Partly for inspiration with my obsession I have lately with storyboarding animation shorts I've been watching movies that drastically vary in quality. Lord of the rings is the most obvious one for general inspiration because overall even the 3D effects were done to an amazing standard but I couldn't help be fascinated by the drop in quality for the mission impossible movies.
They were always I think it's fair to argue B-Tier action movies so not anything to be amazed by. However even when it comes to action movies if they're long running you can see as time goes on even the omfg look at the amazing 3D vomit aspect has gone down the hill and it's so damn disappointing. The reason being is Hollywood are going to be people who can afford big render farms among other things so they should be able to churn out the most amazing special effects you've ever seen but I've seen blender users on 1080's do better jobs than the retards who do the compositing and the effects for 'modern' movies and general 3D.
What do we get instead? Tom Cruise panicking in a closed cubicle over some poorly rendered low res 3D smoke that I could have done a better job with and I have a 1660 super. Hell, it would have been more cost effective and a better job to just deploy a smoke machine and have it blow around the way you want it to which is another example of why practical effects are so much better sometimes and even take less effort to do.
Fucking Hollywood can't even get basic compositing and 3D effects right anymore, they also did this 3D scene with the Kremlin and I could instantly spot they'd done a green screen/possibly studio mockup and it was baffling how low detail the effects were for what was inevitably a pretty big budget movie.
The visual effects for LOTR were made on Win98 and used simulated actors for the VFX effects for Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith.
We're so lucky that those movies were made at the only time it was ever both culturally and technologically possible to make them right.
Not only that, but they absolutely landed the perfect cast members across the board. Which is quite a miraculous stroke of luck all on its own.
It’s a shame we can’t say the same about the Hobbit.
I tried at least three to get into that movie but each time I gave up within 30 minutes
Sadly true. Although having given it a proper rewatch a year or two ago, I did find some aspects of the attempt rather endearing. It was still a clusterfuck, but you could tell that there was at least some earnest and honest effort given by some of the writers, cast, and even the visual effects department.
Unfortunately the studio was a bit too greedy while expecting more and immediate results than were reasonable given the scope of the story they were working with.