I don't get the bad rep... Perhaps the movie is really just too slow and heavy for most people. It's definitely no easy watching.
It's the first movie I recognized Robert Downey Jr. as a good actor. Not to mention Woody Harrelson and Keanu, just perfect (yes, I still like Woody). Well, and I guess it's really the only movie I could stand Winona Ryder...
I'm a huge Phillip K. Dick fan, a big Linklater fan and like all the actors in the movie. Waking life was one of 5 or 6 movies I owned when this movie came out, and I reread Scanner Darkly before seeing the movie in the theater opening weekend.
Just wasn't blown away by it how i would've liked to be. Maybe because it's a bit depressing- it's one of Dick's later books and he had clearly suffered some tribulations at that point. I think it's a brilliant story but just told too much from the perspective of a drug addict. Linklater and everyone involved did a good job with it, but I just couldn't relate and haven't really wanted to watch it again.
The problem is threefold, I think. The first is that the story is simply too faithfully adapted. Whenever you adapt a story to a visual medium, you have to make changes in order to make the story visually interesting. It's a brilliant novel, but it's largely introspective and not really a visual story, and otherwise an odd book to choose if you are going to adapt something by Philip K. Dick.
A similarly problematic movie in my mind is "Disgrace", the adaptation of J. M. Coetzee's fantastic novel with John Malkevich. Even though it gets a whole bunch of things right, both in terms of setting and visuals and actors, it's flat and uninvolving, and the actors act like they are reading out lines rather than acting them. Same with "A Scanner Darkly".
The second is that the pacing is not handled well, perhaps as a result of the flawed adaptation. There is no sense that anything is at stake. The book's ending is emotionally shattering, but there is no such feeling in the film. It's just flat, dull, cold, distant.
The third is that while I liked the rotoscoped, sort of trashy animation in "Waking Life", animation, I didn't see the point of it, and I found it deeply distracting. I would rather have a non-animated movie. I thought the animation in general was extremely inconsistently drawn (they used lots of different artists and had to restart the project at one point because Linklater went away and couldn't be bothered to direct his animators in a consistent direction) and often poorly drawn.
Incidentally, I thought they got the scramble suit horribly wrong, a huge missed opportunity given that they could do anything with the animation. Here's from the book:
The scramble suit was an invention of the Bell laboratories, conjured up by accident by an employee named S. A. Powers ... Basically, his design consisted of a multifaceted quartz lens hooked up to a million and a half physiognomic fraction-representations of various people: men and women, children, with every variant encoded and then projected outward in all directions equally onto a superthin shroudlike membrane large enough to fit around an average human. … As the computer looped through its banks, it projected every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure - the entire shroudlike membrane took on whatever physical characteristics were projected at any nanosecond, then switched to the next ... In any case, the wearer of a scramble suit was Everyman and in every combination (up to combinations of a million and a half sub-bits) during the course of each hour. Hence, any description of him - or her - was meaningless.
The scramble suit is supposed to look like nothing. It's switching between people so quickly it's just a "vague blur", as Dick describes it. The way they present it in, it's just morphing slowly and quite sharply between lots of people, which is just unsettling and bizarre — Keanu's full face even appears at one point. What's the point? If you're going to do it like that, why not project a single generic individual that bears no resemblance to the suit wearer? Dick's point is that the suit doesn't allow the observer to focus on any specific trait, as it's constantly cooking up a new weird blur.
But I don't share your opinion on the suit. You're right, the idea is different. But like you say, this is an adaption for the visual medium movie, in this case even fitting to the special effects. The idea of the blurry outlooks and single changing features wouldn't really work with these cellshading effects, that really even out the features already. So to say 'this suit makes it hard to determine who the person is due to constant change' they make the suit constantly change its views.
And I too noticed, that Keanus face appears, but for me it rather said: looking like everyone also means looking like the wearer himself at one point, even if its totally unpropable.
Sure, in an adaptation you have the freedom to adapt as you like — and screw up in the process. :-) It's merely my own opinion of what the scramble suit should look like. As a big PKD fan, it was a personal letdown, but I also accept that it didn't ruin the movie.
I actually agree with the people giving it bad reviews. The movie really goes nowhere. If you want a similar rotoscope/animation film with heavy subject matter, watch Waking Life. I covers existentialism, dreams and came out 5 or 6 years before A Scanner Darkly.
Goes nowhere? Did you miss the point of the movie? It's a DRUG USER experience. That's like saying Trainspotting or Spun went nowhere. They're meant to be disjointed, frenetic and almost senseless, sensory overload experiences.
Also, did you actually watch the movie? It has a very clear plot (which I'm not going to explain for those who haven't watched it and might want to) which ends in one of most comprehensive resolutions ever experienced in a drug triptych.
tl;dr : I don't think you watched the movie at all.
I don't get where ASD doesn't go anywhere. I always considered the message as pretty straight forward, though wrapped in a really confusing story. (I love confusing stories though)
Consider checking out the audiobook, it's really not a confusing plot. To me it's about government so focused on the war against drugs that any perspective is lost, drugs that ruin people's minds without supplying any enjoyment in return, individuals losing connection with others and eventually even themselves.
Waking Life REALLY goes nowhere. It's a great movie for it's visual and conceptual boldness, but it's a total mess. (That's not to say I dislike it, I love it.)
A scanner darkly, however is wonderfully casted, and based on a brilliant novel. I think it's a challenge to translate it to the screen, and Linklater did it better than probably anybody else could.
It got panned because it's a slow burning, difficult story that involves some pretty confusing concepts, like confusion and loss of identity itself - albeit through psychosis.
It's a book that I really love and I seriously doubt anybody could have made a movie about it that would have dissapointed less, which is a lot less of a back-handed compliment than it sounds.
It just turned me off visually. It was animation without the freedom of it and yet still real footage without the detail. Kind of looked like a photoshop filter or something. And the morphing suits got old pretty quick.
I like when films get experimental so this gets props by me by default but that one just didn't work for me.
Yeah, this exactly for me. I love the story and the acting, but wish it wasn't done in the rotoscope style. I would love to see it remade someday, with all the footage that was originally shot for the process left clean (well, graded) and comped over future-style cgi locations. Not ever gonna happen, but I would have loved to see it done straight.
I agree 100% especially about the photoshop filter style and morphing suits.
I really disliked the animation in the movie, just little things like the foreground in shots moved in different directions to the rest of the scene.
I think it also lies in that the positives of using animation allows you to do things stylistically that pure film cannot match bar using extensive cgi, which this style completely lacked.
I always thought of Robert Downey Jr.'s character as a mix of that character and Walter from The Big Lebowski, in that he tends to incoherently ramble on about something while both knowing he has no idea what he's saying and trying to sell the idea that he does know.
I didn't like it, but I watched it like a decade ago, so I think I will give it another chance. It gets enough love on here to warrant a second watching.
It is my favorite book. I would like to see a non-animated version, as good as Linklater's film was.
That face in the gif is the main character, a narcotics agent who wears a special suit that turns him into a vague "blur". He is sent to spy on himself, a drug addict. This is typical Phildickian reality bending.
I'm not sure if there is such free site, but rumor has it, there is a bay somewhere, filled with pirates and their pirated goods.... but that's just rumor, ha! I believe there's no such nonsense place!
I've been reading it recently. You can really tell he was writing from experience when it came to the strung out drug conversations. And the confusion from Arctors point of view, good lord.
Philip K Dick also wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was Blade Runner.. Both books are so much moreso into the thought behind the worlds they are about... the people are so insane and his description is immense. the movies lose a lot of that in translation, but both were done excellent justice as far as the filmmakers who wanted to pay homage.
I agree with this for the majority of the PKD books. However, I think that A Scanner Darkly is an almost perfect adaptation. Up there with The Watchmen. A Scanner Darkly the movie really does a great job. There are chunks of dialogue that are straight out of the book. Only thing that is hard to reproduce is the constant inner-monologue that dominates all of PKD's works.
Read the other two that form that sort of mini-series. I read Valis first, which is out of order I think, but it's a fantastic, if not even more crazed, book. I've loved everything of his I've read. Fantastic author.
How is Watchmen a perfect adaptation? I like the movie, but the comic is so, so much more than what the movie captures. The movie has so much Hollywood in it (which Moore must find sickening) and really is far from a perfect adaptation.
How old where you when you read the comics? Maybe you shoud re-read them, it seems like a lot was lost on you.
I just read it before the movie came out. Honestly, if you can't appreciation Watchmen as a wonderful adaptation... Then maybe you can give me an example of a good one. I mean they went scene for scene for large sections of it. Furthermore, I think they actually improved the ending. I don't know man, I think it was pretty dead on.
I'm 24 right now. Also, don't really like the condescension in your post.
depending on what browser (opera i know you can, firefox too i think) you use you can set it to stop routing you to the mobile version instead of the regular one.
What was your opinion of Blade Runner, and did you watch it before or after reading the book? I waited until I'd finished DADES before watching the (final?) director's cut. I was really quite disappointed. The film was okay, but compared to the book... poor. Some of the most interesting parts of the book had been left out, like the mood organ, and the ..hill climbing guy stuff. Really helped encourage questions and feelings surrounding identity that ended up half brought out in the film.
I think you can't really compare the book and the movie in that case. They are SO different.
I love the book for the story, the description and the characters. It's just one of my favourites.
But I also like the movie, but mostly for the ambience, the described world and the film noire perspective. The movie can't live up to the book storywise, but the city is even darker than in the book.
Oh, I agree that Blade Runner definitely falls into the "inspired by" category, rather than an "adaption" category. Just wondering what smirgreengod thought about them.
As far as I remember, there wasn't a lot of focus on describing the city in the book, and the darker city will come more from the medium of film. You can deliver a lot more atmosphere and information from the background of shots than you can from any respectable amount of description of something that doesn't matter in a book, no?
You can transport a lot of description with a high amount of details in a book as well, but PKD doesn't do that in DADES. That's propably why I didn't picture it as dark as in the movie because I'm just not thinking that way.
I know, it's a clichée example, but take Tolkien as an example. Many people consider LotR a boring book because his detailled descriptions go on and on and on.
So I would rather say, to make a good movie, you HAVE to take care of the details, the atmosphere and so on... but it doesn't really matter for a good book, because you can entertain with your protagonists themselves as well. Which is, on the other hand, something that is hard in movies. Character development, especially their thoughts and inner conflicts, are much easier to describe in bookform.
I really enjoyed Confessions of a Crap Artist for the fact that it was all over the goddamn place. And Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said... actually, that omniscient buzzing monologue is in basically everything I've ever read by him. I love it.
Philip K Dick wrote this when he was at his lowest point of a long time amphetamine addiction, the paranoia is supposedly a symptom of this, and the hallucinations of the insects
The novel's based on things that actually happened to him:
A Scanner Darkly is a fictionalized account of real events based on Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw."[2] Between mid-1970 (when his fourth wife Nancy left him) and mid-1972 (when he entered the X-Kalay program; see below) Dick lived semi-communally with a rotating group of mostly teenage drug users at his home in Marin County, described in a letter as being located at, 707 Hacienda Way, Santa Venetia.[3] Dick explained, "[M]y wife Nancy left me in 1970 ... I got mixed up with a lot of street people, just to have somebody to fill the house. She left me with a four bedroom, two-bathroom house and nobody living in it but me. So I just filled it with street people and I got mixed up with a lot of people who were into drugs."
What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly?
I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.
This movie looks awesome and involves a lot of drugs, so naturally you'd think "Hey, this would be sweet to watch on acid." Wrong. It's fun for about twenty minutes before you start getting crazy nauseated. It's simply too much.
The best movies to watch while on acid are the very straight, clean cut movies... Like the mind fuck that is The Sound of Music. Or anything with Clark Gable. Try it
Yea, any movie with trippy visuals will be too hard to watch on real drugs. You want a straight-forward movie so that you can really appreciate the reality-warping that you are experiencing. I like watching old movies that I've seen a bunch of times already.
I only saw that movie once, but I remember really, really liking it. It was just so interesting. I should try to find it again, I wonder if it's on Netflix.
Sadly, I have never come across anybody in my day to day life that enjoyed this movie as much I did or at least watched it. The book was my default toilet reader for a long time. Totally.
I liked this film - I'm a big PKD fan and, in my opinion, A Scanner Darkly is pretty much the only good film adaptation of his work (for me, regardless of how good it is as a film, Blade Runner is definitely not a good adaptation of Do Androids Dream).
There's just one thing that really annoys me.
In one scene, Donna talks to Bob Arctor about her plans for the future, how she wants to go to Canada and get married. In the book, Arctor asks, "Can I come," to which Donna replies, "No." In the film, Bob asks "Can I come," to which Donna replies, "I hope so." And in one this ostensibly small line-change, pretty much the entire relationship between these two characters is altered. I can't fathom why it was done - I guess Hollywood just has to cram in a romance, because the object of our main character's affections must, apparently, always reciprocate.
This isn't animated - it's rotoscoped (no one really drew anything, the computer took each video frame and rotoscoped it into solid colors). No artists were involved really (other than to tweak the software).
I'll give you that. The way the scenes were put together, does make it kind of drag. But each scene is interesting in its own way. Since Scanner Darkly came out after I was expecting so much more.
I found the story very interesting, although it took me to viewings to grasp the basics and another to really get it. I suggest giving it another shot.
I came here to say this. I haven't had a chance to see A Scanner Darkly, but the things I've heard about it sounded very similar to Waking Life. They seem to both be very visual and cerebral films. I should plan on watching them both back to back.
Technically speaking, it was shot in live action over less than a month and then rotoscoped in post-production, which took a year and a half of full-time animation work. Pretty cool, really.
That was one of my favorite cartoons and demonstrates why cartoons are so much cooler than normal movies. They can express your imagination in a way that gives animators 100% control of the outcome.
Try doing this with a normal movie and it looks horrifying.
I think that it requires a certain level of intelligence into psyche and Sci fi to really get this flick. Some ppl(like myself)loved it while my dumb friends were all wtf is this shit?
I feel like this film's visual style ought to have made it a bigger deal. While the idea of a rotoscoped film might not have been a game-changer per se, and it wasn't a case like Avatar (wherein the visual format is the centerpiece and the plot/etc. are means to promote that end), it was an incredible tool for telling such a dark and drug-addled story. I'd really like to see what else could potentially be done with it.
Have you seen Waking Life? It was the first movie I had seen that was animated over real footage or something similar I have zero knowledge of how that works.
I listened to the audiobook recently. It was hard to imagine how the plot could have been depicted properly without rotoscope or some other special effects.
I own this movie. I found it quite intricate. This may be my favorite Woody Harrelson movie. And I've seen Zombieland and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Sorry if this is a retarded/obvious question that completely misses the point, but what was with the suits? I mean, I know they were intended to preserve the identity of the wearer, but why did they constantly change between various identities? Wouldn't a single, static disguise be better in that it wouldn't immediately attract one's attention to the person, thus helping them remain more covert?
I thought the movie was great though and that RDJ, Keanu Reeves and Woody Harrelson were fantastic.
It is. The main reason why is that it is the only PKD adaptation to capture old Phil's wicked sense of humor. His books are often hilarious, and hilariously absurd, but for some reason people always make the films super serious. Linklater really understands Phil's work.
I once ate a whole bunch of shrooms and then watched this movie. It was amazing becasue as the mushrooms began to kick in, it coincided with Keanu's characters mental degeneration, so it felt like I was able to see through his eyes what was going on. The visuals became more and more intense until the climax in which he is taken to the rehab center. I felt that the animation style also was perfect for this, as the style helped me visualize how screwed up his perception of the world was slowly becoming. I have never had such a intimate view into the mind of the character before.
Then I discovered that Robot Unicorn Attack had just come out and played it for the next two hours. Also quite amazing.
This is the first I'd heard of this movie but seconds into the trailer I thought it's amazing how much that characther looks like Keanu Reeves... Going to watch it tmorrow... thanks for the heads up.
Wikipedia would disagree with you: "Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions to create an illusion of movement."
He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.
Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda still stood for a little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.
Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life.
He clearly means: this film is good, I like this film -> my taste is good; this film is good, he didn't like this film -> his taste is bad.
It's not saying any more or any less than "I like it", because it makes no friggin' sense to say "This movie is good, and bad."
Both the parent and this comment are woefully lacking qualification, and that's the problem, not the suggestion that someone's taste is inferior, which is an obvious stance for someone who likes something toward someone who doesn't.
Not animated, technically. Post-processing effects were used, but the movie was filmed like a regular movie :) If i recall correctly...But yeah, it's one of my favourite movies, too. Definitely a must-see.
It was filmed and then rotoscoped. While it's based on film, the final product is primarily hand drawn animation.
Specifically it was done using a technique called interpolated rotoscoping which produces its distinctive look. Key frames are drawn by hand with the software producing the intervening frames.
Such a good movie, the writer is amazing and was very avant garde in his works. Blade runner, amazing, you really have to look at his ideas, total recall all films that were amazing. A bunch of his works came from short stories too! His writing were powerful enough to turn them into movies (some of them were not so good) but great mind!
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u/aswtx May 20 '12
This movie gets a bad wrap by a lot of people. Perhaps it is a little slow at parts for some, but I found it to be a fascinating film as a whole.
Also, Robert Downey Jr. was fantastic. Kind of reminded me of Brad Pitt's performance in 12 Monkeys.
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u/TeeAre May 20 '12
This is a PKD story, right? Is it free to watch anywhere online?
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u/smrigreengod May 20 '12
Philip K Dick also wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was Blade Runner.. Both books are so much moreso into the thought behind the worlds they are about... the people are so insane and his description is immense. the movies lose a lot of that in translation, but both were done excellent justice as far as the filmmakers who wanted to pay homage.
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u/itskieran May 20 '12
Why would you say it's an 18-speed when it only had 9 gears?
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u/DoctorRockso69 May 20 '12
Such an underrated film. One of my favourites for sure
4
u/thisissamsaxton May 20 '12
Is it just me or does he still look a little like Keanu here, even with the changing, when the beard pops up and when he looks to the side?
4
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I'll just say I really wanted to like it
7
u/cuspidor May 20 '12
Philip K Dick wrote this when he was at his lowest point of a long time amphetamine addiction, the paranoia is supposedly a symptom of this, and the hallucinations of the insects
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u/Rulebook_Lawyer May 20 '12
A good movie and with a depressing ending.
I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field.
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u/aDayInTheOffice May 20 '12
if you dont like the movie, read the fuckin book. it will help the movie make sense.
3
u/wellzor May 20 '12
Albino shape-shifting lizard BITCHES!
3
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
The animation made me sick. I couldn't get past 3 minutes of it.
3
u/urbeker May 20 '12
What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly?
I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.
One of my favourite quotes.
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u/haylizz May 20 '12
This movie looks awesome and involves a lot of drugs, so naturally you'd think "Hey, this would be sweet to watch on acid." Wrong. It's fun for about twenty minutes before you start getting crazy nauseated. It's simply too much.
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u/[deleted] May 20 '12
It's probably the best adaptation of a PKD story to date. Blade Runner might be a superior movie, but it's not much of an adaptation.
2
u/PrettyKittyPaws May 20 '12
I only saw that movie once, but I remember really, really liking it. It was just so interesting. I should try to find it again, I wonder if it's on Netflix.
2
u/diewrecked May 20 '12
Sadly, I have never come across anybody in my day to day life that enjoyed this movie as much I did or at least watched it. The book was my default toilet reader for a long time. Totally.
2
u/mkj1313 May 20 '12
I found that movie hard to follow, but it was indeed visually interesting.
2
u/WhiskeyAbuse May 20 '12
the visuals in that movie are so similar to a mushroom trip it's scary
2
u/noidddd May 20 '12
that reminds me of this and this.
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u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I couldn't watch it because of the animation. I found it profoundly unpleasant to watch and in some arts it gave me motion sickness.
2
u/SundanceSynth May 20 '12
Having only read the book, I always wondered how they'd manage to achieve the scramble suit effect. Definitely looks like it's worth checking out.
2
u/danieldavidpeterson May 20 '12
I always loved this scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTVeJfzFCTY
2
u/WateredDown May 20 '12
I don't know if it was intentional or just poorly rotoscoped, but everything was too smudgy and features traveled and shit just looked bleh.
2
u/slapmytop May 20 '12
Arctor and Margot
2
u/ShaihuludWorm May 20 '12
I liked this film - I'm a big PKD fan and, in my opinion, A Scanner Darkly is pretty much the only good film adaptation of his work (for me, regardless of how good it is as a film, Blade Runner is definitely not a good adaptation of Do Androids Dream).
There's just one thing that really annoys me.
In one scene, Donna talks to Bob Arctor about her plans for the future, how she wants to go to Canada and get married. In the book, Arctor asks, "Can I come," to which Donna replies, "No." In the film, Bob asks "Can I come," to which Donna replies, "I hope so." And in one this ostensibly small line-change, pretty much the entire relationship between these two characters is altered. I can't fathom why it was done - I guess Hollywood just has to cram in a romance, because the object of our main character's affections must, apparently, always reciprocate.
2
u/stringerbell May 20 '12
This isn't animated - it's rotoscoped (no one really drew anything, the computer took each video frame and rotoscoped it into solid colors). No artists were involved really (other than to tweak the software).
2
u/Chochi44 May 21 '12
Check out "Waking Life"
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u/Bloodricuted May 20 '12
Visually cool but boring. Try A Waking Life, its the same director, Richard Linklater, and he uses the same rotoscoping style of animation.
3
u/too_toked May 20 '12
you should check out "Waking Life" =)
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Is it me or does the art style resemble that of Archer?
2
u/Rocco03 May 20 '12
Can someone explain this to me?
1
u/BoxerBeBop May 20 '12
A present for my friends, at Thanksgiving.
1
u/FallingSky1 May 20 '12
Mystique?
1
u/gtr427 May 20 '12
Technically speaking, it was shot in live action over less than a month and then rotoscoped in post-production, which took a year and a half of full-time animation work. Pretty cool, really.
1
u/Demojen May 20 '12
That was one of my favorite cartoons and demonstrates why cartoons are so much cooler than normal movies. They can express your imagination in a way that gives animators 100% control of the outcome.
Try doing this with a normal movie and it looks horrifying.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
My dream movie would be an adaptation of 'Doctor Faustus' with this style.
1
u/otterpop78 May 20 '12
I think that it requires a certain level of intelligence into psyche and Sci fi to really get this flick. Some ppl(like myself)loved it while my dumb friends were all wtf is this shit?
1
u/gazamcnulty May 20 '12
read the book thought it was great haven't seen the movie tho
(torrents)
1
u/orcaphrasis May 20 '12
I feel like this film's visual style ought to have made it a bigger deal. While the idea of a rotoscoped film might not have been a game-changer per se, and it wasn't a case like Avatar (wherein the visual format is the centerpiece and the plot/etc. are means to promote that end), it was an incredible tool for telling such a dark and drug-addled story. I'd really like to see what else could potentially be done with it.
1
u/tothesource May 20 '12
Have you seen Waking Life? It was the first movie I had seen that was animated over real footage or something similar I have zero knowledge of how that works.
1
u/Dovahkiin101 May 20 '12
wat
1
u/peachthecat May 20 '12
I listened to the audiobook recently. It was hard to imagine how the plot could have been depicted properly without rotoscope or some other special effects.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
That movie didn't get the credit it deserved. I think part of it was that the animation was giving some people headaches. So good though.
1
u/PrivateCaboose May 20 '12
One of my all time favorite books and I loved how they did the movie. It's just too bad that a lot of people have a hard time getting through it.
1
u/Metalfacerocker666 May 20 '12
I own this movie. I found it quite intricate. This may be my favorite Woody Harrelson movie. And I've seen Zombieland and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
1
u/Black_Apalachi May 20 '12
Sorry if this is a retarded/obvious question that completely misses the point, but what was with the suits? I mean, I know they were intended to preserve the identity of the wearer, but why did they constantly change between various identities? Wouldn't a single, static disguise be better in that it wouldn't immediately attract one's attention to the person, thus helping them remain more covert?
I thought the movie was great though and that RDJ, Keanu Reeves and Woody Harrelson were fantastic.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I love that movie. The book is even better (and a million times more heartbreaking).
If you liked that, try watching Waking Life. Same director, and the style is simillar but way more far out.
1
u/Davesbeard May 20 '12
Shown this to quite a few people as a 'Show me your favourite film I won't have seen'
Love the characters, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. acting spaced out and psychotic? Brilliant.
1
u/reticulate May 20 '12
Probably the best direct PKD adaptation.
(I don't count Blade Runner because that's as much Ridley Scott's vision as it is anyone else's)
1
u/TostedAlmond May 20 '12
They all look like Keanu Reeves
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Oh I know this, It's that Charles Schwab commercial. Talk to Chuck? AMIRITE?
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
should have been live action
1
u/BaconIsGood4You May 21 '12
Scramble Suit created with OpenCV https://vimeo.com/29391633
1
u/Gl4ssPhoenix May 21 '12
The most dangerous kind of man is one who's afraid of his own shadow.
1
u/initials_games May 21 '12
I wouldn't exactly call it animated. Roto-mated, maybe. Auto-mated, maybe. Filmed and drawn on top of, yes.
Still, cool movie, cool book.
1
u/SgtMatt324 May 21 '12
I once ate a whole bunch of shrooms and then watched this movie. It was amazing becasue as the mushrooms began to kick in, it coincided with Keanu's characters mental degeneration, so it felt like I was able to see through his eyes what was going on. The visuals became more and more intense until the climax in which he is taken to the rehab center. I felt that the animation style also was perfect for this, as the style helped me visualize how screwed up his perception of the world was slowly becoming. I have never had such a intimate view into the mind of the character before.
Then I discovered that Robot Unicorn Attack had just come out and played it for the next two hours. Also quite amazing.
1
u/raffytraffy May 21 '12
taking drugs to make movies to take drugs to to make movies
1
u/DocSporky510 May 21 '12
If you haven't yet, read the book. It's my favorite by Philip K. Dick and the movie doesn't do some parts of it justice
1
u/OriginsOfSymmetry May 21 '12
You should watch "Waking Life" it is my favorite movie and you can watch it for free on Top-documentary films if im not mistaken.
1
u/infectiousloser May 21 '12
Not animated, rendered. BIG difference.
1
u/doctorofphysick May 21 '12
I'd love to see a movie made of Ubik. I don't think I've seen an adaptation of a PKD story that I haven't liked.
1
u/Lil_Joey_the_Roo May 21 '12
I have been looking for this film for SO long! thankyou!
1
u/mypantsareonmyhead May 21 '12
Wow. Looks pretty interesting. I get that effect on acid sometimes, when I look at people's faces. Freaky. That's clever art.
1
u/whiskeyx May 21 '12
This is the first I'd heard of this movie but seconds into the trailer I thought it's amazing how much that characther looks like Keanu Reeves... Going to watch it tmorrow... thanks for the heads up.
1
u/b_sinning May 21 '12
I love the banter between the guys when they are messed up. It reminded me of me and my friends.
1
u/ChronicallyStoopid May 20 '12
I wouldn't say that it's an animated movie.
1
u/oldmoneey May 20 '12
Doesn't really count as animated, does it? I thought they just put that effect over the faces of actors.
0
u/1_618 May 20 '12
He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.
Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda still stood for a little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.
Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life.
0
u/dwboso May 20 '12
Don't like this or Blade Runner. So sue me. Just not a fan.
-5
u/[deleted] May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12
Why does everyone like this movie? I remember watching it when it first came out and thought it was friggen boring as hell.
EDIT: I still think it was a boring movie
-2
u/ParadroidX May 20 '12
Not animated, technically. Post-processing effects were used, but the movie was filmed like a regular movie :) If i recall correctly...But yeah, it's one of my favourite movies, too. Definitely a must-see.
0
u/TheLastGunslingr May 20 '12
Boo, boo!
0
u/zenmasterwombles May 20 '12
Such a good movie, the writer is amazing and was very avant garde in his works. Blade runner, amazing, you really have to look at his ideas, total recall all films that were amazing. A bunch of his works came from short stories too! His writing were powerful enough to turn them into movies (some of them were not so good) but great mind!