ILM vs. Weta

Industrial Light & Magic were for a long, long while the masters of special effects in Hollywood. Then, just like that, Weta made a name for themselves with the LoTR movies and now it seems that for every big movie with lots of effects, people name-drop Weta as supplying the effects.

Is ILM old hat? What do you think? I'll always have a soft spot for them for bringing to life the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

 

Gollum > Yoda.

Weta however, are pretty bad at blue screen stuff. I'm thinking particularly of Merry and Pippin on the top of Treebeard, walking through the forest, and the velociraptor chase in King Kong.

Gollum and Kong looked great, but ILM are still far superior.

 

ilm more or less created weta, i remember readin that all the programs weta use the got from ilm, which ilm created from scrath

plu the effects on kong where awefull

 

Davy Jones > Kong


ILM by a long shot.

 

I thought Weta Digital did a very good job with LOTR, and I also thought they did a very good job with Kong himself in King Kong... however the rest of the CGI work in King Kong is (IMO) very very poor (in keeping with the film, really). The work ILM did in ROTS, War of the Worlds and Dead Man's Chest is of a consistently high standard.

Weta Digital are good, but they have an awful long way to go before they can come close to ILM.

 

ILM is the best of the effects houses. Weta is good, but they still have a lot to learn.

 

i think they are both equal. both have their strong and weak points

 

WETA is great at animals and creatures. But ILM is perfect for creating real CG people. The clone troopers blow away anything seen in the LOTR movies.

 

ILM and Stan Winston>>>>WETA.

 

I'm reminded of Ian Malcolm's speech in Jurassic Park:

The problem with scientific power you've used is it
didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read
what others had done and you took the next step. You
didn't earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don't take
the responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders
of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you
could, and before you knew what you had, you patented
it, packages it, slapped in on a plastic lunch box, and
now you want to sell it.

Weta stood on the back of ILM and added onto what they had spent years of blood, sweat and tears making. Sometimes they get it righ (Balrog, Rivendell, Sauron) and sometimes the effects were on the level of ILM when they made Willow (Cave Troll). You make this blanket statement that Weta has taken the mantle from ILM yet last time I looked all the major effects films were still using Lucas' company (RotS, War of the Worlds, Pirates of the Carribean, Mission Impossible, Poseidon). They're the new kid on the block with a great amount of potential, but they've certainly not taken over anything yet.

 

ILM, definitely. And Roland's post pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter.

 

I don't really care who does them, awesome FX are awesome FX.

ILM has a 20+ year head start on Weta, so they used a few tricks from the ILM book. But they also did a lot of pioneering work, especially combining animation and motion capture techniques with Gollum. That said, Weta needed help from ILM for the river of horses scene.

 

I too don't really care for these arguments. Tons of FX houses usually work together on a single project. No one's better, they just usually specialize in certain areas of VFX. I don't care in the end, I'd take a job from either one

 

Yoda in Revenge of the Sith is simple the best blows Gollum away ILM is the best.