Studios do battle to make it bigger

A cannonball splinters an 18th century warship, sending British sailors flying. Japanese samurai thunder through a fogbank into the rifles of a 19th century infantry. Defenders of Middle-earth charge 200,000 armored monsters. Confederate forces slaughter thousands of Union soldiers on a blood-soaked landscape.

The battle scenes crowding theaters this holiday season aim to attract moviegoers with showier, costlier, bigger and more intense combat than they’ve ever seen. Whether the onscreen hostilities thrill audiences or leave them with a sense of battle fatigue could determine, to a large extent, the success of a handful of year-end films in which Hollywood has invested an estimated half-billion dollars.

Studios spent an average of $100 million each on “The Matrix Revolutions,” “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” “The Last Samurai,” “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “Cold Mountain” -- all of which feature lavish displays of martial force, either computerized, replete with flesh-and-blood extras, or some combination of both.

There’s no question the number of effects-heavy movies and the percentage of budgets devoted to effects have gone up, says Hutch Parker, president of production for 20th Century Fox, whose $125-million “Master and Commander” is the costliest of the season’s action films. “You can do literally anything now,” Parker says. “That’s a challenge we all face. There’s a point at which it goes too far.”

Just ask Los Angeles movie buff Chris Ryall. He felt duty-bound to go to the third and final “Matrix” film, “The Matrix Revolutions.” He was hoping to see something he hadn’t seen before.

He did. But amid the movie’s climax -- a $40-million, 17-minute epic battle featuring thousands of murderous flying machines -- Ryall checked his watch. “I was thinking, ‘How long is this going to go on?’ ”

In Hollywood terms, it looks as if it’s going to go on for a while, at least into 2004 and 2005, when bigger, more expensive spectacles are expected. The epic “Troy,” featuring Brad Pitt as Achilles, is expected to cost $180 million; estimates for Oliver Stone’s film on Alexander the Great have risen to $150 million. Filmmakers say they feel pressured to feed what they’ve created -- a growing appetite among movie fans for more, cooler and larger effects. The urge to push boundaries is part and parcel of the creative side of the business, says director Rob Cohen (“The Fast and the Furious”). Raising genre films to new levels is a director’s obligation, he says.

“There’s no sense in going back and making ‘Top Gun’ the way Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer made it in 1986,” says Cohen, whose next film, “Stealth,” will follow the U.S. Naval Air Force 15 years into the future when humans may no longer pilot planes. “I wanted to put the audience in the jets in an unprecedented way,” he says. “Since all my aerial stuff is going to be computer-generated, I have none of the restrictions Tony Scott had with ‘Top Gun.’ ”

A brave new world

Filmmakers have celebrated massive action scenes since the days of “Birth of a Nation,” but nothing has upped the ante quite as much as the groundbreaking computer-generated techniques used to great effect in recent films such as “The Matrix,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Gladiator.” Executives could not ignore the returns, notably $452 million domestically for the first two movies in the “Matrix” trilogy.

Computerized effects are allowing some epic sagas to be told for the first time, some filmmakers say. “Lord of the Rings” producer Barrie Osborne says it would have been impossible to bring the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien to the screen without computerized images. Famous films like “Ben-Hur” noted for “casts of thousands” would be cost prohibitive today without computer-generated images, Parker says.

Moviemakers have gone through cycles of upping the scale of action movies since the beginning of film. The 1945 German film “Kolberg” used 187,000 real soldiers, more than actually fought in the battle it re-created. Both “Exodus” and “Ben-Hur” had casts of 50,000.

That particular wave saw the invention of “Cinemascope” and the spread of classically themed epics such as “Spartacus” and “The Ten Commandments.” It ground to a halt in 1962 with “Cleopatra,” a $44-million extravaganza that collapsed under the weight of its own excess.

Another wave in the 1980s included the “Die Hard” movies and fixed Hollywood’s reputation in the public mind as a town dedicated to bigger and better explosions.

This new round of “battleflation” aims to take audiences to imaginary or historical worlds they haven’t experienced before, filmmakers say. That U.S. soldiers have been actually fighting in Iraq is largely irrelevant to the moviemakers’ quest to create cinematic warfare. Whether the effects are showcased dramatically as in the “Matrix” films or integrated seamlessly as in “Master and Commander,” they pose the same problem -- how to top the last big battle and still stay focused on characters and story.

The situation is frustrating for directors like Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”), whose next film, “King Arthur” will be released next winter. “As a director, you try to focus on telling the best story you can,” he said. “At the same time, you have a lot of pressure from everybody to outdo this battle scene in this movie even though that movie may have had $50 million more than you have.”

For those who have the budget, “it’s like being seduced by the dark side of the force,” says Don Shay, editor of Cinefex Magazine, a quarterly for film buffs and professionals. “It’s a wonderful tool to broaden filmmakers’ horizons. But if they rely on it as a crutch rather than a supplement to storytelling, sooner or later, the audience will say, ‘Enough.’ ”

“I personally wouldn’t want to see a film that’s just action,” says director Peter Weir (“Master and Commander”), who used 735 visual-effects shots in the high-seas action adventure, based on the characters of novelist Patrick O’Brian. In a film, he says, “you want to follow the people you know are under threat or in danger. You hope they get through it and your emotions are engaged. Otherwise it’s like looking at a road accident.”

Perhaps surprisingly, publisher Shay says it’s the salaries for stars, producers and directors that mostly account for spiraling movie budgets and not necessarily the special effects that have brought low profits. “For all the money spent on effects, a lot [of providers] have gone out of business the last few years. The profit margin is so slim, there’s not much of a toehold economically,” he says.

“Lord of the Rings’ ” Osborne says the three films were shot consecutively, not as sequels, each adding more evil, more soldiers, more significant battles than the last. The reason director Peter Jackson could make different use of the technology was that it was still evolving and became cheaper, Osborne says.

Sticking with battle plan

If the effects in the third installment, which opens Dec. 17, succeed in avoiding overkill, it’s because the military buildup was called for in Tolkien’s epic fantasy, the filmmakers say. “The book describes [the enemy forces] as almost like a fungus, a living organism,” says Jon Allit, the digital crowd supervisor on the films. To achieve that goal, he says he created as many programmed soldiers as he could -- 220,000.

The films’ essence is about drama and the individual challenges we face in our own lives, Osborne says. “In the end, it all comes down to Frodo and Sam.”

Filmmakers say the year-end films, often timed for Oscar consideration, are targeted for a broad range of audiences. But the marketing still tends to feature the most spectacular combat scenes to appeal to the teenage market, which can single- handedly dictate box-office fortunes.

But young people want more than just effects. “Even the teenage audience, my most faithful group, really love the picture to progress in a very aggressive narrative pace,” director Cohen says. “They’re not much for a director’s self-indulgence.”

Audience expectations shot up with “Star Wars” and climb higher every season, says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. “Once audiences have seen what is possible, it’s hard for them to shake it out of their minds. They want bigger, stronger, faster. They expect more.”

The first “Matrix,” with its digitally enhanced “bullet time,” showed filmmakers they had a new generation of sophisticated moviegoers to satisfy, says film executive-turned-producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura.

“They’re younger and brought up on video games. But they’ve also had unparalleled access to the movie experience, through videos, DVDs and an unbelievably large number of theaters,” says DiBonaventura, who helped develop “The Last Samurai” and “The Perfect Storm.” “If you’ve seen 500 films, you’re more informed. Your taste is different.”

What’s more, filmmakers have given away many of their moviemaking tricks in behind-the-scenes shows and interviews. “People watching battle scenes are looking for the tricks. Once they know how they’re done, it’s not fun anymore. You find yourself trying to find another way to do it,” says director Fuqua.

Using the whole palette

There is an art to staging a bigger and better battle that won’t make moviegoers check their watches, says “Lord of the Rings” producer Osborne. In the midst of the fighting, characters and personalities need to be identified, so the audience is emotionally connecting, he said. Directors use other techniques to avoid monotony, such as cross-cutting, where separate but interdependent sets of action run concurrently. They vary close-ups of warriors with long shots of the whole battle. In the editing, various sounds can be added, at different volumes.

Even the computergenerated soldiers can “think” for themselves, Allit said. Going beyond early digital techniques that replicated actors or animals to show scope, Allit and a crew of a dozen digital artists created the appropriately named Massive software program to make characters that react to their surroundings and with one another. They are programmed with random gaits and strides.

“We put a lot of simulated intelligence into the [computerized extras],” he said. “Sometimes we get a surprise.” In making the “Two Towers,” he had programmed the soldiers to engage one another based on uniform color. But about 1,000 horsemen couldn’t “see” the other soldiers, and they just continued running, away from the battle and off the screen. He adjusted the program accordingly.

Beneath the surface

On the Napoleonic saga “Master and Commander,” a film that is winning praise for its blend of narrative and action, Weir says the special effects are supposed to go unnoticed. It’s one of the first films to place computer-generated actors on model ships, so audiences can see realistic midrange shots of the warships at sea with English and French sailors running around on deck. In the past, seafaring movies could show only full-size ships for close-ups and models for distant shots. “Sometimes they put on little tiny maquettes, frozen to a rope,” Weir said. “They hoped you thought they were paralyzed by fear.”

Some sense a shift in the winds of expensive effects and a mood of restraint. Producer Lauren Shuler Donner (“X-Men,” “X2”) says she resisted the temptation to “do big effects for big effects’ sake” in “X2” by making each big effect have a personal purpose -- enhancing each particular character. The film grossed $215 million, better than expected, and more than the original, she said.

Battles in “Cold Mountain,” which comes out Christmas Day, and “The Last Samurai,” opening Friday, were filmed with extras -- real, unreplicated people. Fuqua says most of the effects in “King Arthur’s” big battles come from the real atmosphere and techniques inherent to camerawork.

“The time of the expensive follow-up is not happening any more,” director Cohen said. “I’m preparing a sequel to “XXX” with Ice Cube, not Vin Diesel. I’m really thinking about how to continue the flavor of the original without feeling I have to top it by making it bigger and louder.”

Next year will see fewer big sequels and more historical sagas. A sampling: “Spider-Man II,” “Troy,” “Alexander,” “The Alamo,” “Hannibal,” and “Revolution.” If they fall flat, the biggest will fall the hardest, Dergarabedian says. On the epic blockbusters’ opening weekend, he says, “all the people are psyched to see the movie, the marketing is at a fever pitch. It’s big Friday, Saturday and Sunday. By the next weekend, it’s yesterday’s news.”

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Staff writer John Horn contributed to this story.