Crappy Green Screen: A Burgeoning Problem

Although I didn’t review it for this site, I watched the movie Allied when it came out.  And something bothered me about the movie.  Namely, shitty green screening in places where it really shouldn’t be. It caught my eye almost immediately.

Brad Pitt parachutes into the Moroccan desert, complete with PS1 graphics switching from ‘real’ to ‘CGI’. But that was only the beginning, because while such a stunt might warrant such effects, Pitt then quickly got into a car.

And the shitty green screening continued.  Right throughout the movie.  Later this month the movie is released on Blu-Ray and this week a new behind the scenes clip has been released, which shows the extent of the effects abuse (I think that’s a good word to describe it).  I can’t embed the video, but you should check out CinemaBlend’s video to see how much it’s used.

White House Down (2013), an extreme offender

Like Independence Day: Resurgence or In the Heart of the Sea, Allied is a movie that tries to cut corners on visual effects and just totally weighs the movie down and takes you out of the moment, the opposite of the intention.  Suddenly, French Morocco becomes less atmospheric and borderline cringe.

In fact with movies like these, after noticing crude back screening for exterior shots and even side streets two or three times, your mind starts looking for more of it throughout the rest of the movie.  And sure enough it becomes a game of ‘spot the tight-fisted bullshit background’.  Also, to accompany these fake environments, they introduce crappy synthetic light.  In fact for me, often this is the first sign that something in the background isn’t quite right.

It’s funny that people like Robert Zemeckis don’t see how badly these ‘effects’ suck, or don’t care. It’s like we’re regressing to crappy 1950’s with atrocious rear projection.

They’re sitting on a fucking stage! … should be a complaint of the past.  Where is the money going in these stupidly expensive movies?