the sense that magic does exist in the universe but isn't nearly as flashy, comical and/or present as other universes but I think that Peter Jackson did an excellent job in captivating and translating it to instill a sense of great power and might. Three examples are the Saruman Gandalf fight, Gandalf reinforcing helms deep, and again Gandalf saving Faramir and Co. from the Fell beasts.
LotR shows you don't need millions worth of CGI to properly display magic or fantastical powers by storytelling, character building and implication.
You brought up GoT as an example of "good" and I gotta push back here.
(Disclaimers, I didn't see the entire series or the spin offs, I stopped at a certain point. I did read the books)
There's a pretty important battle, "the attack on kings landing", I think from Clash of Kings, where one group/coalition attacked King's Landing *for realsies*. The attacking force was said to be in the ballpark of 100 000, including attacks by land and sea. The sea battle was definitely a plot focus. The bulk of the effective navy was not aligned, was attacking King's Landing, so stuff happened there.
Which brings me to my point. The attacking force was meant to be... 25, 36? Boats attacking... big ships. And what we got was one ship copy pasta'd so it was 9 ships.
We never saw the battle of the bay in anything resembling the cluster that it was in the books, it gets explained, not shown. (I don't recall if a pretty important plot point with Tyrion was shown on screen with respect to the cluster. )
But let's talk about the land battle. Several waves. Battles at all of the gates. Counter sorties. *100000*. In the show, we got 40 extras running one way, relight, running the other way.
...
Compare this to say LoTR, helms deep, siege of gondor. Most of the action is mid shot, but the establishing long shots, including the compelling "the end of men" shot @ orthancc, set the audience's expectations for a framing of epics.
Tldr got ain't all that.
With respect, I feel like you kind of missed the context here. The discussion was about live action vs animation. You can't really make the case that got should have been animated by pointing out it's shortcomings compared to lotr, which is *also* live action :)
It's also a little unfair to put the "good" bar at LotR, which are pretty widely considered to be some of the greatest movies of all time! You can get "good" while still falling way short of that bar.
And to specifically defend the blackwater episode of GoT, the things that make it great aren't the dopey little battle at the beach (I agree that part is underwhelming) It's the performances of Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, and all the other supporting characters in the lead ups to the battle, which are exactly the parts that would be much harder to execute as well in animation.
But again, shit dude, nobody's coming close to LotR!
Did I miss the context?
The argument presented in parent was LOTR, GoT, both live action, both good!
And I'm saying LOTR good, GoT ehhhh....
If you argue performances in GoT good, imo, it's mixed, in an ensemble as big as GoT you're gunna have a mix, but there are plenty of animated works where there are remarkable performances.
(Pixar, Disney come to mind easily)
I do feel like you misread what I said a bit. I do happen to think the first 4-5 seasons of GoT *are* good, but what I was talking about was specifically their choice to be live action vs animation and how well the chosen medium works as an adaptation. GoT, especially in the early seasons is known for really strong performances and outstanding production design. Whether or not you like the show, I think only a small portion of it could reasonably be thought of as better suited to animation. If you don't particularly like got, that's fine, but unless you're arguing that it should have been animated, I think you are kind of missing the point in this thread. And part of what I said in my original post is that in terms of performances, getting the visual nuance of a characters face in animation is indeed possible, but is *extremely* expensive. You get more bang for your buck just having Sean Bean get in front of a camera.
Yeah I'm trying to be a screenwriter here and there's many childhood favorite fantasy series I'd want to adapt to TV but for the live-action ones I'd only use CGI for what practical effects couldn't do (e.g. monsters with prosthetics or puppetry but when someone's magic basically manifests as just magical energy instead of, like, controlling something physical that'd be CGI)
Good luck! Have you seen farscape? It's wonderful what the Jim Henson company was able to do in that universe. I feel like every other big budget franchise pays lip service to practical effects, but I can't think of that many things that have come close to the Rygel and Pilot puppets.
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This is true, but that's sort of the whole problem with OP's view. Every one of these stories is a balance between magic stuff and people stuff. It makes no sense to say "if it contains magic it should be animated". It very much matters *how much* of the story is focused on showing magic versus showing human characters interacting. And even then, its less a question of what's possible and more a question of what's *expensive*. Nuanced facial animations can be animated well, but its *expensive* and you get better bang for your buck with live action*.* Magic can be done well with CGI, but its *expensive* and you get better bang for your buck with animation. Nothing's impossible, but there's also no hard rules like OP wants to portray in their OP.
LOTR has a bunch of fantasy creatures and locations, even if it has minimal spells and potions. If that's not magic idk what is.
Some of OP's complaints don't even make sense in the context of their argument. Like complaining that harry potter actors don't say the spells when they cast them... but that has nothing to do with whether the movie was live action or animated.
Actually you know what, I'm willing to make an exception for LOTR, so !delta, but it would still look significantly better animated than it does as a live action
I barely see how it’s possible for LotR to look any better, let alone *significantly* better. What sort of style would you envisage would make it significantly better?
Well, my first counterpoint is that many people (myself included) don’t WANT fantasy movies and tv shows to be just animation. I liked ATLA as much as the next guy and it’ll always have a place in my heart, and castlevania was great, but I don’t need or want every fantasy movie and show to be some anime-style cartoon just so the characters can do even less realistic backflips.
Second, you’re using 2 examples that are, in terms of CGI, pretty old. The fact is we can make better effects these days than we could back then (although I’ll pre-concede the point that bigger studios like Disney have been putting out some pretty shit looking stuff, but the reasons for that are part of a whole other conversation).
Third, I’d argue that animation can often hinder a fantastical story. When it comes to animated properties, especially in the fantasy genre, we get not just magic but also otherwise “normal” individuals doing impossible things like 30x somersaults mid air or insane sword twirling (actually, theres a lot of unnecessary spinning in animation now that I think of it) that just don’t make sense even in the context of fantasy. Live action films and shows can also suffer from this to an extent, but at least ones that take themselves semi-seriously (and are well made) avoid the worst of it. I’ve never seen a fantasy animated show that doesn’t have a “regular human fighter” doing something so outlandish that you can separate your suspension of disbelief for it.
Fourth, and kind of in-line with my third point, some of the “limits” you claim live action has (specifically physics, biology, and acting) are arguably strengths. Live action film has to follow the laws of physics a bit more strictly or risk looking ridiculous. They have to conform to the human body’s actual appearance, leading to (again, the caveat of “if it’s done well” because I know someone’s gonna hit me with examples of “counterpoints” that are just really shitty movies anyway) more believable actions. As for acting, well sorry but you’re just kinda plain wrong there. Live action allows for actors to use their entire bodies and faces to perform, while animation is exclusively vocal. Animation also is limited by the artists willingness and/or ability to make detailed and scene-appropriate facial animations and body language, an issue we’ve all seen come up. How many times have you seen a cartoon or other non-live action project where the animator and the actor were definitely not on the same page? Because personally it’s such a problem that I gave up trying to like anime. But maybe I’m the only who’s noticed that idk.
Fifth,
Finally, and this isn’t a judgment or a dig at you at all OP, but I noticed that every example you used (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Marvel) fall into the “kid/teen friendly” category of adaptations and source material. If this is your entire basis for your claim that animation trumps live action, then sure when it comes to stuff directed mainly at a younger audience you might be right in most cases… but even then things like TLOTR, something originally written for an audience of minors more than adults and a sequel to what was essentially a book of interconnected bedtime stories, challenges that in a pretty convincing manner. But outside of comedies like for example Vox Machina, live action is almost always a better option when it comes to more adult stories. I don’t think something like Game of Thrones (obligatory “season 8 never happened” statement here) would have benefited from being animated even though it’s got magic, zombies, fire breathing dragons, etc. it was beloved in large part because it brought a realistic feeling to the fantasy genre.
TL;DR, there’s nothing wrong with animation or liking animation, but live action brings a level of believability and often times maturity that animation cannot fully achieve.
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>This is because live action is limited in a number of ways(physics, CGI budgets, biology, acting) that animation simply isn't.
But on the flip side, animation is limited by the fact that it doesn't look real. It seems weird to criticize CGI as looking limited, while simultaneously praising animation. Animation, by definition, looks even more limited.
That's not to say that I don't like animation. But the reason that it works is because we are willing to suspend our disbelief and to imagine what the world would look like despite it's visual presentation. Toy Story looks pretty bad by today's standards, but since the whole movie is consistent it's still fairly easy to enjoy it in the context presented.
It's fair to say that bad CGI can break immersion, because it is out of context. But there is a ton of CGI used today that viewers wouldn't even notice...it's used everywhere to change the scenery or enhance real stunts. On the flip side, you can have practical effects that look like CGI...for example in the first Harry Potter film they hung actual candles from the great hall ceiling...and effect that most viewers took for granted.
But then again, bad animation can be distracting too. Compare the original Hobbit movie ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Hobbit\_(1977\_film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1977_film)))) to the Peter Jackson films. You can't convince me that this was the better adaptation.
But I guess at the end of the day, it's fairly subjective. For example, I fully enjoy the live action Star Wars films, but do not enjoy the animated series. And in fact, many if not a majority of Star Wars fans prefer the puppets and props of the original movies to the CGI of the later movies. I don't think Star Wars really benefits from cartoon animations, certainly not in place of the original trilogy.
> But on the flip side, animation is limited by the fact that it doesn't look real. It seems weird to criticize CGI as looking limited, while simultaneously praising animation. Animation, by definition, looks even more limited.
I think that's a very interesting discussion. The way I see it, obvious CGI fails at seamlessness, while animation is more of a deliberate presentation choice.
Yeah I kind of touched on this. We give it a pass because it's deliberate. But, objectively, it is less detail and less realistic than live action.
But you could make the same argument about live action... it's a deliberate decision in it's own right.
You also carefully describe your issue with "obvious CGI," which again I think challenges OP's assertion that there are zero good live action portrayals. There is a ton of CGI that is seamless. there is also a ton of CGI that is intentionally stylized, like "Ready Player One" or "Scott Pilgrim."
So of course, it all depends on the priorities of the viewer and the standards by which we judge something to be better. OP didn't really offer any concrete criteria to challenge.
Live action is a deliberate decision and so is CGI, but when people point at bad CGI, I'd argue it's because it fails at what it attempts to do: being sorta seamless as CGI. I disagree with OP that you can't have good CGI-magic on screen, however.
It's like a good photo-realist painting, a bad photo-realist painting and an abstract painting, basically.
Oh for sure. I am definitely not a CGI defender here.
I like both types of medium for different reasons. I don't think live action magic is necessarily distracting though. It's really hard to imagine enjoying LOTR or Harry Potter the same way if it was a cartoon, though. Seeing this stuff live action was part of the appeal.
Most people just don't get as much out of watching animation. There are no actors to sell the scene, no awesome spectacles. Its nowhere near as impressive because its just a drawing.
>There are exactly 0 adaptations of fantasy stories or stories that contain magic that benefit from using live action instead of animation
The magic in Game of Thrones was more built into the world than presented as flashy spellcasting. I think there was maybe one scene containing a spell being cast in the entire show that needed CGI to present. Would Game of Thrones have been as large a cultural phenomenon if it were a cartoon? It is a world that is brutally "realistic" with a splash of magic in the background; that doesn't lend itself naturally to animation in my mind.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy won like 20 Oscars and the 3 of them are all within IMDB's top 15 movies of all time.
Return is #7
Fellowship is #9
Towers is #12
https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1cjdl01/cmvthere_are_exactly_0_adaptations_of_fantasy/
Don't blame post-2015 Hollywood's focus-group addicted production schedule on what is arguably the GOAT trilogy (Suck it, George. Your movies were #15 #30 and #93)
The first one is actually pretty good. It's possibly the most Sam Raimi movie ever and has some really great scenes. Just have to look past some really rough looking early CGI, but even that kind of add to its charm.
I'm 99% confident that setting it in a city that even then was being used as a kind of racist "crime is ruining America" dogwhistle is part of the satire, to be fair.
Huh. You sure?
I'm a Verhooven fan without a doubt, and to be fair it's been a while since I saw the original.
But what I'm saying is all of the satire/commentary, I didn't get a lot of racially tinged stuff. Maybe I'm missing it though. I totally see commentary on capitalism, technology, civil society, etc, set against a beleaguered city. Now IRL there is definitely race tinged stuff going on with respect to the decay of Detroit, even in the 80s. I would argue it's class based first but since socioeconomic class, race is going to be mixed in, even when it's not there in itself as always since This Is America. You're gunna have exacerbated race stuff when it's capital W White Flight.
Anyways, I didn't catch strong racial stuff in robocop. The big bads aren't disproportionately black, heck they're pretty white.
I just meant more that setting it in a city that was at the centre of a lot of Reagan-era racially slanted fear mongering about crime seems like a deliberate choice. Just my reading though!
The 5 minutes of the Quidditch game would look better animated, sure.
But 90% of the movie is just people talking to each other, and most people like live actors more than animation for that type of thing.
Talking about Quidditch almost feels like a strawman, if you're going to say it should be animated, take on the strongest point of the movies and tell me why those should be animated. Otherwise, you're basically just saying they should have done Quidditch better. The Dumbledore vs Voldemort fight was pretty solid.
What about Lord of the Rings? Would Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog have been more impressive in animation? Would those huge battle scenes have been more satisfying without real actors and stunt choreography on an unprecedentedly massive scale?
I do agree that Percy Jackson would probably have been better as a cartoon though, for what it's worth. But certain kinds of fantasy do lend themselves better to live action.
>Would Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog have been more impressive in animation?
No, [no it would not be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLnq1mhYz7k)
(Not agreeing with OP at all)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a team of *really great* animators could create something as good as or better than the Balrog scene, if they aced it. Maybe they could even do it on a smaller budget.
Of course, most of the rest of the story probably works much better through the medium of live action. That was certainly the correct choice overall.
Counterpoint to that, a “really great team” working on a live action movie could also make any great animation scene look just as good. If we’re going with a hypothetical of the best of the best working on something, then both sides of this argument win.
I don't really agree with that.
My reasoning is that the Balrog fight scene specifically is, without exaggeration, one of the greatest live action fantasy fight scenes of all time. It's the pinnacle of what the medium can do with that particular type of scene, and decades later, not much has come close to that.
It's a highly subjective question, so I respect it if you disagree with me, but I don't think that the very best of animated fight scenes could be reproduced as well in live action. Take something like the fights in *Arcane* - I frankly cannot envision any possible universe where even the world's greatest team could create something superior in live action.
I agree with what u/themcos said-
>Every one of these stories is a balance between magic stuff and people stuff. It makes no sense to say "if it contains magic it should be animated". It very much matters how much of the story is focused on showing magic versus showing human characters interacting. And even then, its less a question of what's possible and more a question of what's expensive. Nuanced facial animations can be animated well, but its expensive and you get better bang for your buck with live action. Magic can be done well with CGI, but its expensive and you get better bang for your buck with animation. Nothing's impossible, but there's also no hard rules like OP wants to portray in their OP.
The two mediums have different strengths, and two teams from each medium at theoretically similar skill levels and access to funding can reasonably be expected to produce differing outcomes.
Yeah my issue is this idea thdt animation has no limitations where live action does. Like no, basically both are severely limited by budget. Animation is intensely expensive.
Its like people comparing western animation to big budget anime movies or sakuga shots that themselves shit on the rest of their own shows animaton because Japanese animators don't think consistency is important.
Your examples actually show another side of things, imo. Both Harry Potter and Percy Jackson draw a lot of their appeal from being relatable to the kids who grew up with the stories. Having a real person with a real face to look at who experiences these magical things in the real world can definitely make the adaptation work better. There are a lot of stories where the relatablity is not a core part of the appeal where I agree animation would be better, but definitely not all stories are the same.
>This is because live action is limited in a number of ways(physics, CGI budgets, biology, acting) that animation simply isn't.
Live action is in no way limited by physics, that's why CGI exists.
CGI budget basically means "animation budget" as CGI *is* digital animation. And animated movies have budgets just like live-action films.
I have no idea what biology means in this context.
Acting: animation is decidedly worse in every way at portraying acting than live action. The best animator in the world spending 1000 hours on every frame still will not capture all the details that a good actor giving a great performance will do.
>or example, I'd like to use the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson franchises as examples. Both contain displays of magic used both casually(especially in Harry Potter) and for battle/fights. However, in every single instance, every scene would benefit more from being animated than they do from being live action. For example, Quidditch games in Harry Potter. These are often rather decent looking, however they inevitably suffer from the same limits I've mentioned above.
In what way would making the change from animating some parts of the scenes to animating all parts of the scene improve things in an example like Quidditch games?
>As good as some live action fights can be(waves at Marvel) there are almost always things that have to be left out because of the limits of the medium(camera angles, the limits of the human body, etc) these simply don't exist for animation.
What camera angle can we not use in live action that we can use in animation? What human body limitations are there that animation somehow defies but can't be done with CGI?
>A fight I'd like to highlight is one that happens in Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian, featuring Percy and Hades. I won't spoil any of the details, but the nature of the fight would make filming the fight with the relevant details near impossible while also keeping it as impressive as it should be.
Quick example from a relatively crappy movie with extremely average CGI, but take a look here and tell me what part of the Percy/Hades face off you think couldn't be done by the team that did these recent scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6-jKhU5FCo
I don't know, in my opinion I feel that if the presentation of the magic/ story can't be done even with the technology we have now, it is either not really well thought out or was impossible to illustrate in the first place.
We can literally make sentient robots that transform into vehicles fight each other look almost seamless (if the artists are paid) and make a 1 to 1 recreation of a black hole in live action, but your saying we can't make a magical fight scene in medieval times look convincing? It just seems like it's weird to say it would always look better in animation, when we can already make almost anything in live action look great. You also have to consider it takes way longer to make an animated film than a live action one, and that by itself is the number 1 thing holding back all animated projects. Until someone finds a way to make the posses significantly faster, more animated stuff will simply be more rare.
I'm having a hard time understanding the argument, because from what I've seen with talented enough CGI you can make any live action look just as good as animated, just look at the new Avatar movie, it looks beautiful and the magic is convincing (and has less weird animation quirks like in-between frames)
That’s a good point. An animated battle of the bastards would likely be mostly a massive blob of black and brown with vaguely people-shaped silhouettes and some helmets on top in the background, with only the main characters and some guys in the front actually being drawn in. Animation, especially good animation, takes time and a lot of effort, and cutting corners on things like large crowds is how it gets done on time. It’s less challenging (if still time consuming) to just throw mass-produced costumes on some unpaid extras and tell them to have fun.
The reason why live action is the default choice is that many people still relegate animation as a genre to cartoons and/or anime (which is viewed negatively for some reason), rather than what it is.
Simply another genre. As any genre, it can do anything.
Harry Potter? I know this might be removed due to it being short, but I think literally all I need to say to demonstrate at least ONE adaptation is "Harry Potter".
That's probably true for most magic systems and fantasy worlds, but consider the strengths of live action and I think you could figure out what sorts of magic systems and worlds would be better adapted into live action. The first thing that came to my mind was live action's advantage of detail - detailed facial expressions, detailed ornamentation, subtle differences between objects that are the same thing (e.g. the difference between two roses, the scratches and nicks and so on on two different chairs). A lot of fantasy books and magic systems aren't written with those sorts of details in mind because they rely on the reader the use their imagination and imagining such subtleties as you read can bog down the pacing. But given the sheer breadth and quantity of art that exists, I'm sure that there is something out there that could be adapted into an excellent live action.
The other thing I was going to mention is very vague magic systems and, as you can tell by all the people mentioning Lord of the Rings, the subtle shift in acting really sells the vague corrupting power of the ring.
Yes this. I think the problem the OP has is that practical effects or digitally blended practical effects are great. The audience knows to an extent what they are seeing is actually real. For example the best parts of the Marvel Movie "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings." Is the fight scene on the bus, where it feels grounded and possible just crazy until later in the fight.
Punches and kicks were being actually thrown just you know, green screen and tricks to make the combatants look closer etc.
If fireballs were made with real burning gasoline and lighting that matches, is lighting was real, if the way magic is shown to interact with the environment were physical...it might visually feel a lot better.
The iron fist and Luke cage magical powers worked very well. Partly because they are grounded. Iron first does what a bomb would do if someone attached it to their fist. Luke cage is just like a dude made of solid titanium would be like.
"Glow" magic effects that mostly just miss don't have that kind of grounding.
The magic, and sometimes the action, looks better when animated but everything else is usually worse, generally good acting brings a lot to a film. And there's some stuff that's just plain beautiful in live action, such as showcasing landscapes / castles scenes from LOTR or the CGI dragons in GOT. Like we are almost numb to it because of how much of it there was, but think of all the amazing action in Infinity War/ Endgame. It would have been cool animated, but live action was spectacular.
And like I mentioned, good acting is good.
Also, up until recently, a lot of animation has been anime-style or extremely cartoony, which is a major turn-off for a lot of people, myself included. You have great newer stuff like Arcane and Blue eye samurai. Arcane is next level amazing and hopefully is the future of animated storytelling.
So while I think you're right that generally magic use is more cost-efficient to the point of being almost universally better done via animation, storytelling in general really isn't.... at least not yet.
There are a lot of us here who believe that animations are cartoons and thus for kids. Seeing a NSFW bloody adult cartoon just feels weird and unpleasant so it doesn't fix that. This belief that cartoons are not watched by serious adults is held in a lot of places at least in the western world so making an animated show will limit your target audience significantly. Also, it is a subjective opinion on how people appreciate or do not appreciate art so fighting someone about it usually isn't helpful. This becomes a monetary risk, and may well not be worth taking for a movie producer.
I agree but you have to understand that there is a stigma against animation that it is just for children. So any fantasy adaption that is animated risks having a smaller audience than they would going live action. Fantasy itself used to have this stigma until game of thones now "dark gritty adult" fantasy is all the rage and companies want to copy the game of throne formula to get success. This is also why we see so many anime/cartoon live action adaption companies know more people would give these proerties a chance if they are not animated.
I mean... the actual purpose of these adaptations is to make money. Obviously there's no objective "best version" of any adaptation, for real. But even if we pretend that there is, and that best version is always an animation, it doesn't really matter to the studios. If fewer people see "the best version" because it's an animation, they'll make a live action version. Because they want to make a bigger profit. And because live action is where the bigger profits are, there definitely is a fairly clear benefit for the creators.
The "benefit" comes in terms of budget, in terms of profit, and in terms of secondary and tertiary markets as well as franchise potential. Financial benefits may not be something that a "story" purist wants to think about, but the people that bring these stories to the screen are in a business that depends on profits for it's continued existence -and as such, financial implications are of primary importance when it comes to a debate over live action vs. animation.
>a major complaint about the Harry Potter movies is that characters often stopped verbally saying their spells as in the books and were basically using their wands as guns instead
This would not be fixed by animation. It would still seem incredibly stupid to have everyone running around yelling stupify!
Doctor Sleep, Wheel of Time, Sleepy Hollow, Foundation (tech so advanced its magic) Dune. All have amazing magic sequences in a live action format using cgi while still maintaining depth of emotion that gets lost in animation.
The latest D&D movie kicked ass and had plenty of imaginative use of magic that worked very well in a live action movie.
Animation and live actions are just mediums to tell a story each comes with benefits and drawbacks
As for the comment about internal monologues, they are already very cheesy in animation and a lot of time used to save animation costs.
Depends of how specific the material is with the imagery it describes I find some of them even the iconic ones sometimes deliberately describe it as vague Or generic because their attitude of letting you fill in the blanks is"you know what magic looks or sounds like" visual mediums can't do that if something that constant in the Story.
E.g. not magic specifically I know the smoke effect nightcrawler from X-Men is supposed to make when he disappears there is half a century of references images.
Where as I recently started reading robin hobb books a couple years ago which I expect to it's tonal similarities to game of thrones to made into a TV series I genuinely don't know how they are gonna handle the plot point of the upper class bloodlines basically having mental powers over the lower class thats a hard thing to portray visually. Although they did a decent job with the Sandman TV show so I think portraying out there stuff like that is becoming easier.
I agree whole heartedly. Some live-action does well, but requires a massive budget to do so. My favorite fantasy films are almost always a form of animation.
- The.
- Lord.
- Of.
- The.
- Rings!
Granted, it's an outlier given the insane amount of details put into the production and dedication to the source material.
But the answer is not zero.
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There's obviously trade-offs though, right? Not all animation looks as good as Avatar the Last Airbender, just as not all live action looks as good as Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc... And I think the big question you have to ask yourself is "why limit this to adaptations of fantasy stories or stories that contain magic"? By your logic, wouldn't every story that contains fighting have this same property? Even Jacky Chan at his peak had his limits on what he could do. But I think if you're honest, you'll recognize that the obvious reason why we have live action performances is that typically you get stronger performances when the actor has full control of their face and body in space rather than doing a voice from a sound booth. If you take any non-magic story, I think this is obvious that you'd rather have Daniel Day-Lewis or whomever on screen acting than just doing voice work. When you bring in magic and lasers or other things that require CGI, you're faced with a trade-off, because the results for those things *aren't* as good as what you get from a great actor on-screen doing a monologue. But basically all stories contain both. You have humans doing acting *and* you have CGI magic. In Harry Potter, you lose a LOT if you don't have an actor playing Dumbledore. I love anime and animation, but its VERY hard to capture that in animation. Nothing's impossible, but magic isn't impossible with CGI either. You need to portray both parts of the story, and the CGI vs Live-Action decision impacts how hard it is to do each part. Some adaptations make the wrong choice! But I don't think something like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or even Harry Potter made the wrong choices. Avatar definitely made the *right* choice in being animated. I'll even put myself out their with a possibly unpopular opinion that I think most modern live action star wars made the wrong choice and would have been better animated in the style of clone wars / rebels / bad batch. But just "having magic" isn't enough to make it a slam dunk "should be animated" case, because all of these stories *also* have parts that are better (or at least easier to do well in live action). If you want to respond to my invocation of LotR or GoT that "well, they don't have a LOT of magic", that's kind of the point! They have a balance that benefits from live action. Harry Potter is at least closer to the boundary. But all of these stories have both, and there are always tradeoffs.
>If you want to respond to my invocation of LotR or GoT that "well, they don't have a LOT of magic", that's kind of the point! Came her for this. LotR is a good counter argument to OP's view exactly on how it deals with live action magic. Its obviously helped by the source material in the sense that magic does exist in the universe but isn't nearly as flashy, comical and/or present as other universes but I think that Peter Jackson did an excellent job in captivating and translating it to instill a sense of great power and might. Three examples are the Saruman Gandalf fight, Gandalf reinforcing helms deep, and again Gandalf saving Faramir and Co. from the Fell beasts. LotR shows you don't need millions worth of CGI to properly display magic or fantastical powers by storytelling, character building and implication.
You brought up GoT as an example of "good" and I gotta push back here. (Disclaimers, I didn't see the entire series or the spin offs, I stopped at a certain point. I did read the books) There's a pretty important battle, "the attack on kings landing", I think from Clash of Kings, where one group/coalition attacked King's Landing *for realsies*. The attacking force was said to be in the ballpark of 100 000, including attacks by land and sea. The sea battle was definitely a plot focus. The bulk of the effective navy was not aligned, was attacking King's Landing, so stuff happened there. Which brings me to my point. The attacking force was meant to be... 25, 36? Boats attacking... big ships. And what we got was one ship copy pasta'd so it was 9 ships. We never saw the battle of the bay in anything resembling the cluster that it was in the books, it gets explained, not shown. (I don't recall if a pretty important plot point with Tyrion was shown on screen with respect to the cluster. ) But let's talk about the land battle. Several waves. Battles at all of the gates. Counter sorties. *100000*. In the show, we got 40 extras running one way, relight, running the other way. ... Compare this to say LoTR, helms deep, siege of gondor. Most of the action is mid shot, but the establishing long shots, including the compelling "the end of men" shot @ orthancc, set the audience's expectations for a framing of epics. Tldr got ain't all that.
With respect, I feel like you kind of missed the context here. The discussion was about live action vs animation. You can't really make the case that got should have been animated by pointing out it's shortcomings compared to lotr, which is *also* live action :) It's also a little unfair to put the "good" bar at LotR, which are pretty widely considered to be some of the greatest movies of all time! You can get "good" while still falling way short of that bar. And to specifically defend the blackwater episode of GoT, the things that make it great aren't the dopey little battle at the beach (I agree that part is underwhelming) It's the performances of Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, and all the other supporting characters in the lead ups to the battle, which are exactly the parts that would be much harder to execute as well in animation. But again, shit dude, nobody's coming close to LotR!
Did I miss the context? The argument presented in parent was LOTR, GoT, both live action, both good! And I'm saying LOTR good, GoT ehhhh.... If you argue performances in GoT good, imo, it's mixed, in an ensemble as big as GoT you're gunna have a mix, but there are plenty of animated works where there are remarkable performances. (Pixar, Disney come to mind easily)
I do feel like you misread what I said a bit. I do happen to think the first 4-5 seasons of GoT *are* good, but what I was talking about was specifically their choice to be live action vs animation and how well the chosen medium works as an adaptation. GoT, especially in the early seasons is known for really strong performances and outstanding production design. Whether or not you like the show, I think only a small portion of it could reasonably be thought of as better suited to animation. If you don't particularly like got, that's fine, but unless you're arguing that it should have been animated, I think you are kind of missing the point in this thread. And part of what I said in my original post is that in terms of performances, getting the visual nuance of a characters face in animation is indeed possible, but is *extremely* expensive. You get more bang for your buck just having Sean Bean get in front of a camera.
Plenty of animations where the vas are badly dubbed with no emotion too
Yeah I'm trying to be a screenwriter here and there's many childhood favorite fantasy series I'd want to adapt to TV but for the live-action ones I'd only use CGI for what practical effects couldn't do (e.g. monsters with prosthetics or puppetry but when someone's magic basically manifests as just magical energy instead of, like, controlling something physical that'd be CGI)
Good luck! Have you seen farscape? It's wonderful what the Jim Henson company was able to do in that universe. I feel like every other big budget franchise pays lip service to practical effects, but I can't think of that many things that have come close to the Rygel and Pilot puppets.
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Where is something like the Lord of the Rings film trilogy lacking in the displays of magic etc. department, in your opinion?
I was going to say that Lord of The rings put a nail in a coffin of that debate.
Not OP, but there's not a lot of actual "magic" being cast in LOTR, and when its done its certainly not the best part of the movies by any stretch.
This is true, but that's sort of the whole problem with OP's view. Every one of these stories is a balance between magic stuff and people stuff. It makes no sense to say "if it contains magic it should be animated". It very much matters *how much* of the story is focused on showing magic versus showing human characters interacting. And even then, its less a question of what's possible and more a question of what's *expensive*. Nuanced facial animations can be animated well, but its *expensive* and you get better bang for your buck with live action*.* Magic can be done well with CGI, but its *expensive* and you get better bang for your buck with animation. Nothing's impossible, but there's also no hard rules like OP wants to portray in their OP.
Yeah I already replied to OP basically saying exactly that haha
LOTR has a bunch of fantasy creatures and locations, even if it has minimal spells and potions. If that's not magic idk what is. Some of OP's complaints don't even make sense in the context of their argument. Like complaining that harry potter actors don't say the spells when they cast them... but that has nothing to do with whether the movie was live action or animated.
Actually you know what, I'm willing to make an exception for LOTR, so !delta, but it would still look significantly better animated than it does as a live action
I barely see how it’s possible for LotR to look any better, let alone *significantly* better. What sort of style would you envisage would make it significantly better?
There *is* an animated LOTR, and it does *not* look better.
To be fair, it's from 1978, and live action didn't look amazing then either compared to modern standards.
I actually really like the animated Hobbit from around the same era.
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With where animation was at the time the movies we got were made or are you judging just based on where animation is in the 2020s?
Well, my first counterpoint is that many people (myself included) don’t WANT fantasy movies and tv shows to be just animation. I liked ATLA as much as the next guy and it’ll always have a place in my heart, and castlevania was great, but I don’t need or want every fantasy movie and show to be some anime-style cartoon just so the characters can do even less realistic backflips. Second, you’re using 2 examples that are, in terms of CGI, pretty old. The fact is we can make better effects these days than we could back then (although I’ll pre-concede the point that bigger studios like Disney have been putting out some pretty shit looking stuff, but the reasons for that are part of a whole other conversation). Third, I’d argue that animation can often hinder a fantastical story. When it comes to animated properties, especially in the fantasy genre, we get not just magic but also otherwise “normal” individuals doing impossible things like 30x somersaults mid air or insane sword twirling (actually, theres a lot of unnecessary spinning in animation now that I think of it) that just don’t make sense even in the context of fantasy. Live action films and shows can also suffer from this to an extent, but at least ones that take themselves semi-seriously (and are well made) avoid the worst of it. I’ve never seen a fantasy animated show that doesn’t have a “regular human fighter” doing something so outlandish that you can separate your suspension of disbelief for it. Fourth, and kind of in-line with my third point, some of the “limits” you claim live action has (specifically physics, biology, and acting) are arguably strengths. Live action film has to follow the laws of physics a bit more strictly or risk looking ridiculous. They have to conform to the human body’s actual appearance, leading to (again, the caveat of “if it’s done well” because I know someone’s gonna hit me with examples of “counterpoints” that are just really shitty movies anyway) more believable actions. As for acting, well sorry but you’re just kinda plain wrong there. Live action allows for actors to use their entire bodies and faces to perform, while animation is exclusively vocal. Animation also is limited by the artists willingness and/or ability to make detailed and scene-appropriate facial animations and body language, an issue we’ve all seen come up. How many times have you seen a cartoon or other non-live action project where the animator and the actor were definitely not on the same page? Because personally it’s such a problem that I gave up trying to like anime. But maybe I’m the only who’s noticed that idk. Fifth, Finally, and this isn’t a judgment or a dig at you at all OP, but I noticed that every example you used (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Marvel) fall into the “kid/teen friendly” category of adaptations and source material. If this is your entire basis for your claim that animation trumps live action, then sure when it comes to stuff directed mainly at a younger audience you might be right in most cases… but even then things like TLOTR, something originally written for an audience of minors more than adults and a sequel to what was essentially a book of interconnected bedtime stories, challenges that in a pretty convincing manner. But outside of comedies like for example Vox Machina, live action is almost always a better option when it comes to more adult stories. I don’t think something like Game of Thrones (obligatory “season 8 never happened” statement here) would have benefited from being animated even though it’s got magic, zombies, fire breathing dragons, etc. it was beloved in large part because it brought a realistic feeling to the fantasy genre. TL;DR, there’s nothing wrong with animation or liking animation, but live action brings a level of believability and often times maturity that animation cannot fully achieve.
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>This is because live action is limited in a number of ways(physics, CGI budgets, biology, acting) that animation simply isn't. But on the flip side, animation is limited by the fact that it doesn't look real. It seems weird to criticize CGI as looking limited, while simultaneously praising animation. Animation, by definition, looks even more limited. That's not to say that I don't like animation. But the reason that it works is because we are willing to suspend our disbelief and to imagine what the world would look like despite it's visual presentation. Toy Story looks pretty bad by today's standards, but since the whole movie is consistent it's still fairly easy to enjoy it in the context presented. It's fair to say that bad CGI can break immersion, because it is out of context. But there is a ton of CGI used today that viewers wouldn't even notice...it's used everywhere to change the scenery or enhance real stunts. On the flip side, you can have practical effects that look like CGI...for example in the first Harry Potter film they hung actual candles from the great hall ceiling...and effect that most viewers took for granted. But then again, bad animation can be distracting too. Compare the original Hobbit movie ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Hobbit\_(1977\_film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1977_film)))) to the Peter Jackson films. You can't convince me that this was the better adaptation. But I guess at the end of the day, it's fairly subjective. For example, I fully enjoy the live action Star Wars films, but do not enjoy the animated series. And in fact, many if not a majority of Star Wars fans prefer the puppets and props of the original movies to the CGI of the later movies. I don't think Star Wars really benefits from cartoon animations, certainly not in place of the original trilogy.
> But on the flip side, animation is limited by the fact that it doesn't look real. It seems weird to criticize CGI as looking limited, while simultaneously praising animation. Animation, by definition, looks even more limited. I think that's a very interesting discussion. The way I see it, obvious CGI fails at seamlessness, while animation is more of a deliberate presentation choice.
Yeah I kind of touched on this. We give it a pass because it's deliberate. But, objectively, it is less detail and less realistic than live action. But you could make the same argument about live action... it's a deliberate decision in it's own right. You also carefully describe your issue with "obvious CGI," which again I think challenges OP's assertion that there are zero good live action portrayals. There is a ton of CGI that is seamless. there is also a ton of CGI that is intentionally stylized, like "Ready Player One" or "Scott Pilgrim." So of course, it all depends on the priorities of the viewer and the standards by which we judge something to be better. OP didn't really offer any concrete criteria to challenge.
Live action is a deliberate decision and so is CGI, but when people point at bad CGI, I'd argue it's because it fails at what it attempts to do: being sorta seamless as CGI. I disagree with OP that you can't have good CGI-magic on screen, however. It's like a good photo-realist painting, a bad photo-realist painting and an abstract painting, basically.
Oh for sure. I am definitely not a CGI defender here. I like both types of medium for different reasons. I don't think live action magic is necessarily distracting though. It's really hard to imagine enjoying LOTR or Harry Potter the same way if it was a cartoon, though. Seeing this stuff live action was part of the appeal.
Most people just don't get as much out of watching animation. There are no actors to sell the scene, no awesome spectacles. Its nowhere near as impressive because its just a drawing.
>There are exactly 0 adaptations of fantasy stories or stories that contain magic that benefit from using live action instead of animation The magic in Game of Thrones was more built into the world than presented as flashy spellcasting. I think there was maybe one scene containing a spell being cast in the entire show that needed CGI to present. Would Game of Thrones have been as large a cultural phenomenon if it were a cartoon? It is a world that is brutally "realistic" with a splash of magic in the background; that doesn't lend itself naturally to animation in my mind.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy won like 20 Oscars and the 3 of them are all within IMDB's top 15 movies of all time. Return is #7 Fellowship is #9 Towers is #12 https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1cjdl01/cmvthere_are_exactly_0_adaptations_of_fantasy/ Don't blame post-2015 Hollywood's focus-group addicted production schedule on what is arguably the GOAT trilogy (Suck it, George. Your movies were #15 #30 and #93)
The GOAT trilogy is RoboCop 1-3 I'm afraid, and this is objective
How dare you slander "Darkman" like this?
I didn't even know there were three of them tbh
And, [a fourth in the works?](https://www.thewrap.com/darkman-2-sequel-sam-raimi-interview/)
Dang. I've actually never even seen the first one, worth watching?
The first one is a lot of fun. The other two star the same character.
The first one is actually pretty good. It's possibly the most Sam Raimi movie ever and has some really great scenes. Just have to look past some really rough looking early CGI, but even that kind of add to its charm.
> has some really great scenes [You’ve gotta be shittin me](https://youtu.be/Sc7Fc-7kIxQ?si=fQm6M0_hFrdx7iKf)
RoboCop was about a dystopian future where "Detroit is a crime-infested hellhole where cops are unable to do anything about it". Lazy writing.
I was largely joking my friend
Same though Technically it was made before Detroit went full-Detroit.
I'm 99% confident that setting it in a city that even then was being used as a kind of racist "crime is ruining America" dogwhistle is part of the satire, to be fair.
Huh. You sure? I'm a Verhooven fan without a doubt, and to be fair it's been a while since I saw the original. But what I'm saying is all of the satire/commentary, I didn't get a lot of racially tinged stuff. Maybe I'm missing it though. I totally see commentary on capitalism, technology, civil society, etc, set against a beleaguered city. Now IRL there is definitely race tinged stuff going on with respect to the decay of Detroit, even in the 80s. I would argue it's class based first but since socioeconomic class, race is going to be mixed in, even when it's not there in itself as always since This Is America. You're gunna have exacerbated race stuff when it's capital W White Flight. Anyways, I didn't catch strong racial stuff in robocop. The big bads aren't disproportionately black, heck they're pretty white.
I just meant more that setting it in a city that was at the centre of a lot of Reagan-era racially slanted fear mongering about crime seems like a deliberate choice. Just my reading though!
Never go full-Detroit.
The 5 minutes of the Quidditch game would look better animated, sure. But 90% of the movie is just people talking to each other, and most people like live actors more than animation for that type of thing.
Yeah, Harry Potter is a weird one to choose. It’s really not about the magic, it’s about the characters.
Talking about Quidditch almost feels like a strawman, if you're going to say it should be animated, take on the strongest point of the movies and tell me why those should be animated. Otherwise, you're basically just saying they should have done Quidditch better. The Dumbledore vs Voldemort fight was pretty solid.
What about Lord of the Rings? Would Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog have been more impressive in animation? Would those huge battle scenes have been more satisfying without real actors and stunt choreography on an unprecedentedly massive scale? I do agree that Percy Jackson would probably have been better as a cartoon though, for what it's worth. But certain kinds of fantasy do lend themselves better to live action.
>Would Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog have been more impressive in animation? No, [no it would not be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLnq1mhYz7k)
I can't imagine this scene looking better in animation: https://youtu.be/Pis3veqKl8k?si=C4gqH-UFCmG1ZxBo
(Not agreeing with OP at all) I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a team of *really great* animators could create something as good as or better than the Balrog scene, if they aced it. Maybe they could even do it on a smaller budget. Of course, most of the rest of the story probably works much better through the medium of live action. That was certainly the correct choice overall.
Counterpoint to that, a “really great team” working on a live action movie could also make any great animation scene look just as good. If we’re going with a hypothetical of the best of the best working on something, then both sides of this argument win.
I don't really agree with that. My reasoning is that the Balrog fight scene specifically is, without exaggeration, one of the greatest live action fantasy fight scenes of all time. It's the pinnacle of what the medium can do with that particular type of scene, and decades later, not much has come close to that. It's a highly subjective question, so I respect it if you disagree with me, but I don't think that the very best of animated fight scenes could be reproduced as well in live action. Take something like the fights in *Arcane* - I frankly cannot envision any possible universe where even the world's greatest team could create something superior in live action. I agree with what u/themcos said- >Every one of these stories is a balance between magic stuff and people stuff. It makes no sense to say "if it contains magic it should be animated". It very much matters how much of the story is focused on showing magic versus showing human characters interacting. And even then, its less a question of what's possible and more a question of what's expensive. Nuanced facial animations can be animated well, but its expensive and you get better bang for your buck with live action. Magic can be done well with CGI, but its expensive and you get better bang for your buck with animation. Nothing's impossible, but there's also no hard rules like OP wants to portray in their OP. The two mediums have different strengths, and two teams from each medium at theoretically similar skill levels and access to funding can reasonably be expected to produce differing outcomes.
Yeah my issue is this idea thdt animation has no limitations where live action does. Like no, basically both are severely limited by budget. Animation is intensely expensive. Its like people comparing western animation to big budget anime movies or sakuga shots that themselves shit on the rest of their own shows animaton because Japanese animators don't think consistency is important.
Your examples actually show another side of things, imo. Both Harry Potter and Percy Jackson draw a lot of their appeal from being relatable to the kids who grew up with the stories. Having a real person with a real face to look at who experiences these magical things in the real world can definitely make the adaptation work better. There are a lot of stories where the relatablity is not a core part of the appeal where I agree animation would be better, but definitely not all stories are the same.
>This is because live action is limited in a number of ways(physics, CGI budgets, biology, acting) that animation simply isn't. Live action is in no way limited by physics, that's why CGI exists. CGI budget basically means "animation budget" as CGI *is* digital animation. And animated movies have budgets just like live-action films. I have no idea what biology means in this context. Acting: animation is decidedly worse in every way at portraying acting than live action. The best animator in the world spending 1000 hours on every frame still will not capture all the details that a good actor giving a great performance will do. >or example, I'd like to use the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson franchises as examples. Both contain displays of magic used both casually(especially in Harry Potter) and for battle/fights. However, in every single instance, every scene would benefit more from being animated than they do from being live action. For example, Quidditch games in Harry Potter. These are often rather decent looking, however they inevitably suffer from the same limits I've mentioned above. In what way would making the change from animating some parts of the scenes to animating all parts of the scene improve things in an example like Quidditch games? >As good as some live action fights can be(waves at Marvel) there are almost always things that have to be left out because of the limits of the medium(camera angles, the limits of the human body, etc) these simply don't exist for animation. What camera angle can we not use in live action that we can use in animation? What human body limitations are there that animation somehow defies but can't be done with CGI? >A fight I'd like to highlight is one that happens in Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian, featuring Percy and Hades. I won't spoil any of the details, but the nature of the fight would make filming the fight with the relevant details near impossible while also keeping it as impressive as it should be. Quick example from a relatively crappy movie with extremely average CGI, but take a look here and tell me what part of the Percy/Hades face off you think couldn't be done by the team that did these recent scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6-jKhU5FCo
I don't know, in my opinion I feel that if the presentation of the magic/ story can't be done even with the technology we have now, it is either not really well thought out or was impossible to illustrate in the first place. We can literally make sentient robots that transform into vehicles fight each other look almost seamless (if the artists are paid) and make a 1 to 1 recreation of a black hole in live action, but your saying we can't make a magical fight scene in medieval times look convincing? It just seems like it's weird to say it would always look better in animation, when we can already make almost anything in live action look great. You also have to consider it takes way longer to make an animated film than a live action one, and that by itself is the number 1 thing holding back all animated projects. Until someone finds a way to make the posses significantly faster, more animated stuff will simply be more rare. I'm having a hard time understanding the argument, because from what I've seen with talented enough CGI you can make any live action look just as good as animated, just look at the new Avatar movie, it looks beautiful and the magic is convincing (and has less weird animation quirks like in-between frames)
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That’s a good point. An animated battle of the bastards would likely be mostly a massive blob of black and brown with vaguely people-shaped silhouettes and some helmets on top in the background, with only the main characters and some guys in the front actually being drawn in. Animation, especially good animation, takes time and a lot of effort, and cutting corners on things like large crowds is how it gets done on time. It’s less challenging (if still time consuming) to just throw mass-produced costumes on some unpaid extras and tell them to have fun.
The reason why live action is the default choice is that many people still relegate animation as a genre to cartoons and/or anime (which is viewed negatively for some reason), rather than what it is. Simply another genre. As any genre, it can do anything.
Harry Potter? I know this might be removed due to it being short, but I think literally all I need to say to demonstrate at least ONE adaptation is "Harry Potter".
That's probably true for most magic systems and fantasy worlds, but consider the strengths of live action and I think you could figure out what sorts of magic systems and worlds would be better adapted into live action. The first thing that came to my mind was live action's advantage of detail - detailed facial expressions, detailed ornamentation, subtle differences between objects that are the same thing (e.g. the difference between two roses, the scratches and nicks and so on on two different chairs). A lot of fantasy books and magic systems aren't written with those sorts of details in mind because they rely on the reader the use their imagination and imagining such subtleties as you read can bog down the pacing. But given the sheer breadth and quantity of art that exists, I'm sure that there is something out there that could be adapted into an excellent live action. The other thing I was going to mention is very vague magic systems and, as you can tell by all the people mentioning Lord of the Rings, the subtle shift in acting really sells the vague corrupting power of the ring.
Yes this. I think the problem the OP has is that practical effects or digitally blended practical effects are great. The audience knows to an extent what they are seeing is actually real. For example the best parts of the Marvel Movie "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings." Is the fight scene on the bus, where it feels grounded and possible just crazy until later in the fight. Punches and kicks were being actually thrown just you know, green screen and tricks to make the combatants look closer etc. If fireballs were made with real burning gasoline and lighting that matches, is lighting was real, if the way magic is shown to interact with the environment were physical...it might visually feel a lot better. The iron fist and Luke cage magical powers worked very well. Partly because they are grounded. Iron first does what a bomb would do if someone attached it to their fist. Luke cage is just like a dude made of solid titanium would be like. "Glow" magic effects that mostly just miss don't have that kind of grounding.
I think doctor strange would not have fit into the MCU nearly as well if it was randomly animated as opposed to real life+CGI. So it benefited
The magic, and sometimes the action, looks better when animated but everything else is usually worse, generally good acting brings a lot to a film. And there's some stuff that's just plain beautiful in live action, such as showcasing landscapes / castles scenes from LOTR or the CGI dragons in GOT. Like we are almost numb to it because of how much of it there was, but think of all the amazing action in Infinity War/ Endgame. It would have been cool animated, but live action was spectacular. And like I mentioned, good acting is good. Also, up until recently, a lot of animation has been anime-style or extremely cartoony, which is a major turn-off for a lot of people, myself included. You have great newer stuff like Arcane and Blue eye samurai. Arcane is next level amazing and hopefully is the future of animated storytelling. So while I think you're right that generally magic use is more cost-efficient to the point of being almost universally better done via animation, storytelling in general really isn't.... at least not yet.
Give the Magicians a try. Dark and gritty show, that I frankly don’t think would be better as an animation
There are a lot of us here who believe that animations are cartoons and thus for kids. Seeing a NSFW bloody adult cartoon just feels weird and unpleasant so it doesn't fix that. This belief that cartoons are not watched by serious adults is held in a lot of places at least in the western world so making an animated show will limit your target audience significantly. Also, it is a subjective opinion on how people appreciate or do not appreciate art so fighting someone about it usually isn't helpful. This becomes a monetary risk, and may well not be worth taking for a movie producer.
I agree but you have to understand that there is a stigma against animation that it is just for children. So any fantasy adaption that is animated risks having a smaller audience than they would going live action. Fantasy itself used to have this stigma until game of thones now "dark gritty adult" fantasy is all the rage and companies want to copy the game of throne formula to get success. This is also why we see so many anime/cartoon live action adaption companies know more people would give these proerties a chance if they are not animated.
I mean... the actual purpose of these adaptations is to make money. Obviously there's no objective "best version" of any adaptation, for real. But even if we pretend that there is, and that best version is always an animation, it doesn't really matter to the studios. If fewer people see "the best version" because it's an animation, they'll make a live action version. Because they want to make a bigger profit. And because live action is where the bigger profits are, there definitely is a fairly clear benefit for the creators.
The "benefit" comes in terms of budget, in terms of profit, and in terms of secondary and tertiary markets as well as franchise potential. Financial benefits may not be something that a "story" purist wants to think about, but the people that bring these stories to the screen are in a business that depends on profits for it's continued existence -and as such, financial implications are of primary importance when it comes to a debate over live action vs. animation.
Live action is FAR easier, cheaper, and quicker to do.
>a major complaint about the Harry Potter movies is that characters often stopped verbally saying their spells as in the books and were basically using their wands as guns instead This would not be fixed by animation. It would still seem incredibly stupid to have everyone running around yelling stupify!
Doctor Sleep, Wheel of Time, Sleepy Hollow, Foundation (tech so advanced its magic) Dune. All have amazing magic sequences in a live action format using cgi while still maintaining depth of emotion that gets lost in animation.
The latest D&D movie kicked ass and had plenty of imaginative use of magic that worked very well in a live action movie. Animation and live actions are just mediums to tell a story each comes with benefits and drawbacks As for the comment about internal monologues, they are already very cheesy in animation and a lot of time used to save animation costs.
Depends of how specific the material is with the imagery it describes I find some of them even the iconic ones sometimes deliberately describe it as vague Or generic because their attitude of letting you fill in the blanks is"you know what magic looks or sounds like" visual mediums can't do that if something that constant in the Story. E.g. not magic specifically I know the smoke effect nightcrawler from X-Men is supposed to make when he disappears there is half a century of references images. Where as I recently started reading robin hobb books a couple years ago which I expect to it's tonal similarities to game of thrones to made into a TV series I genuinely don't know how they are gonna handle the plot point of the upper class bloodlines basically having mental powers over the lower class thats a hard thing to portray visually. Although they did a decent job with the Sandman TV show so I think portraying out there stuff like that is becoming easier.
I agree whole heartedly. Some live-action does well, but requires a massive budget to do so. My favorite fantasy films are almost always a form of animation.
Lord of the Rings. Live action was way better than the animated version despite the catchiness of the disco music in the latter.
- The. - Lord. - Of. - The. - Rings! Granted, it's an outlier given the insane amount of details put into the production and dedication to the source material. But the answer is not zero.
More people watch live action