Films that look cheaper than they are

[George White]

Tried looking at Miracle at St. Anna  by Spike Lee, which apparently cost 45 million dollars.
Yet looks like an Asylum film.


That recent Robin Hood looks like a TV pilot, but cost 100 million dollars.

[Sin Agog]

The Hobbits looked about ten times cheaper than those other films made a decade earlier.  In unrelated news, their catering was to die for.

[samadriel]

I thought The Usual Suspects looked really cheap, it got in the way of me enjoying it.

[Brundle-Fly]

The cave sets at the end of Bone Tomahawk (2015) looked like they were borrowed from some 1970's Amicus Doug McClure adventure yarn.

[chveik]

Noah cost 362 millions and it looks like a dtv

[Neomod]

I've seen it countless times and that's no matter how expensive the budget is, films often skimp on really shit photoshopped photos. This usually happens when they need a group photo of the protagonists at a younger age.

Exhibit A.



Book Club. A 2018 film. (Budget $10 million)

It always grates.

[Brundle-Fly]

My favourite example of that is in the UK soaps when characters look at old photos that are clearly sourced from The Spotlight or cut out from an old copy of the TV Times.

[Dex Sawash]

The cave sets at the end of Bone Tomahawk (2015) looked like they were borrowed from some 1970's Amicus Doug McClure adventure yarn.

I thought 1970s Land of the Lost TV set

[Sin Agog]

I've seen it countless times and that's no matter how expensive the budget is, films often skimp on really shit photoshopped photos. This usually happens when they need a group photo of the protagonists at a younger age.

Exhibit A.



Book Club. A 2018 film. (Budget $10 million)

It always grates.

I think they blew the budget coming up with that great Herzog line where Diane Keaton referred to her vagina as 'The Cave of Forgotten Dreams.'

[gib]

I thought 1970s Land of the Lost TV set

or original Star Trek

[Mister Six]

I don't know how much it cost, but Inland Empire looks like it was shot on your nan's second-hand camcorder. I know it was the early days of digital video, but Jesus Christ.

[Mister Six]

Also the CGI in the $200 million blockbuster Black Panther looks like it came from a mid-range PS3 cutscene. Baffling - surely it had the same resources as all the other, visually superior Marvel movies?

[biggytitbo]

Total recall is the obvious one, although I think I read somewhere that Verhoven wanted it to look cheap on purpose, to give it a feel of stagey unreality.

[St_Eddie]

I've seen it countless times and that's no matter how expensive the budget is, films often skimp on really shit photoshopped photos. This usually happens when they need a group photo of the protagonists at a younger age.

On that note, I hate it when sequels use a publicity photo from one of the prior movies.  For example,  Denholm Elliott and Sean Connery's photographs in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...

Denholm Elliot's photo is quite clearly taken from his scene set in Hatay, from The Last Crusade.  Check out the extras in full-on Syrian wardrobe behind Marcus.  I think that you can even see the train in the background...

As for Sean Connery's photo; naturally Henry Jones Sr. just happens to be wearing his exact outfit from The Last Crusade but more to the point, in the reality of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, who the fuck would pose for a casual photo in that manner?!  That pose just screams "my name is Sean Connery and I'm posing for a publicity photo".

The recent (and appallingly bad) The Predator also had a similar issue; the covert photo of the titular creature from the original movie, as shown to the protagonist, is a direct still from Arnie's showdown at the end of the movie!  Huh, I guess that Dutch must have been taking snaps of the creature whenever he was off-camera.  Absolutely pathetic.

[Replies From View]

The recent (and appallingly bad) The Predator also had a similar issue; the covert photo of the titular creature from the original movie, as shown to the protagonist, is a direct still from Arnie's showdown at the end of the movie!  I guess that Dutch must have been taking snaps of the creature whenever he was off-camera.

I think The Fly II has something similar.  In the first film, Seth Brundle films himself undergoing his transformative process into a common or garden house fly.  If I'm not mistaken it's not only this footage that characters in the sequel have access to in order to study what happened, but footage from the film that couldn't possibly exist in-universe.

This is quite off-topic isn't it.  Sorry!

[Brundle-Fly]

It would have been better if the art department used these framed pictures instead.

[Replies From View]

Exhibit A.

That's bonkers.  They've given her head an impossible relationship to her own body in order to not conceal the book behind her.

[St_Eddie]

I think The Fly II has something similar.  In the first film, Seth Brundle films himself undergoing his transformative process into a common or garden house fly.  If I'm not mistaken it's not only this footage that characters in the sequel have access to in order to study what happened, but footage from the film that couldn't possibly exist in-universe.

You're actually wrong on this one, or at least I think that you are.  The footage of his Father, that Martin Brundle views around the halfway mark, is of one of Seth Brundle's video journals (which he was shown to be making in the first film).  It makes perfect sense that Bartok industries (who funded Seth's teleportation project in the first film and hired his Son to continue his work in the sequel) would have access to his video diaries.  I don't recall there being any other footage of Seth, or of the first film in general, being used in the sequel.  Happy to be proven wrong though!

FUN FACT: The director of the sequel, Chris Walas, was actually quite clever because he used footage which was recorded for the original film but never used in the final cut.  Therefore, to the uninitiated, it may appear as though they actually managed to get Jeff Goldblum to film a brief cameo for the sequel.

[colacentral]

I don't know how much it cost, but Inland Empire looks like it was shot on your nan's second-hand camcorder. I know it was the early days of digital video, but Jesus Christ.

To be fair it's no accident, and it's not like it was a major studio which was trying to make something look good - it was Lynch pissing about with his own camcorder. He usually mentions the type of camera it is when talking about the film, insinuating that he knows it looks bad. I think he likes it though. I do too, to be honest - it's initially off-putting but I find that as you get into the film it works to its advantage - the idea of the film being a facade, Laura Dern getting up at the end, the dancing sequence etc; I think the shitty picture works with that story.

[Replies From View]

You're actually wrong on this one, or at least I think that you are.  The footage of his Father, that Martin Brundle views around the halfway mark, is of one of Seth Brundle's video journals (which he was shown to be making in the first film).  It makes perfect sense that Bartok industries (who funded Seth's teleportation project in the first film and hired his Son to continue his work in the sequel) would have access to his video diaries.  I don't recall there being any other footage of Seth, or of the first film in general, being used in the sequel.  Happy to be proven wrong though!

Problem is I'm in no hurry to watch that film again.  In this situation I suggest we assume that I am right and move on.

[St_Eddie]

...I suggest we assume that I am right and move on.

Never suggest, it makes a sug out of ges and t.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It makes a Suggs out of ET.

[George White]

That's bonkers.  They've given her head an impossible relationship to her own body in order to not conceal the book behind her.

Plus the photos are also from different eras. Time After Time-era Steenburgen, early 70s Bergen.

[kidsick5000]

Licence To Kill aka the James Bond TV Movie

[St_Eddie]

It makes a Suggs out of ET.

That sentence is downright alien in its madness.

[George White]

Licence To Kill aka the James Bond TV Movie

Well, you know why that is.
MGM/UA at that point were about to be  bought by Qintex/Robert Halmi, the king of 80s/90s TV movies, head of Hallmark channel. But then the deal fell through shortly after the agreement was made.

[greenman]

That recent Robin Hood looks like a TV pilot, but cost 100 million dollars.

The Guy Ritchie formula were 50% of the budget is spent on coke for all involved?

[Replies From View]

Plus the photos are also from different eras. Time After Time-era Steenburgen, early 70s Bergen.

I wish I was good at photoshop as I'd especially love to put together some old snapshots of Sigourney Weaver and Katharine Hepburn at primary school together, and things.

[Sin Agog]

I wish I was good at photoshop as I'd especially love to put together some old snapshots of Sigourney Weaver and Katharine Hepburn at primary school together, and things.

But they didn't go to primary school together.  That would be lying.

[Mister Six]

To be fair it's no accident, and it's not like it was a major studio which was trying to make something look good - it was Lynch pissing about with his own camcorder.

It's not though, is it? It had funding from Studio Canal and a proper cast and crew. It might have been shot on a shoestring budget, but it was a proper film and it doesn't look like it. The lighting and (particularly) the sound give it an air of a student film, and not a good one.