10 Worst Green/Blue Screen Effects in Big
Budget Movies
Chroma key is pretty difficult to do right.
You need to not only have the right camera
set up, but you also need perfect lighting
to make sure your actors match the lighting
of your intended background.
You also need to ensure that the background
in question is three dimensional and convincing
and you also need your actors a good distance
away from the green or blue screen you’re
using to ensure they don’t accidentally
cast a shadow and create a weird silhouette.
So it should come as a surprise that not every
movie gets it right, here are 10 Green/Blue
Screen effects gone horribly wrong.
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Star Wars Prequels
This whole list could have probably been filled
with specific moments from Star Wars.
We’ve decided to limit the list just to
just one entry.
When George Lucas made the prequels he insisted
on pushing what technology could do in order
to get his vision across.
The downside was that filming nearly every
scene of the movie either on a chroma key
screen, and including masses of visual effects
in every shot that wasn’t on one led to
a very rubbery, artificial world at best,
and made the characters look like they were
standing in front of 2D picture at worst.
From the arena battle of attack of the clones,
to the four hour long battle on the lava planet
of Mustafa in return of the Sith, precisely
nothing looks like it’s actually there,
not even the actors.
Thankfully the more recent Star Wars films
haven’t abused chroma key quite as much.
The Adventures Shark Boy and Lava Girl in
3-D
Robert Rodriguez is the man behind Sin City,
a film which along with the other Frank Miller
comic movie 300 is a lesson in how to do green
screen and digital effects right.
He’s also the man behind Sharkboy and Lava
Girl, which is wrong in pretty much every
capacity.
More or less the entire film is layered with
CG shots gone wrong.
The worst of all though is the goddamn green
screens that the movie uses throughout its
entire run time.
Not one of them looks remotely real and worst
of all is that it doesn’t even really match
the monstrous CG creations cooked up for the
film.
That coupled with some painful lines of dialogue
and cringe the inducing delivery of them,
not to mention all of those aforementioned
poor effects being in 3-D, made for a less
than great movie.
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
No, we’re not done picking on Robert Rodriguez.
Before making Sharkboy and Lava Girl he tried
his hand at 3-D with the third Spy Kids movie
to a very similar effect.
While any of the Spy Kids movies could have
been used in place of this we don’t think
that there’s much worse than a 3-D movie
with some of the flattest keyed in back grounds
we’ve ever seen.
While later, better movies like Avatar would
use 3D to and depth to the world and would
use blue screens to tremendous effect, early
movies like Spy Kids not only don’t hold
up, but were poor at the time too.
It’s important to note that Robert Rodriquez
was using blue screens to great effect in
other movies but for some reason the Spy Kids
movies always fell very, very short.
Labyrinth
Rather than using giant marionettes in this
movie a-la Toho movies, Labyrinth decided
that the best way to make puppets dance was
to have them operated by men fully covered
in black on a black background.
While the puppets dancing themselves don’t
look bad, after all this is a technique used
in theatre all the time, what looks simply
horrendous is the appalling backdrop they’re
dancing on.
It neither looks like the puppets are standing
on it, nor does it look like the actress is
standing on it.
For a movie with great visuals and fantastic
practical effects, this one attempt at chroma
keying was just unbelievably awful.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull
One of the things that the Indiana Jones films
get praised for is their approach to practical
effects and sets.
The stunts were always done by real people
and the special effects looked organic.
Indiana Jones was like a cross between an
epic stunt show and an old movie serial.
This was completely lost in the fourth entry,
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
While the movie isn’t terrible, the over
abundance of CGI including this awful green
screen car chase sequence looked downright
awful when compared to the other, much older
films.
The worst part was that Steven Spielberg initially
said that the movie was going to make use
of practical effects the same way the original
movies did.
Unfortunately, that was not what we got.
Jupiter Ascending
Perhaps the only thing scarier than the Wachowski’s
ablity to direct academy award winner Eddie
Redmayne to the worst performance of his career
are the ever present, but never quite convincing,
green screen backgrounds in Jupiter Ascending.
Jupiter Ascending uses the Phantom Menace
approach to chroma key, which is that as much
as possible should be CG’d in post.
While the Wachowski’s have been known for
their use of CGI and techniques such as bullet
time that inspired a wave of action movies,
Jupiter Ascending is unfortunately less ground
breaking and more regressive.
For a movie that features the gold bearded
Channing Tatum soaring through the air, it
would really help if the audience believed
that the sky was actually there.
The Hobbit
The Hobbit trilogy suffered from a lot of
problems behind the scenes, one of the major
ones being Peter Jackson being put in the
director’s seat at the last minute and generally
not having a clue what he was doing throughout
the entire production of the movie.
As a result, the big sets and brilliant costume
design were largely replaced with CG backgrounds
and objects that were put in behind the scenes.
As with most movies that overuse green screen
effects the end result was half of the movie
just not looking like it belonged there.
While certainly not the worst example of bad
green screening, so much of the Hobbit looked
artificial and with the movie being stretched
out from two to three, the budget was spread
thinner.
It’s not Peter Jackson’s fault but all
of those back stage issues ultimately led
to the movie looking far worse.
Movie Source/Year:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring, 2001, New Line Cinema,
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002,
New Line Cinema,
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,
2003, New Line Cinema,
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 2012, Warner
Bros.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, 2013,
Warner Bros.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,
2014, Warner Bros.
Star Trek: Insurrection
Insurrection is one of many bad Star Trek
films from the original movie til’ now.
The grand finale of the film was originally
going to utilise a blue screen, however they
were unable to get the desired effect.
So rather than actually attempting to do anything
new with the set they just… left the blue
screen up.
As a result we get to see Picard, Worf and
crew fighting bad guys on a space ship primed
for chroma key.
Not only is it incredibly noticeable it doesn’t
look right on camera.
There is no reason for the blue to be there
and rather than it being a mistake that was
easily covered it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice
We could have taken most of the shots from
this movie as a pretty good example.
At some point superhero movies decided that
the city wasn’t exactly important unless
it was being destroyed.
Batman vs Superman is plagued with obviously
CGI cities and backgrounds, with nearly all
the important action shots being filmed on
green screen.
Judging by the behind the scenes footage of
Justice League, that doesn’t look like it
will be changing any time soon.
So it looks like we’re going to get to see
a lot more of Batman walking through obviously
computer generated landscapes.
With that said, it’s not the worst use of
chroma key on the list and it’s certainly
nowhere near as bad as…
Movie Source/Year:
Man of Steel, Warner Bros, 2016
Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner
Bros, 2016
Justice League, Warner Bros, 2017
Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. 2017
The Green Lantern
Making use of lots of blue screens and a fully
CG costume is the godawful Green Lantern movie.
Not only were the keyed in backgrounds roughly
the same quality of an early era PS3 cutscene,
but the suit itself that was also keyed in
was similarly awful.
Rather than looking like The Green Lantern
was floating above a video game background,
it instead looked like Ryan Reynolds severed
head was floating around the movie, only just
about looking like it was attached to the
costume.
While movies like Batman vs Superman and The
Hobbit had poorly integrated CG, it can’t
even compare with The Green Lantern’s special
effects, which were so bad they were even
mocked in Ryan Reynold’s later superhero
movie: Deadpool
Are there any others you wish we’d have
mentioned?
Leave a comment and let us know!
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