Pearl Harbor (2001) had a terrible romantic sub-plot but the attack scene was very well-done with the CGI whereas Tora,Tora,Tora could only do so much at the dawn.
If someone spliced the Pearl Harbor battle scenes into Tora, it could make for an amazing film.
Actually, having just rewatched TTT I would say quite a few of the attack scenes stack up quite well against CGI. The only area where the effects are clearly inferior are the shots of battleship row and even today I give enough literary license so to speak that I do not feel terribly distracted from the action. PH would have done well to do a partial mock up of the forward portion of what is supposed to be a Nevada class battleship like TTT did even though it has four turrets of three guns each like a Pennsylvania class. Probably something got changed in the script from the time the mock up was built until the filming of the mock up took place.
shareYou've got to be fucking joking.
The CGI in Pearl Harbor is part of why it is roundly panned by nearly every active serving and veteran sailor.
Because it's complete bullshit.
Oh it visually LOOKS realistic. Sorta.
But it behaves cartoonishly. Coyote vs roadrunner cartoons
have more realistic physics.
Almost any movie with a decent budget can have pretty detailed and very hyper realistic CGI nowadays. The look of the CGI is not the problem. The problem is that CGI is not contained by real physics. That's fine when what you are needing to do is physically impossible, like in fantasy or sci-fi. But when you are creating a CGI version of something that is real, it HAS TO BEHAVE AS THOUGH AFFECT BY REAL PHYSICS. But Michael Bay went for the rule of cool rather than realism. Fine for transforming space robots. Not so fine for a historical battle.
And if you still think that CGI was realistic... You are a fucking moron.
[deleted]
I think that you meant to direct your response to the OP. I agree with those who say that TTT had very respectable special effects. The only thing that I MIGHT take a CGI swing at would be an aerial shot of battleship row for a 10-15 second clip.
shareso you prefer CGI over story?
shareTora! IMO has far better effects than Pearl Harbor (I won't address the movies directly).
There's nothing like seeing real aircraft compared to CGI. As amazing as it is, CGI is nowhere near able to convincingly replace life. Not yet.
Some of the sea battles in Tora! are clearly large models in a pool, but I don't know if CGI would be better for the sea battles (maybe, I'd have to see them both).
But there is no part of Pearl Harbor that I would want grafted into Tora! To me, Tora! Tora! Tora! is perfect just the way it is.
Yeah sure. PH CGI scenes look real...
1. Planes flying between hangars at hangar-roof height... When the real planes wingspan is almost as wide as the hangar is tall. The airplanes would have hit the ground!
2. The California capsizing... And the anchor chain does not move with the ship as it rolls!
3. The airfield control tower full of rust. No American base would have been as shi!t! as that base. If the idea was to leave the rust to represent fire on the tower, at least the control tower should have been painted by the CGI artist in the scenes before the attack.
4. The Japanese bomb that careens after hitting the ground with the fuze still moving after the bomb stops... That propeller-looking thingy in the fuze moves by the air only when the bomb is coming down. The bomb hits the ground, it is not moving through the air, the propeller-looking thingy stops moving!
5. That stupid maneuver the two American pilots going towards each other then moving apart so the Zeros crash... Bull!
...sh!t.
Mostly nope. There are a handful of short scenes that could be included if put through a filter, though. Most of PH's action is rubbish.
PH: D
TTT: A-
I remember watching Tora when I was a kid when it was first released, and even at that age, wondered about the vintage P-40s that were being destroyed on the ground and even when taxiing on the airfield.
It turns out that they actually built full size P-40 replicas to destroy. Watch this two minute video. Amazing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS_da33g5ac
That scene was so realistic I thought it was actual footage taken 12/7/41 at Pearl.
The only parts of Tora that weren't realistic were the scale model battle ships in the pool, and I think most of the problem was the unrealistic sky.
Great video. Thanks for the link. I’d never seen that before. Sad seeing a healthy Christopher Reeves at the end
share