Captain Marvel Super Saiyan effect

[Professor Freeza]

With the new trailer, I guess it's proven that the tech is there to make a realistic super saiyan effect and ki blast battles.

[Robo4900]

I mean, it's probably been possible since at least 1999 -- say what you will about the movie itself, Phantom Menace was a masterpiece of effects work. Go back and watch that movie with the isolated score track on, and just appreciate some of John Williams' best work with arguably the best-aged special effects work of the '90s. And if you could render battle droids, space ships, etc. that fit seamlessly with the actors in a scene, with most of the scene being a model that the fairly minimal main set has been composited onto...
Well... I think putting some nice-looking energy blasts would make this all look easy.

So, long as you have a good production designer who has a vision of some really good ki effects in his head to put to screen, it could have looked amazing any time the past couple of decades. But, the only time it's been attempted with Dragon Ball was, of course, a film assembled with only the vaguest idea of what Dragon Ball is, for which the screenwriter at one point apologised to Dragon Ball fans for his work on it...

I think nowadays, effects that could create good ki attacks and such would be not just possible, but -- in comparison to the kinds of effects that often go into tentpole franchises like Star Wars or Marvel -- perhaps even rather easy for a modern major motion picture.

(... "I am the very model of a modern picture film, I've exposition, characters and maybe franchise potential...")

[KBABZ]

Personally I don't think it looks anything like the usual ki blast. They're way too over-detailed and wispy for that. IMO the ki blasts always felt more like liquid plasma moving so fast it appears quite rigid, and as such appears as one solid "mass". Not the "a billion AfterEffects plugs-ins at once" look in Captain Marvel.

[Robo4900]

Personally I don't think it looks anything like the usual ki blast. They're way too over-detailed and wispy for that. IMO the ki blasts always felt more like liquid plasma moving so fast it appears quite rigid, and as such appears as one solid "mass". Not the "a billion AfterEffects plugs-ins at once" look in Captain Marvel.

That kind of effect has been done. At least a few instances of the various different renderings of magic in the Harry Potter films look pretty close.

[DragonBallFoodie]

But ki auras and blasts are easy to do these days.

Still, Marvel has the budget to do DB-style battles.

[Kunzait_83]

I mean, it's probably been possible since at least 1999 -- say what you will about the movie itself, Phantom Menace was a masterpiece of effects work.

The first major Wuxia film to heavily utilize CGI for its Ki/Chi battle effects was Storm Riders in 1998, a year prior to TPM.

Spoiler:

Prior to that, Wuxia films managed to convey Ki/Chi effects perfectly fine with rotoscoping effects (the same technique used to create the original Star Wars trilogy's lightsaber and blaster effects). In fact, they've used rotoscoping to create Ki/Chi blasts since the black and white silent film serials of the 1920s.

Spoiler:

More broadly than that though... the initial conceit of this whole thread (and really, that of just about all other similar-such threads within the whole "live action DBZ movie" subgenre of forum threads) is - and I'm sorry that there's no nicer way to say this - just absurdly stupid on its face. Yes, only NOW in 2018, with the newest trailer for the 95th Marvel movie, are we ABSOLUTELY certain that just MAYBE the visual effects to create Ki blasts and auras for a live action visual effects-heavy DB movie MIGHT somehow be possible.

At this point, I'm starting to genuinely wonder if most of the people who make all of these "OGM, can the effects for a proper live action DBZ film's fights actually be accomplished?! Do we have the technology for it?!" threads are participating in some sort of elaborate form of trolling performance art or something.

The idea that creating convincing visual effects for Ki blast-heavy mystical martial arts fights is some tremendously difficult or barely-surmountable mountain of a challenge for a big budget major film studio to climb would have been a ridiculous concern back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s (where Wuxia films featuring such fights were cranked out in a pre-CGI world with immense regularity), much less in the post-Matrix, post-Star Wars prequels, post-Lord of the Rings, post-War of the Worlds, post-Sin City, post-300, post-Pan's Labyrinth, post-Pirates of the Caribbean, post-Minority Report, post-Bayformers, post-Avatar, post-Inception, post-Benjamin Button, post-MCU, post-Andy Serkis' Whole Fucking Career world of 2018, where even a low-budget independent film can probably create the suitable effects just fine on a laptop in someone's bedroom.

Half-serious question: do the people who create and post their doubts and concerns in these types of threads actually ever watch ANY movies at all? Any of y'all own something called Netflix, or a Blu Ray or DVD player? I mean, I'm fairly sure most of you saw Iron Man flying around New York City Repulsor blasting away at aliens coming out of a portal in the sky in the first Avengers movie back in 2012: something like that might clue you in that from a sheer technological standpoint, crafting the effects necessary for Ki auras and blasts for a live action Dragon Ball movie is probably not much of a hurdle at this stage.

[Polyphase Avatron]

where even a low-budget independent film can probably create the suitable effects just fine on a laptop in someone's bedroom.

I've seen DBZ fan films with convincing effects.

[KBABZ]

Funnily enough the simplicity of the rotoscoped ki effects look way more faithful to Dragon Ball than what Evolution tried to do, probably because Dragon Ball itself uses that sort of thing in the anime to get those awesome glows. Captain Marvel is probably getting people's attention because of the "hair floating up" thing, as well as that final shot of firing energy beams in space.

Kunzait of course is right, and it's well worth noting that there are a bunch of other factors that can influence what an effect looks like. For example, all three big picture depictions of The Hulk (Hulk, Incredible, and the rest of the MCU) were ALL done by Industrial Light & Magic, but the difference in directors results in very different depictions of the character.

To me the main factor behind a live-action Dragon Ball movie is not just the VFX themselves but the way it's all strung together in the edit. I remember seeing Kotaku pimp a DBZ fan-film a while back saying it's "better than Hollywood", but I heavily disagreed because the characters were just floating in-fame while they go a hundred miles an hour over a repeating landscape. The types of fights you see in Dragon Ball are incredibly difficult to pull off in a live-action setting because it's inherently ridiculous. This extends to the look as well: Evolution showed us that Goku's hair just doesn't work in live-action, and the stylization of the way the story is told through Toriyama's hand and its imitators (from Maeda to Toyotaro) is inherently part of the DNA and the charm. You can't just remove that and expect it to still feel like DBZ.

This is also why live-action versions of other anime like Sailor Moon and Attack on Titan and Parasyte never work. They just don't look like the original product, and in anime, how it looks is an enormous part of the charm. You're better off just sticking to 2D animation because that automatically gives it the seal of approval from an aesthetics standpoint (see: Curse of the Blood Rubies, Path to Power).

[Robo4900]

Prior to that, Wuxia films managed to convey Ki/Chi effects perfectly fine with rotoscoping effects (the same technique used to create the original Star Wars trilogy's lightsaber and blaster effects). In fact, they've used rotoscoping to create Ki/Chi blasts since the black and white silent film serials of the 1920s.

Yes, that thought did occur to me, but I assumed we were talking CG here.

More broadly than that though... the initial conceit of this whole thread (and really, that of just about all other similar-such threads within the whole "live action DBZ movie" subgenre of forum threads) is - and I'm sorry that there's no nicer way to say this - just absurdly stupid on its face. Yes, only NOW in 2018, with the newest trailer for the 95th Marvel movie, are we ABSOLUTELY certain that just MAYBE the visual effects to create Ki blasts and auras for a live action visual effects-heavy DB movie MIGHT somehow be possible.

At this point, I'm starting to genuinely wonder if most of the people who make all of these "OGM, can the effects for a proper live action DBZ film's fights actually be accomplished?! Do we have the technology for it?!" threads are participating in some sort of elaborate form of trolling performance art or something.

The idea that creating convincing visual effects for Ki blast-heavy mystical martial arts fights is some tremendously difficult or barely-surmountable mountain of a challenge for a big budget major film studio to climb would have been a ridiculous concern back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s (where Wuxia films featuring such fights were cranked out in a pre-CGI world with immense regularity), much less in the post-Matrix, post-Star Wars prequels, post-Lord of the Rings, post-War of the Worlds, post-Sin City, post-300, post-Pan's Labyrinth, post-Pirates of the Caribbean, post-Minority Report, post-Bayformers, post-Avatar, post-Inception, post-Benjamin Button, post-MCU, post-Andy Serkis' Whole Fucking Career world of 2018, where even a low-budget independent film can probably create the suitable effects just fine on a laptop in someone's bedroom.

Half-serious question: do the people who create and post their doubts and concerns in these types of threads actually ever watch ANY movies at all? Any of y'all own something called Netflix, or a Blu Ray or DVD player? I mean, I'm fairly sure most of you saw Iron Man flying around New York City Repulsor blasting away at aliens coming out of a portal in the sky in the first Avengers movie back in 2012: something like that might clue you in that from a sheer technological standpoint, crafting the effects necessary for Ki auras and blasts for a live action Dragon Ball movie is probably not much of a hurdle at this stage.

Heh. Y'know, I'm with you, though I don't quite share your frustration. I'm more amused than anything else, if I'm honest.

To me the main factor behind a live-action Dragon Ball movie is not just the VFX themselves but the way it's all strung together in the edit. I remember seeing Kotaku pimp a DBZ fan-film a while back saying it's "better than Hollywood", but I heavily disagreed because the characters were just floating in-fame while they go a hundred miles an hour over a repeating landscape. The types of fights you see in Dragon Ball are incredibly difficult to pull off in a live-action setting because it's inherently ridiculous. This extends to the look as well: Evolution showed us that Goku's hair just doesn't work in live-action, and the stylization of the way the story is told through Toriyama's hand and its imitators (from Maeda to Toyotaro) is inherently part of the DNA and the charm. You can't just remove that and expect it to still feel like DBZ.

This is also why live-action versions of other anime like Sailor Moon and Attack on Titan and Parasyte never work. They just don't look like the original product, and in anime, how it looks is an enormous part of the charm. You're better off just sticking to 2D animation because that automatically gives it the seal of approval from an aesthetics standpoint (see: Curse of the Blood Rubies, Path to Power).

Y'see, my view is that the main factor in what would make a Dragon Ball movie is simply a proper, rounded understanding of what a Dragon Ball movie should be among the producers, writers etc. As in... Not that weird nebulous idea loads of people have of "Zack Snyder makes something like Man Of Steel but wish-granting orbs", which would give us a forgettable, dark, generic/commercial action movie, albeit one that vaguely fits in with the American pop cultural osmosis idea of what Dragon Ball Z kind of is.
The thing that tends to go wrong about anime movies right now is kind of exactly this, though... They make forgettable, generic/commercial action movies that vaguely fit in with the American pop cultural osmosis idea of what it kind of is. Ghost In The Shell, Dragonball: Evolution, etc. The way to make a good Dragon Ball movie is to make it a damn Dragon Ball movie, not just some generic blockbuster that's been Hollywooded to death at best, or created with no real idea of the source material from the beginning at worst. The key to Marvel's success in making comic book movies that many others have failed to grasp is that they play into what makes Marvel, and its individual sub-franchises, unique, what gives it its identity. Combine that with good writing, and always going for creatives with a distinct vision, and you get great movies.
So... To make a good Dragon Ball movie, you have to make it a Dragon Ball movie, not just some generic action movie in Dragon Ball skin.

What I'm trying to get at is, the effects don't really matter so much as the writing and the direction. Even if the visuals aren't exactly right, as long as it's an authentically Dragon Ball movie, it won't really matter... Though arguably if they do it right, this won't be something they have to worry about that much, at least at first. If they did started us off right right, as in something akin to Path To Power or the '80s OG DB trilogy, it wouldn't be loaded up with ki attacks, even if they are a staple of a few of the key action scenes.

[KBABZ]

The thing that tends to go wrong about anime movies right now is kind of exactly this, though...

Oh I was talking to the homegrown stuff, like Parasyte. There's just something about the visual depiction of it that makes it not work in live-action for me.

Considering all the above and the fact that we're getting theatrically-released animated Dragon Ball movies now, there's literally no reason to have a live-action Dragon Ball movie get made. It's nothing but a barrel of negatives just so you can say "We tried to do it in live-action! Again!".

[Robo4900]

Oh I was talking to the homegrown stuff, like Parasyte. There's just something about the visual depiction of it that makes it not work in live-action for me.

Considering all the above and the fact that we're getting theatrically-released animated Dragon Ball movies now, there's literally no reason to have a live-action Dragon Ball movie get made. It's nothing but a barrel of negatives just so you can say "We tried to do it in live-action! Again!".

I object to this logic, because it implies the only thing brought to the table by a movie would be literally just the fact it's done with cameras and physical actors. If that's the case, the Harry Potter movies would bring nothing to the table, the Marvel movies would bring nothing to the table, etc... What a good Dragon Ball movie would bring to the table would be in the performances, the exact nature of the adaptation, the music, the unique visual style they choose to present it in, etc...

And just because a few homegrown efforts have ended up doing it wrong doesn't mean everyone will. Again, look at Marvel... Their movies aren't just bringing to the table the fact they are live action movies, otherwise they'd be bringing nothing new compared to previous adaptations; I don't like Spider-Man Homecoming because it does what the '90s cartoon or Spectacular did but in live action, I like it because of the performances, the exact nature of its adaptation of the characters and stories, its music, its particular visual style, etc. etc.

[MasenkoHA]

; I don't like Spider-Man Homecoming because it does what the '90s cartoon or Spectacular did but in live action, I like it because of the performances, the exact nature of its adaptation of the characters and stories, its music, its particular visual style, etc. etc.

The best part of Spider-man:Homecoming was it wasn’t terrible like the previous five attempts by Sony.

And people can come at me Raimi’s Spider-man 1 and 2 were both terrible

[Soppa Saia People]

; I don't like Spider-Man Homecoming because it does what the '90s cartoon or Spectacular did but in live action, I like it because of the performances, the exact nature of its adaptation of the characters and stories, its music, its particular visual style, etc. etc.

The best part of Spider-man:Homecoming was it wasn’t terrible like the previous five attempts by Sony.

And people can come at me Raimi’s Spider-man 1 and 2 were both terrible

yea none of them really hold up, though I find the first pretty interesting because it's a pretty decent time capsule of popular films in the very late 90s and early aughts, just with a lot of the editing, colors, and shot construction.

Hannibal Burress in homecoming was like the best part btw, he's a national treasure.

[Robo4900]

And people can come at me Raimi’s Spider-man 1 and 2 were both terrible

You are entitled to your opinion, and I don't think this is the time or place to argue about Raimi's Spider-Man films, but I will say I find the manner you choose to present this opinion rather irksome. Given the films are generally quite well-liked, this is at best baiting disagreement with an unpopular opinion about two very popular movies, which seems like a pointless exercise in this case.

And it's not because I disagree with you that it's a pointless exercise, it's a pointless exercise because you've offered no insight by saying they're terrible. If you want to say "It's terrible because of X", then this is probably negated, since presumably X would be some insight, but this is not what you are doing here.

So... What I'm trying to say here is, please don't criticise something if you're not going to offer some insight about it. It's a massive pet peeve of mine, and I'm sure I'm not alone in finding it endlessly frustrating in online discourse in general. Plus, you kind of totally ignored everything I was talking about in my post to do this, which is extremely annoying.

[ABED]

There are some live action adaptations I enjoy, but by and large, I don't have a desire to see cartoons in live action, especially if they are very cartoony (Speed Racer). What's the point? 20 years ago I would've said "hell yeah!" Not as a 33 year old man. I don't think the same applies to US superhero comics. While it might seem funny to say it, they are more grounded than DB, and lend themselves to live action adaptations more.

For a while I thought it might be difficult to do well and look good, the look of DB isn't my biggest issue. I've been a fan of DB for 25 years and only since joining this forum do I think I've got a good enough grasp on what DB is at its core. I don't trust Hollywood to understand that, even if the writer or director was a superfan.

[Professor Freeza]

I mean, it's probably been possible since at least 1999 -- say what you will about the movie itself, Phantom Menace was a masterpiece of effects work.

The first major Wuxia film to heavily utilize CGI for its Ki/Chi battle effects was Storm Riders in 1998, a year prior to TPM.

Spoiler:

Prior to that, Wuxia films managed to convey Ki/Chi effects perfectly fine with rotoscoping effects (the same technique used to create the original Star Wars trilogy's lightsaber and blaster effects). In fact, they've used rotoscoping to create Ki/Chi blasts since the black and white silent film serials of the 1920s.

Spoiler:

More broadly than that though... the initial conceit of this whole thread (and really, that of just about all other similar-such threads within the whole "live action DBZ movie" subgenre of forum threads) is - and I'm sorry that there's no nicer way to say this - just absurdly stupid on its face. Yes, only NOW in 2018, with the newest trailer for the 95th Marvel movie, are we ABSOLUTELY certain that just MAYBE the visual effects to create Ki blasts and auras for a live action visual effects-heavy DB movie MIGHT somehow be possible.

At this point, I'm starting to genuinely wonder if most of the people who make all of these "OGM, can the effects for a proper live action DBZ film's fights actually be accomplished?! Do we have the technology for it?!" threads are participating in some sort of elaborate form of trolling performance art or something.

The idea that creating convincing visual effects for Ki blast-heavy mystical martial arts fights is some tremendously difficult or barely-surmountable mountain of a challenge for a big budget major film studio to climb would have been a ridiculous concern back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s (where Wuxia films featuring such fights were cranked out in a pre-CGI world with immense regularity), much less in the post-Matrix, post-Star Wars prequels, post-Lord of the Rings, post-War of the Worlds, post-Sin City, post-300, post-Pan's Labyrinth, post-Pirates of the Caribbean, post-Minority Report, post-Bayformers, post-Avatar, post-Inception, post-Benjamin Button, post-MCU, post-Andy Serkis' Whole Fucking Career world of 2018, where even a low-budget independent film can probably create the suitable effects just fine on a laptop in someone's bedroom.

Half-serious question: do the people who create and post their doubts and concerns in these types of threads actually ever watch ANY movies at all? Any of y'all own something called Netflix, or a Blu Ray or DVD player? I mean, I'm fairly sure most of you saw Iron Man flying around New York City Repulsor blasting away at aliens coming out of a portal in the sky in the first Avengers movie back in 2012: something like that might clue you in that from a sheer technological standpoint, crafting the effects necessary for Ki auras and blasts for a live action Dragon Ball movie is probably not much of a hurdle at this stage.

See here's the thing. Not everyone see or even know that such F grade Wuxia shit is there. The one chinese movie i tried to watch was supposedly one of the greatest [The old Karate Kid].

So keep that BS to yourself.

[Robo4900]

See here's the thing. Not everyone see or even know that such F grade Wuxia shit is there. The one chinese movie i tried to watch was supposedly one of the greatest [The old Karate Kid].

So keep that BS to yourself.

You don't like the movies Kunzait refers to, therefore the special effects work within them that Kunzait talks about is irrelevant to the discussion?

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

See here's the thing. Not everyone see or even know that such F grade Wuxia shit is there. The one chinese movie i tried to watch was supposedly one of the greatest [The old Karate Kid].

So keep that BS to yourself.

First of all, just because most people haven't seem or heard about Wuxia movies does NOT mean it is impossible to do "Dragon Ball"-like ki and energy effects as the Wuxia movies have been demostrating it's totally possible (and as Kunzait mentioned, it has been possible since pre-CG era).

And second, Karate Kid (1984) is an american movie.

[Kunzait_83]

The one chinese movie i tried to watch was supposedly one of the greatest [The old Karate Kid].

Thread over guys. Hell, close down the entire damn forums in general. Its never getting any better than this.

[MasenkoHA]

See here's the thing. Not everyone see or even know that such F grade Wuxia shit is there. The one chinese movie i tried to watch was supposedly one of the greatest [The old Karate Kid].

So keep that BS to yourself.

For my own sanity I’m gonna assume you were making a joke. Like when people say Corey in the House is their favorite anime.