Hacker Cinema
Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home
1995 · Film · 95 min
Part of Free Willy Collection
Directed by Dwight H. Little
Jesse becomes reunited with Willy three years after the whale's jump to freedom as the teenager tries to rescue the killer whale and other orcas from an oil spill.
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1 comment on Hacker News
Fascinating, thanks for sharing. It's amazing how many novel techniques went into the film. I haven't seen it yet, but looking forward to it.
One of my favorite TV shows as a kid was Movie Magic. Back in the 90s, most effects were practical, rather than CG, and it was interesting to learn about the various techniques used to achieve the results. From matte paintings, foley sounds and miniature sets, to animatronics and pyrotechnics. There were entire industries dedicated to this, which were replaced—practically overnight—by computers.
While there was a rough patch of awful CGI in the 90s and 00s, and the tech has certainly come a long way since then, even today, a discerning viewer can still tell CGI apart from live action.
I feel like we lost some of that "magic" in the process.
Consider the animatronics used in Jurassic Park[1] and Free Willy 2[2]. They might be crude, stiff and surely very laborious and expensive to build, but the result on screen was much more impressive than today's state of the art CGI. Maybe we've been saturated and take VFX for granted today, but it's a shame that some of these practical effects didn't continue to improve, and are rarely used in modern films.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Fv3tQm_Os
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdzksxe4rio