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Chapter 706 - Chapter 706: Fifty-Cent Special Effects

"A true hero needs more than just combat power," Duke raised his right hand and pointed to his chest. "They need a firm will."

According to the script, Furiosa is a woman of action, and behind a series of actions lies an incredibly strong inner will.

After so many years of constant bombardment by superhero movies, topics like "Who would win in a fight between Batman and Iron Man?" never seem to go out of style. When it comes to superheroes, people's attention seems to always focus on combat power. The rich rely on technology, the poor on mutations if you have superpowers, go for it; if you don't, just throw money at it. In short, superheroes are just a bunch of people who can fight better than the average person.

But don't forget, supervillains are also rich and powerful, and often even more formidable than the protagonists. Whether it's Ra's al Ghul, Lex Luthor, Hydra, or Ultron—each of them throws in money and effort to surpass the hero team.

Heroes become heroes not just because of their combat abilities, but because they possess a strong heart.

As cliché as that may sound, it's precisely what made Iron Man give up being a weapons dealer and don the suit, what made Batman shed the playboy image to become the Dark Knight, and what made Spider-Man save the world between attending classes and doing part-time jobs despite being broke.

It's not because they're stronger than ordinary people that they protect the world, but because they have unwavering beliefs and the determination to fight for them—that's why they strive to become stronger.

Upon hearing this, Charlize Theron fell into deep thought. After a few minutes, she said, "Furiosa is truly one of the most outstanding female characters I've ever encountered. Just as you said, she stands out not because of her combat strength, but because in the film, she is first portrayed as an independent person, not someone who appears just to have a romantic storyline with the male lead. Only then is she shown as a woman."

Fury Road indeed runs counter to the trend of today's sci-fi blockbusters. Even Duke had to admit that, despite appearing repeatedly in the Marvel series and playing an important role, Natasha Romanoff was essentially just a foil to the male characters. In the two films where Black Widow appeared, the world would've still been saved without her.

And Black Widow's image was quite one-dimensional: "hot and sexy." Audiences remember her as "curvy, strong, and cool"—this stereotype never considered whether dressing like that would even be practical in battle.

But Furiosa is different. Duke had already planned everything out. In the entire film, although she has a pretty face, she shaves her head; although she has long legs, they're wrapped in pants and never revealed once.

Basically, her treatment was similar to that of Tom Cruise, who despite his muscles, never once took his shirt off. Her storyline had almost nothing to do with her being a woman. Her cooperation with the male lead was smooth, sometimes even more impressive, and very logically, there was no romantic subplot in the heat of battle.

In Duke's final years, countless fans loved imagining male characters in superhero movies having romantic tension with each other. Why? Because that sense of mutual trust at the brink of death—"you guard my back, I snipe from afar while you charge in"—was far more compelling than some half-hearted sex scene with a damsel in distress.

Afterward, Duke and Charlize Theron headed to the special effects department, where a mechanical arm designed according to her proportions had already been prepared.

With the help of two staff members, Charlize Theron put on the mechanical prosthetic.

She rotated the fake arm and looked it over, then said to Duke, "So I'm not only bald, I'm also losing an arm."

Duke shrugged without replying. The logic was simple in a post-apocalyptic world, a woman who climbs to such heights has certainly paid more than a man would.

These character settings were also in line with the usual style of Hollywood films: the future is either unrealistically beautiful or apocalyptic madness.

After seeing Charlize Theron off, Duke gathered Anna Prinz and others in the editing room to watch the second round of audition tapes and finalize the remaining main cast.

The five Victoria's Secret Angels were unanimously approved first. In the film, their primary role was ornamental.

The remaining two important roles were also mostly decided: James Franco would play 'War Boy' Nux, and Anthony Hopkins was cast as the villainous big boss Immortan Joe.

Of course, all these still needed to be finalized through negotiations between Charles Roven and the actors' agents.

This film had so little dialogue it could practically be ignored. Almost all the pre-production was centered around preparing for action scenes.

Once approved by Duke, all the prop vehicles went into the modification phase, but with over 150 vehicles, this massive undertaking couldn't be completed in the short term. Duke gave the props and other departments plenty of time, as long as they finished before filming started in December.

Fury Road aimed to make it in time for the Cannes Film Festival next May, so time was tight. Duke had allocated eighty days for filming, but since many of the key stunts required location shoots, he was fully prepared for potential delays.

A film like this was far more complicated to shoot than those using green screens.

Duke didn't reject green screen CGI technology; in fact, he fully supported this method of streamlining the filming process. It clearly represented the direction of future development.

The evolution of cinema is always closely tied to advances in technology, much like improvements in productivity—no one can stop it.

However, compared to on-location shooting, CGI special effects that are truly impressive tend to cost even more.

It's widely known that producing CGI effects for movies is extremely expensive, but what exactly are those costs? How much does a movie really need to spend to deliver satisfying effects?

There are many costly aspects of producing special effects, with the biggest share going to labor. In blockbuster productions like Pirates of the Caribbean or Spider-Man, the post-production phase alone can involve hundreds of team members.

In Hollywood, many big-budget films split the special effects among a dozen, sometimes more than twenty different companies and studios. These teams include experienced animators, compositors, and more—and their wages are definitely not cheap.

Moreover, many films have production cycles that can last several years. Naturally, the expenses aren't small.

To put it simply, good visual effects are built with money.

Back in the country Duke once lived in, countless movies and TV shows were criticized for their "five-cent" special effects. But the gap wasn't entirely due to technology.

Many of Hollywood's VFX projects are outsourced to studios around the world, and some of those are located just across the Pacific. So, technology isn't the main issue.

Duke had worked in the industry on the other side before, and he clearly understood that the real gap came down to two factors.

First is funding. Looking at the entire world, no country's film industry can match Hollywood's mainstream production budgets. The market and audience for these films determine that film companies simply can't invest that much money. And funding is the key to creating special effects.

Second is production philosophy, which has an even greater impact than funding.

In Hollywood's mainstream productions, using green screens instead of real sets often means higher costs, longer post-production times, and more meticulous attention to detail. But in the industry Duke used to work in, when real set construction was difficult or costly, directors or producers would turn to CGI technology. In their mindset, it was just a way to save time and money, so the final outcome could easily be imagined.

There's an interesting trait in the VFX industry: to reach 80% of the desired quality might only require 20% of the time and budget, but achieving the last 20% of quality can often take 80% of the time and budget!

It can be said that shooting occupies only a short part of the film production cycle. Even someone like Duke, who could "cheat," still had to spend several times more time in pre-production and post-production than during filming. Sometimes, he really wondered how those so-called directors who didn't participate in pre-production and had just a few weeks of post managed to succeed?

It sounded even more like a fairy tale than a fairy tale.

Take a film like Transformers without thorough pre-production and huge amounts of time spent, how could such impressive effects even be possible?

The film officially ended its North American run in early November. After more than five months of screening, it raked in $461.55 million from the North American market. For a non-sequel film, that was an excellent result.

Though Transformers didn't perform as well as The Dark Knight in North America, it was clearly more popular in overseas markets. To date, the film had brought in $768.77 million overseas, pushing its global box office past the $1.2 billion mark, reaching $1.23032 billion surpassing the global total of The Dark Knight.

And Transformers was still playing in overseas markets, so its global revenue could continue to rise.

In terms of merchandise and peripherals, Transformers' global popularity also completely crushed The Dark Knight. The different settings and genres of the two films determined the kinds of treatment they could enjoy in the global market.

Undeniably, The Dark Knight was more outstanding and brilliant, while Transformers heavily leaned toward popcorn entertainment. But The Dark Knight's overseas performance proved that outside North America and English-speaking regions, it was somewhat out of place.

A film's commercial success doesn't always correlate with its quality.

Duke understood well that Fury Road couldn't compete commercially with Transformers or The Dark Knight, but it could still find a solid audience. Turning a profit wasn't an issue.

After entering December, he led a massive convoy into New Mexico.

...

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