J
ust rewatched Atlantis: The Lost Empire with the family. It's truly a remarkable achievement, and it's a terrible shame that it performed so badly when it was released. It's a little too niche in its subject matter, a bit too specific in its aesthetic, not really kiddy enough nor adult enough to capture the sort of adulation that Disney is used to, not to mention that the lamentable reign of full-CGI animation had already begun its ascent when Atlantis premiered in 2001. I love how early twentieth-century the vibe is, how much Mike Mignola managed to work into its look, and how fun the cast of characters is.
But something I find truly remarkable is how good the CGI that is in the movie looks. It blends masterfully with the traditional animation, and genuinely looks incredible. I'm honestly not sure I've seen better handling of CGI, and this was from 23 years ago. I think that humility is doing a lot of work here. Back in the late nineties and early two thousands, everyone knew that CGI had its limits. If you tried too hard, and put it too out in the open, it was a mess, and rapidly fell into the uncanny valley. So films like Atlantis, or Lord of the Rings, for that matter, took steps to obscure the CGI so that it evoked without being in the spotlight. Use of darkness is critical here, as is distance and editing. But this careful application leads to films that continue to look incredible decades after their release, while in the intervening years countless movies, drunk on the powers of CGI "coming into their own" believed they could accomplish anything with the magic of 3D modeling, and took no care to hide its imperfections. These movies started to look dated only a handful of years after their release, if they didn't on opening day.
We're still struggling along in this mire. It's so rare to see CGI accompaniments in modern movies that accomplish anything like their goals, no matter how much money is thrown at them. Luckily, we can go back and watch old movies anytime we want. That's true counterculturalism.