Visuals

[Gojira18]

Now, one aspect of the 2014 film that has been praised by almost everyone was the visual effects. IMO, these were some of the greatest visuals I've seen at the time (At least until films like the Jungle Book came out.) Now, with this newly found potential in CGI that the Jungle Book gave us, do you think that the sequel's effects will be even better? Did you like the effects in the 2014 film? If not, how could they improve for the sequels? (Please no "too dark" complaints. That was the Blu Ray transfer's fault, not the movie itself.)

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

They were good but they were far from the best CG effects I've ever seen. Then again it takes a hell of a lot to wow me with CGI anymore. The last film to wow me was District 9. Unless you wanna count Shin Godzilla but that has more to do in comparison to other Japanese films than to the quality of the CGI as a whole. As long as the FX work isn't any worse than G14 I honestly won't be bothered by it. Im very curious to see what Skull Island brings on the special effects front. Im certain Skull Island will be a much brighter looking film than G14 was so I'll better be able to judge the special effects. Shooting almost all of G14's FX shots in darkness, rain, or fog was very distracting to me. Hopefully Skull Island will fix that mistake and hopefully carry over to Godzilla 2 and Godzilla Vs Kong.

[Mr. Xeno]

The effects - and by effects, I mean CGI - in G'14 were better than some other blockbusters I've seen (Jurassic World, Age of Ultron, Warcraft trailers), but they were still just CGI. Nothing in the film wowed me with it's quality. They were on par with Pacific Rim, I'll say that. I do find it hilarious, though, to see people say things like, "G'14 has the best effects I've ever seen!" or "G'14 changed the way I view CGI!"

As for the sequel, with such a long production time, five years of advancements, and what will more than likely be a bigger budget, it'll definitely have better effects.

[BlankAccount]

Most part good but not the best, I've seen more convincing. Best shot to me is when we see the close up of Godzilla's face as he looks at Ford or when we see him smile before slamming his tail into the male Muto. Worst shot? When we see him walking towards the ocean, something just looks so...fake to me about it. When he stops to roar, that's fine, it's just the birds eye view of him walking by the buildings doesn't look convincing to me.

As for Muto, best shot to me is when the male and female finally meet up. Worst shot of them? Pretty much the female's rampage in Las Vegas.

[BlacktimusPrime]

This movie had amazing visual effects. Not the best (that would probably have to go to interstellar), but very well done.

[Ryguy]

The CGI work was done very superbly

The problem with analyzing CGI is that it really is difficult to judge quality. Every modern CGI-based action film has its good and its bad computer generated moments.

For example, everybody is praising Avatar as possessing perhaps the greatest CGI work in cinematic history, but to me it just looks like regular computer generated imagery, nothing more. No CGI work will ever actually look "real", just as how monster suits and animatronics never actually look "real", regardless of how good it actually is

[Variola]

I thought it looked excellent.

Not quite the best I've seen, but almost always convincing. The monsters had a real sense of mass and behaved like believable animals, which is something a lot of CGI creatures fail to convey.

It was also quite nicely shot, with the moody cinematography adding immensely to the foreboding vibe.

[fred25_ca]

Yeah, I also thought the special effects were incredible. Most recent blockbusters have a couple of shoddy parts (like the giant cgi emperor in episode 7 that just looked awful in what was overall a very well made film) but not in G2014. Everything was very well done and you could feel the director was somebody who knew how to use vfx.

It also helps that both Godzilla and the mutos were the kind of creatures that usually look very good with CGI and a lot easier than something more humanoid like let's say the Hulk or even King Kong. Anything that looks like something that already exists is so much harder to convince with CGI. Hulk has never looked like anything more than a cartoon to me since he's essentially a big muscle man and that is just really hard to make. Kong 2005 and the planet of the apes movies, while all really well done, never looked real to me because i've seen monkeys in real life.

Godzilla never had that problem. He looked real to me the entire time and as long as a special effect doesn't pull me out of the story then they did their job really well.