I didn't really get into this in the video, but are you personally HAPPY with the movie landscape after Iron Man?? I.e. do you think the MCU was a net positive or negative for movies??
I think MCU till the endgame were trying to do something that has never been done before which was a collection of good movies coming together to make a great finale and the entire world enjoyed it like a festival, but no one likes repetetive and known formulas and after that not just mcu but even in other countries like in Bollywood sooryavanshi tried to copy the formula. I dont think its their fault for trying something new, but rather than doing something more great in movie, they now just hang on by nostalgia. I think the hero arc is itself overdone in books, litrature and movies but mcu being net negative would only be true because of directors and script weiters trying to copy the formula, otherwise it has given us great flims which cannot be denied by anyone and therefore its a net positive from me.
It was great up to Endgame and a few films after it, but once they started to introduce all the TV stuff on Disney+ it just became too much and the quality has dropped. They need to slow things down a little and try to get back to being great. They are obviously trying to get back to the good old days by bringing back RDJ and Evans. Let's hope they pull it off.
Definetly a net negative, in the same way jaws created the cheap blockbuster, star wars created a decade of terrible sci-fi. Iron man did the same for superheroes
Net positive for sure. For all downsides MCU had on the market, I think if not for them, audience would have never been as fatigued for high budget superhero flicks. It made audience want something different, more experimental and unique. That in itself led us to have such booms as Joker, The Batman and rise of A24 movies.
Right before this video I have watched the "Death of Unicorn" trailer. Last night I watched X-Men Frist Class (2011). It is mind boggling how better that ~2010 CGI looks compared to todays MCU-like productions. Is it better at face value? No, the renders are clearly lower quality, there's less polygons, worse shaders etc etc. But it works. Doesnt pull me out of immersion. I have to make a research and test my hypothesis if shooting on film is of impact here.
@PossiblePasts I'm not an expert but imo 1. it's more about combining CGI with a real life physical reference on set rather than full CG. It at least could with lighting ! Now everything is mocap or green screen. You could clearly see this issue in Infinity war vs Endgame for Iron man too. In infinity war, Robert mostly wore mocap suits. As for Endgame he always had parts of suit on him. 2. The color BLACK is not as deep as it was before! It's an issue so many artists have referred to.
I think a LOT of that comes don't to the sheer size of these modern flicks. They've absolutely surpassed the point of sustainability in regards to post production size. When you have like 30 different VFX companies working on one movie and some of these poor bastards only get like a week to 3 weeks for their chunk it gets REALLY hard to maintain consistency throughout. That's EXACTLY how you end up with stuff like Black Panther where some shots are jaw dropping and then you have that weird parallax in the waterfall fight & the grand finale looking like a video game cut scene.
@ I feel like that’s one of those facts that just kind of occasionally moves in and then out of my brain. And I usually have the same “oh yeah” reaction every single time.
You never see good CGI, because you don't even know its there. But bad CGI, you always see the bad CGI. When the good CGI is invisible and the bad CGI sticks out, people think CGI is always bad.
Counterpoint: there's noticeable good CGI. Case in point, Infinity War and Endgame Thanos. Compared to previous CGI incarnations -- including from the otherwise wonderful Guardians of the Galaxy -- his last two outings were quite amazing, even though it's clearly a computer-generated alien guy mapped onto Josh Brolin's performance. Hell, I'd argue the T-rex from the first Jurassic Park is noticeable good CGI.
Mostly yes, but I think there are a subconscious effects which are relevant. You might not notice the individual CGI elements or shots, but you might get disconnected from the story. This can be due to unrealistic camera moves, unrealistic CGI physics, mismatch between CGI / real lighting, or which many complain about with e.g. the volume is, that the background often doesn't look bad but a bit disconnected. Then there are negative secondary effects from CGI like over reliance leading to worse quality over all or worse acting due to no interaction with the environment.
Human biases. You never notice all the effort put in to make things work. You only notice it when things don't work. See how people think Y2K was a hoax because they're ignorant of the efforts put in to prevent it.
I watch Elf every year for Christmas, I’ve seen it well over 30 times. Only now did I found out he directed it. He is one of the most underrated directors of our generation.
THANK YOU ! It's incredible how people have a short memory (or don't do their homework. Disney buying Marvel was "only" in 2012... 12 years ago ! Ok, maybe not that short of a time...). Which is all the more surprising, coz the vid actually digs a lot of history.
@@jjstarrprod At the same time, everybody is allowed to make mistakes. The channel's owner just admitted (after your comment) his error and changed the title/description
I really dislike that Disney tried so hard and still does try to convince us that they thought up the filming in VR. its like trying to erase Surf's Up.
Yep! As soon as I saw thumbnail, i hoped he would talk about the director’s false claim that he was the first to think of it and use it. It was actually Surf’s Up (as you said) and I believe the first Avatar movie (James Cameron) that were the first to do it. Tells me that this guy didn’t really do enough research for this video 😕
i remember the zathura extras where they legit made the entire house move just to make it feel like there was gravity and the zorgons were really shooting at the damn thing, great movie
It was a flop? I loved the movie when I was little. Looks like some films or books or music or drawing just need a little bit of time to be appreciated.
2:58 It's strange to see Favreau talk that way about CGI, only to then make The Lion King, where art direction and emotion was sacrificed for technically impressive but soulless visual effects. Take dialogue out of the 2D original and you can still follow 90% of the story. Take it out of the remake and you get a dull tech demo.
Welcome back, I would say I' am not happy with the movie landscape, but I think the MCU was a net positive. I will never forget watching Infinity War and Endgame in a crowded theater what an experience.
That's such a great point. I really like original ideas/scripts/standalone movies so the fact that every big blockbuster is so IP-dependant now makes me slightly biased against MCU stuff....BUT, like you say, watching IW and Endgame will always be such a key movie-watching memory for me. The way it became such a pervasive social phenomenon is pretty cool.
on this i am happy with the MCU had started but around 2016 the move landscape change to fit one agenda and they were all in on that particular agenda to the point they poison the landscape. For the MCU that agenda did not really did not hit after endgame cause at the point they hit their climax and they had no clue where to take the story so they follow the trend. Here we are.
He's become a master storyteller. I don't like some of what he's done but I cannot deny the genius of the work. Now, when I see he's credited, I have very high expectations - and have not been let down.
I love Favreau's ingenuity in film making. To this day I wish that the studios had not stuck their hand in Iron Man 2 so hard that it drove him away from directing the series. I wish we had gotten a total Favreau directed Iron Man trilogy. Concerning the LED video wall mentioned in the video. The first time I saw this used was in Tom Cruise's film Oblivion which I really enjoyed.
Jon favreau is so underrated as a director, I might put him in my top 5 of the 21st century. He has many movies that are my favorites. I watch elf every Christmas with my family and didn’t even know he directed that, he made iron man and the mcu as we know it, zathura was one of my favorites as a kid, chef was a movie that moved me when I saw it and I still rewatch that movie once a year at least
I can't say he's among my favorites, but he sure is a fun director! He's quite talented. I remember watching a movie that by all other means should've sucked - Cowboys & Aliens, yet I found it very entertaining and I'm glad I gave it a chance lol
yeah he no speilberg but who is? he done well enough that i am willing to see his movie cause 9 out of 10 i would find them enjoyable. I think he has done very few project that were outright awful.
Yeah spot on! Zemeckis did it over so many different film forms/genres too 👍(I may have been eyeing a video for Who Framed Roger Rabbit for a whileeeeee now 👀)
I'd almost liken him to the Spielberg of this generation. I mean, his filmography is probably not as bulletproof as Spielberg, but they do share a big common point : They're full of heart ! And make for damn good heartfelt spectacle ! Also, both are innovators in the art of filmmaking, always trying to push the technological limits of the entire industry forwards.
@@jjstarrprod Spielberg is on a whole other level, imo. He is one of the greatest to ever do it and JF can't hang in that tier at all. I really do think Zemeckis is the perfect comparison
The virtual production would make so much more sense for anything that isn't a straight remake. And if that virtual world would have been opened up to a slew of filmmakers working on multiple projects within a single environment.
Agreed, hopefully this opens up the opportunity for some less established directors to make original TV pilots on the volume now. Makes sense for Disney to start with a “sure thing” with the remakes though, because they needed to recoup the ridiculous upfront costs to build it/upskill everyone.
Not sure how much it would help. Those virtual worlds are almost certainly incomplete and highly situational. They'd require significant amounts of rework to be used for anything else. Probably the only part that would be useful is the low resolution mockups.
@lukerabon7925 In an ideal world an "assembly line" would allow more investment into the creative process, but of course, companies would simply use it to cut costs.
better to have movie credits @12:38 better ordered. Not sure the rational... (especially when already quoted inline -- and I added a few absent in my reordered list below) that final list is not by seconds clipped or any significance not sure what ordering here is by date... with some and not all the indexes The Jungle Book (1967) @5:32 Jurassic Park (1993) @3:02 The Lion King (1994) @5:36 Rudy (1993) @4:21 Swingers (1996) @0:31 @0:44 @1:02 @1:48 @2:29 Friends (1997) @4:23 Made (2001) @0:45 Monsters, Inc. (2001) @5:11 The Mummy Returns (2001) @3:06 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) @5:02 Die Another Day (2002) @5:00 Elf (2003) @0:46 @1:18 @2:32 The Matrix Reloaded (2003) @3:10 The Polar Express (2004) @6:36 Wimbledon (2004) @4:26 Zathura (2005) @0:47 @1:21 Iron Man (2008) @0:22 @0:48 @1:09 @1:34 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) Iron Man 2 (2011) @0:49 Cowboys & Aliens (2011) @3:34 Attenborough 60 Years in the Wild (2012) @7:58 Gravity (2013) @8:52 Chef (2014) @0:50 @2:34 Jungle Book (2016) @0:51 @5:32 The Lion King (2019) @0:52 @3:32 @5:20 @5:36 Safari of My Life by Klaus Tiedge (2020) @8:09 The Mandalorian (2020) @0:53 @1:04 @8:31 {Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)} @3:38 *absent end credits? or from interview clip {Avatar (2009)} @3:42 *absent end credits? {Terminator II: Judgement Day (2001)} @3:46 *absent end credits? {Abyss (1989)} @3:48 *absent end credits? {PCU (1994)} @4:05 *absent end credits? {one of the LotR} @5:13 *absent end credits?
Thanks for doing a POSITIVE video and being candid about not being a total fanboy. Seems like every other person online has a personal stake in taking sides on every blooming thing.
Oh yea Jon is a great director no doubt about it. I enjoy his cameos aswell and how he played Happy in the Iron Man trilogy. Goated director and even more so goated actor aswell
in 2008 I had no idea Iron Man even got released, in fact I had no idea Marvel was doing a 'cinematic universe' until Avengers in 2012. It's a great film though
It's awesome that in doing that daring move he kept those careers alive _and engaged_ with technology. I'm a Jon Fav fan, even more so now because of his 'gift of curiosity', and thank you Mr Scene It for telling us everything about what the movie Iron Man did and achieved
I didn't see the lion king remake or look much into the news about it when released, because I just didn't really have the interest, so I really had NO IDEA that they created an entirely open-world VR universe as a digital set. that is so. fucking. cool. god, humans are awesome sometimes.
I did like the Jungle Book remake for being closer to the original books. Which I'm much more of a fan of than the prior Disney movies. I barely thought about the CGI.
I know he directed jungle book and The Lion King, I wasn’t aware he’s been directing for as long as he has! Not someone that comes to mind when thinking of a director! This video changed that!
Favreau works on commission just like most artists. Even though I don't like that Disney commissioned another derivative work, I do think that Favreau did everything he could with the job he was given, and I respect him a lot for that. Just because the work he was commissioned to do isn't what would have ideally been created, it doesn't mean he did a bad job on it by any means.
I've watched the behind the scenes of Iron Man, Mandalorian, Elf, and just about every film Favreau has made. I can see how he was good with both storytelling and visual effects.
Thank you for the video. Didn't realize how much of a genius Jon Favreau really is. He's the guy innovating behidn the scenes that can really only be appreciated decades later.
In my opinion, _Iron Man_ is the best Marvel movie to date. It was pure. It was focused. Like he said, they didn't test the movie. They just got a great, smart director and wrote a great, smart script, paid great, smart actors to play the parts, did a great, smart job on post production and *_BAM!!!_* Made a great, smart movie.
I like the irony in how game developers had to play catch-up with VFX in film to slowly adopt techniques for rendering that pre-rendered CG pioneered decades prior, but now have technology capable of real-time rendering that allows for innovations in film and VFX that CG's offline rendering never could. Where tools like Unreal Engine once took the concept of using 360-degree images for reflections from how VFX artists would add specular and diffuse lighting from virtual environments onto props and actors, they can now calculate that lighting in real-time and have those virtual environments projected onto massive screens that'll light those props and actors without need for the extra VFX work, which saves VFX artists a lot of time.
I keep seeing people comment that they hated these digital backgrounds and sets and the fact that Andor didn't use them is one of the things that made it so great. So I'm not sure about how successful this tech is.
For the record, Andor did use the volume for some of the sets. So did House of the Dragon, The Batman, The Fabelmans. There’s a bunch of really good productions that use it
Favreau's work has been hit and miss with me. I enjoyed 2005's Zathura but didn't really key into Favreau as a director until Iron Man. I didn't really like the "live action" Jungle Book and have had no desire to watch the remake of Lion King. I enjoy animation and how talented animators can get humor and expression from characters beyond what acutal people and creatures can perform, so the more realistic versions seem to be lesser versions to me. I have been very impressed, though, with some of this other work like Iron Man and the Mandalorian.
3:10 those matrix scenes look weird (low res) because of the computing power required for the matrix to maintain all those copies of Agent Smith. It’s an “in universe” rendering issue.. the matrix had to downscale to keep the program running.
There are certain narratives that people keep telling about the film industry that really bother me because they are not true but people keep repeating them like they are. One of those is that Hollywood doesn't make any original content. In particular for this video, it's Disney that are criticised for not making any original content. So I looked up a list of their movies. Here is just 2026 back to 2015: Hoppers, Elio, Wish, Elemental, Strange World, Turning Red, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Encanto, Luca, Raya and the Last Dragon, Soul, Onward, Spies in Disguise, Coco, Moana, Zootropolis, The Good Dinosaur, Inside Out. Toy Story 5, Zootopia 2, Moana 2, Inside Out 2, Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Lightyear, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Frozen II, Toy Story 4, Ralph Breaks the Internet, The Incredibles 2, Cars 3, Finding Dory. I guess the list I found with a quick search is only their animated content, but it still illustrates the point. 18 original movies to 14 franchise movies in a little over 10 years. They are making plenty of original content and we should be celebrating that content.
you are right but toy story 4 & 5!? part five? :D remove most of the series from the list (from part 2 or from later? i dont know) you listed 32 titles, i removed the ones i know to be a sequel, now it's 19, and i may have missed some
I first read it as ‘is an idiot’ and when I saw who was being mentioned, I re-read the title and smiled to myself with a nod and said ‘yes, that is correct’
I think the MCU was a net positive, but they should have stopped like 10 movies ago (or however many there have been since Endgame). The development of technical aspects in movie making is in great parts thanks to the MCU, but unfortunately it also had the effect that almost everything has to be a franchise now. Older franchises suddenly got new releases (Indiana Jones, Star Wars) or got remakes (Disney classics), which is definiteley more of a negative development. But overall a net positive imo.
The amount of tech and stuff that people straight up invent for the sake of improving the QOL or just quality in general both for actors and the rest of the crew is what allows for great innovative stuff with movies... But then you have those people up top that would rather grab an IP, churn out some low-mid budget slop and try to maximize profit off of the IP's fame/name and in the process killing it. Then reboot it to wring the towel completely dry, and because of this focus on 'safe bets', we don't get anything new or creative either in technique for filming, or interesting writing. Instead we get rebooted shit with straight up "against-the-source-material" woke-ifying just for the sake of being woke, rather than y'know... Them writing some original stuff in which this woke character makes sense or otherwise fits - and is more interesting than the surface DEI, instead of crudely trying to hammer a cube into a slot that has been established, and accepted as a sphere.
7:30 So... You know VR room-scale? If you do - that's what it is. The VR headset position is the cameras point of view in the VR-world. Then you can on top of this use the visuals from the virtual space and project those environments onto the actors in this room-scale room - and then add CGI onto the environment afterwards. What these projections does is that they make the lighting/reflections that comes off the actors that are genuinely being captured by an actual camera sync with the world that is ultimately going to me CGI'd in. That makes this able to (without too much hassle) look a lot more convincing than a classic green-screen. Where the actors are being lit separately from the environment that will be added in later.
I didn't really get into this in the video, but are you personally HAPPY with the movie landscape after Iron Man?? I.e. do you think the MCU was a net positive or negative for movies??
I think MCU till the endgame were trying to do something that has never been done before which was a collection of good movies coming together to make a great finale and the entire world enjoyed it like a festival, but no one likes repetetive and known formulas and after that not just mcu but even in other countries like in Bollywood sooryavanshi tried to copy the formula. I dont think its their fault for trying something new, but rather than doing something more great in movie, they now just hang on by nostalgia. I think the hero arc is itself overdone in books, litrature and movies but mcu being net negative would only be true because of directors and script weiters trying to copy the formula, otherwise it has given us great flims which cannot be denied by anyone and therefore its a net positive from me.
It was great up to Endgame and a few films after it, but once they started to introduce all the TV stuff on Disney+ it just became too much and the quality has dropped. They need to slow things down a little and try to get back to being great. They are obviously trying to get back to the good old days by bringing back RDJ and Evans. Let's hope they pull it off.
Net potitive right until after Endgame
Definetly a net negative, in the same way jaws created the cheap blockbuster, star wars created a decade of terrible sci-fi. Iron man did the same for superheroes
Net positive for sure. For all downsides MCU had on the market, I think if not for them, audience would have never been as fatigued for high budget superhero flicks. It made audience want something different, more experimental and unique. That in itself led us to have such booms as Joker, The Batman and rise of A24 movies.
First Iron Man still looking better than recent Disney+Marvel Project, says a lot!
Right before this video I have watched the "Death of Unicorn" trailer.
Last night I watched X-Men Frist Class (2011).
It is mind boggling how better that ~2010 CGI looks compared to todays MCU-like productions.
Is it better at face value? No, the renders are clearly lower quality, there's less polygons, worse shaders etc etc.
But it works. Doesnt pull me out of immersion.
I have to make a research and test my hypothesis if shooting on film is of impact here.
@PossiblePasts I'm not an expert but imo 1. it's more about combining CGI with a real life physical reference on set rather than full CG. It at least could with lighting !
Now everything is mocap or green screen.
You could clearly see this issue in Infinity war vs Endgame for Iron man too. In infinity war, Robert mostly wore mocap suits. As for Endgame he always had parts of suit on him.
2. The color BLACK is not as deep as it was before! It's an issue so many artists have referred to.
I thought making robots as CGI was easier, because well… robots are supposed to act rigid and unnatural?
I think a LOT of that comes don't to the sheer size of these modern flicks. They've absolutely surpassed the point of sustainability in regards to post production size. When you have like 30 different VFX companies working on one movie and some of these poor bastards only get like a week to 3 weeks for their chunk it gets REALLY hard to maintain consistency throughout. That's EXACTLY how you end up with stuff like Black Panther where some shots are jaw dropping and then you have that weird parallax in the waterfall fight & the grand finale looking like a video game cut scene.
@@miladsohrabi95
Black colors, are almost removed from a lot of it.
I’m just now learning that “the guy who played happy” directed iron man and elf
Definitely one of those things for me that I heard a good few times before it registered. Kind of a trip to think about.
Finding out he did Elf was really the biggest standout for me too! But the tech behind filming in VR was wildly interesting too.
I just realized he was also on Friends for a few episodes as Monica's boyfriend.
@ I feel like that’s one of those facts that just kind of occasionally moves in and then out of my brain. And I usually have the same “oh yeah” reaction every single time.
Happy to see you’re getting educated. He’s gutter, man!
You never see good CGI, because you don't even know its there. But bad CGI, you always see the bad CGI. When the good CGI is invisible and the bad CGI sticks out, people think CGI is always bad.
Counterpoint: there's noticeable good CGI. Case in point, Infinity War and Endgame Thanos. Compared to previous CGI incarnations -- including from the otherwise wonderful Guardians of the Galaxy -- his last two outings were quite amazing, even though it's clearly a computer-generated alien guy mapped onto Josh Brolin's performance. Hell, I'd argue the T-rex from the first Jurassic Park is noticeable good CGI.
That why those movie feel real, it is cgi but feel like not cgi
Mostly yes, but I think there are a subconscious effects which are relevant. You might not notice the individual CGI elements or shots, but you might get disconnected from the story. This can be due to unrealistic camera moves, unrealistic CGI physics, mismatch between CGI / real lighting, or which many complain about with e.g. the volume is, that the background often doesn't look bad but a bit disconnected.
Then there are negative secondary effects from CGI like over reliance leading to worse quality over all or worse acting due to no interaction with the environment.
A great example would be top gun maverick, its invisible cgi throughout.
Human biases. You never notice all the effort put in to make things work. You only notice it when things don't work. See how people think Y2K was a hoax because they're ignorant of the efforts put in to prevent it.
Just recently watched Elf and realized once again how incredible he is as a director. Really wish more people would make movies of this quality
I watch Elf every year for Christmas, I’ve seen it well over 30 times. Only now did I found out he directed it. He is one of the most underrated directors of our generation.
I agree with the quality of John as a director but not so much about the quality of Elf.
@@MoreBollocks-ui2zsYou must a South Pole elf…
"Don't care about consistency, care about impact" I immediately think of _the Simpsons_ , which always sacrifices consistency for the joke.
Actually more family guy and plenty would argue it goes too far the other direction. Simpsons somewhere in the middle
@@mattmmilli8287 simpsons has devolved into what thay used to jab at family guy for
@ fair, not watched in many years. How things used to be anyways!
Disney didn't hire RDJ, Marvel did before it was bought by disney.
Was about to say the same thing
THANK YOU !
It's incredible how people have a short memory (or don't do their homework. Disney buying Marvel was "only" in 2012... 12 years ago ! Ok, maybe not that short of a time...).
Which is all the more surprising, coz the vid actually digs a lot of history.
talking about the tech in Jungle Book, Lion King and Mando - but fair point, a little confusing - will change the title! appreciate the feedback :)
@@jjstarrprod At the same time, everybody is allowed to make mistakes. The channel's owner just admitted (after your comment) his error and changed the title/description
@@jjstarrprod It doesn't change anything to the discussion but it was 2009, not 2012.
I really dislike that Disney tried so hard and still does try to convince us that they thought up the filming in VR. its like trying to erase Surf's Up.
Yep! As soon as I saw thumbnail, i hoped he would talk about the director’s false claim that he was the first to think of it and use it. It was actually Surf’s Up (as you said) and I believe the first Avatar movie (James Cameron) that were the first to do it.
Tells me that this guy didn’t really do enough research for this video 😕
@@cherishloveart
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
i remember the zathura extras where they legit made the entire house move just to make it feel like there was gravity and the zorgons were really shooting at the damn thing, great movie
Yup, and built a robot suit. Had people wear the Zorgon suit as well. It's still one of my favorite movies.
It was a flop? I loved the movie when I was little. Looks like some films or books or music or drawing just need a little bit of time to be appreciated.
@@laner4195 I think at the time it had some really tough competition at the box office. Very unfortunate.
2:58 It's strange to see Favreau talk that way about CGI, only to then make The Lion King, where art direction and emotion was sacrificed for technically impressive but soulless visual effects. Take dialogue out of the 2D original and you can still follow 90% of the story. Take it out of the remake and you get a dull tech demo.
Welcome back, I would say I' am not happy with the movie landscape, but I think the MCU was a net positive. I will never forget watching Infinity War and Endgame in a crowded theater what an experience.
That's such a great point. I really like original ideas/scripts/standalone movies so the fact that every big blockbuster is so IP-dependant now makes me slightly biased against MCU stuff....BUT, like you say, watching IW and Endgame will always be such a key movie-watching memory for me. The way it became such a pervasive social phenomenon is pretty cool.
Infinity War yes, but Endgame was very disappointing
on this i am happy with the MCU had started but around 2016 the move landscape change to fit one agenda and they were all in on that particular agenda to the point they poison the landscape. For the MCU that agenda did not really did not hit after endgame cause at the point they hit their climax and they had no clue where to take the story so they follow the trend. Here we are.
Zathura is hugely underrated! It’s a great little film!
Kids love it and can identify with it.
One of the early films of Josh Hutcherson, when he was chubby! 😆
6:45 "Surf's Up" actually implemented a similar technique for it's cinematography.
And it was a better movie too.
Actually one of my favourite movies watching at it as a movie critic!!! I’m a shit movie critic but I fkn love it
He's become a master storyteller. I don't like some of what he's done but I cannot deny the genius of the work. Now, when I see he's credited, I have very high expectations - and have not been let down.
I love Favreau's ingenuity in film making. To this day I wish that the studios had not stuck their hand in Iron Man 2 so hard that it drove him away from directing the series. I wish we had gotten a total Favreau directed Iron Man trilogy. Concerning the LED video wall mentioned in the video. The first time I saw this used was in Tom Cruise's film Oblivion which I really enjoyed.
John Favreau's biggest mistake was thinking something magical like The Lion King works with photorealistic imagery.
vince gilligan and jon favreau together for a project, would be my dream come true lol
My worry would be they'd encourage one another to go really, really dark. Or maybe that'd be amazing.
@ they should all just do some director avengers ish, and do random team ups
Jon favreau is so underrated as a director, I might put him in my top 5 of the 21st century. He has many movies that are my favorites. I watch elf every Christmas with my family and didn’t even know he directed that, he made iron man and the mcu as we know it, zathura was one of my favorites as a kid, chef was a movie that moved me when I saw it and I still rewatch that movie once a year at least
I can't say he's among my favorites, but he sure is a fun director! He's quite talented. I remember watching a movie that by all other means should've sucked - Cowboys & Aliens, yet I found it very entertaining and I'm glad I gave it a chance lol
yeah he no speilberg but who is? he done well enough that i am willing to see his movie cause 9 out of 10 i would find them enjoyable. I think he has done very few project that were outright awful.
3:54 I was thinking the other day, if James had chosen to make animated films the industry would be different
So Jon Favreau basically become the Robert Zemeckis of Gen X?
facts
Yeah spot on! Zemeckis did it over so many different film forms/genres too 👍(I may have been eyeing a video for Who Framed Roger Rabbit for a whileeeeee now 👀)
Perfect comparison
I'd almost liken him to the Spielberg of this generation.
I mean, his filmography is probably not as bulletproof as Spielberg, but they do share a big common point : They're full of heart ! And make for damn good heartfelt spectacle ! Also, both are innovators in the art of filmmaking, always trying to push the technological limits of the entire industry forwards.
@@jjstarrprod Spielberg is on a whole other level, imo. He is one of the greatest to ever do it and JF can't hang in that tier at all.
I really do think Zemeckis is the perfect comparison
Zathura is so underrated.
Have you seen Chef?
Shout out to Chef cus that movie is such a joy~ His movies (mostly since I skipped the live action remake) has heart.
His little cooking show on Netflix is actually rad too, I like it alot.
What's the background beat in the beginning 0:12 secs forward or so?
yeah i wanna know too
I can't shazam it and I want it
Never wouldve imagined the iron man director being this close to hideo kojima professionally
You know... if *_ANYONE_* could do justice to a live-action Fern Gully, I think that it would be Jon Favreau.
Interesting idea! I'd watch that.
One of the greatest Marvel movies ever. It all started trickling down in quality and rising in laziness after that...
The virtual production would make so much more sense for anything that isn't a straight remake. And if that virtual world would have been opened up to a slew of filmmakers working on multiple projects within a single environment.
Agreed, hopefully this opens up the opportunity for some less established directors to make original TV pilots on the volume now. Makes sense for Disney to start with a “sure thing” with the remakes though, because they needed to recoup the ridiculous upfront costs to build it/upskill everyone.
Just like an assembly line. You don't even need a director, as long as you have 10+ cameras on set.
@@temper44 Sorry, but "just like an assembly line" is the most horrifying idea for the future of film and tv
Not sure how much it would help. Those virtual worlds are almost certainly incomplete and highly situational. They'd require significant amounts of rework to be used for anything else. Probably the only part that would be useful is the low resolution mockups.
@lukerabon7925 In an ideal world an "assembly line" would allow more investment into the creative process, but of course, companies would simply use it to cut costs.
Thanks for this great and entertaining video! Who would have thought that IRON MAN´s sidekick is / was the director 😂 One of a kind!
better to have movie credits @12:38 better ordered. Not sure the rational... (especially when already quoted inline -- and I added a few absent in my reordered list below) that final list is not by seconds clipped or any significance not sure what ordering
here is by date... with some and not all the indexes
The Jungle Book (1967) @5:32
Jurassic Park (1993) @3:02
The Lion King (1994) @5:36
Rudy (1993) @4:21
Swingers (1996) @0:31 @0:44 @1:02 @1:48 @2:29
Friends (1997) @4:23
Made (2001) @0:45
Monsters, Inc. (2001) @5:11
The Mummy Returns (2001) @3:06
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) @5:02
Die Another Day (2002) @5:00
Elf (2003) @0:46 @1:18 @2:32
The Matrix Reloaded (2003) @3:10
The Polar Express (2004) @6:36
Wimbledon (2004) @4:26
Zathura (2005) @0:47 @1:21
Iron Man (2008) @0:22 @0:48 @1:09 @1:34
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Iron Man 2 (2011) @0:49
Cowboys & Aliens (2011) @3:34
Attenborough 60 Years in the Wild (2012) @7:58
Gravity (2013) @8:52
Chef (2014) @0:50 @2:34
Jungle Book (2016) @0:51 @5:32
The Lion King (2019) @0:52 @3:32 @5:20 @5:36
Safari of My Life by Klaus Tiedge (2020) @8:09
The Mandalorian (2020) @0:53 @1:04 @8:31
{Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)} @3:38 *absent end credits? or from interview clip
{Avatar (2009)} @3:42 *absent end credits?
{Terminator II: Judgement Day (2001)} @3:46 *absent end credits?
{Abyss (1989)} @3:48 *absent end credits?
{PCU (1994)} @4:05 *absent end credits?
{one of the LotR} @5:13 *absent end credits?
Thanks for doing a POSITIVE video and being candid about not being a total fanboy.
Seems like every other person online has a personal stake in taking sides on every blooming thing.
The fact they called that Lion King movie "live action" pretty much tells me there's an idiot behind it. May not be Favreau, but it's somebody.
Oh yea Jon is a great director no doubt about it. I enjoy his cameos aswell and how he played Happy in the Iron Man trilogy. Goated director and even more so goated actor aswell
The Replacements and i think it was Four Holidays were he was a wrestler
I had no idea they had done that with Lion King. While I hate the remakes, that tech they developed is undeniably cool.
in 2008 I had no idea Iron Man even got released, in fact I had no idea Marvel was doing a 'cinematic universe' until Avengers in 2012. It's a great film though
It's awesome that in doing that daring move he kept those careers alive _and engaged_ with technology. I'm a Jon Fav fan, even more so now because of his 'gift of curiosity', and thank you Mr Scene It for telling us everything about what the movie Iron Man did and achieved
I didn't see the lion king remake or look much into the news about it when released, because I just didn't really have the interest, so I really had NO IDEA that they created an entirely open-world VR universe as a digital set. that is so. fucking. cool. god, humans are awesome sometimes.
Welp, I guess I'm gonna go revisit most of Favreau's work that I didn't know he helped further tech on.
I always forget how much I love mando season 1 until I see a clip of it.
I missed it. It's on my bucket list.
Damn. Happy Hogan kickstarted the MCU saga. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that.
"Baby you are so money, and you don't even know it..."
Perfect ending.
I did like the Jungle Book remake for being closer to the original books. Which I'm much more of a fan of than the prior Disney movies. I barely thought about the CGI.
10:55 Herzog? Wow they had some cool cameos.
I know he directed jungle book and The Lion King, I wasn’t aware he’s been directing for as long as he has! Not someone that comes to mind when thinking of a director! This video changed that!
great video excellently done. Jon favreau is amazing and should start a studio of his own
the lion king wasnt the first film to use virtual production, that was Surf's up.
I am so glad to see people commenting this ❤
Love Favreau - thanks for the look into his mindset!
Excellent roundup.
hahah i really loved Zathura when i was a kid.
In this world, any time you meet any person that's not an idiot, it feels like a miracle ✨
Good explanation, good finish of the video too.
Favreau works on commission just like most artists. Even though I don't like that Disney commissioned another derivative work, I do think that Favreau did everything he could with the job he was given, and I respect him a lot for that. Just because the work he was commissioned to do isn't what would have ideally been created, it doesn't mean he did a bad job on it by any means.
Not only is he one of the biggest names in Hollywood but also an Avenger.
I've watched the behind the scenes of Iron Man, Mandalorian, Elf, and just about every film Favreau has made. I can see how he was good with both storytelling and visual effects.
... and acting 😏
He was also a voice on John Carter.
never knew happy was such a genius
0:15 the floating book scene is so fire
I loved Zathura! I wish more people saw it, it was amazing!
Thank you for the video. Didn't realize how much of a genius Jon Favreau really is. He's the guy innovating behidn the scenes that can really only be appreciated decades later.
Favreau is a low key genius
I don't care what anyone says, Zathura was a banger.
Totally! 😎👍
Hes the guy whos been making some of the only good disney stuff recently
In my opinion, _Iron Man_ is the best Marvel movie to date. It was pure. It was focused. Like he said, they didn't test the movie. They just got a great, smart director and wrote a great, smart script, paid great, smart actors to play the parts, did a great, smart job on post production and *_BAM!!!_* Made a great, smart movie.
Yeah, it was awesome when it came out! Really brought action hero movies to a whole new level! So fun and awesome at the same time!
Favreau is pretty inspiring.
They added to it with new VR tech, but the whole virtual camera thing was done by James Cameron years before that with Avatar...
exactly smh, Surf’s Up did it too
What a good essay.
I like the irony in how game developers had to play catch-up with VFX in film to slowly adopt techniques for rendering that pre-rendered CG pioneered decades prior, but now have technology capable of real-time rendering that allows for innovations in film and VFX that CG's offline rendering never could. Where tools like Unreal Engine once took the concept of using 360-degree images for reflections from how VFX artists would add specular and diffuse lighting from virtual environments onto props and actors, they can now calculate that lighting in real-time and have those virtual environments projected onto massive screens that'll light those props and actors without need for the extra VFX work, which saves VFX artists a lot of time.
Favreau is a genius! Thanks for a great video.
Been missing your videos. Love reading your reviews on Letterboxd
I just realized how many movies of his i watched. Seems like almost all of them
Great video.
cheers bud
I’ve been waiting for this video for forever
What movie is the scene from at 11:18?
Wimbledon (2004)
Never would have thought Happy directed Ironman 1
Hey your back!!! ❤🎉👏🙌😭
Holly shit happy was Tony's real boss 😂😂😂
Wait, you're telling me smily is the boss?
That's great and all... but is he the ULTIMATE fighter?
Iron Man 1 & 2 are on another level.
Lord of the Rings already done most of these back in the day :D. Still pretty cool though!
The way Matthew Libatique lights his cigarette 😂
@ 5:50 is that NOT Eric Andre? Which project were they working on together?
Yeah it’s Eric Andre, he did one of the voices in the new Lion King
I keep seeing people comment that they hated these digital backgrounds and sets and the fact that Andor didn't use them is one of the things that made it so great. So I'm not sure about how successful this tech is.
For the record, Andor did use the volume for some of the sets. So did House of the Dragon, The Batman, The Fabelmans. There’s a bunch of really good productions that use it
Favreau's work has been hit and miss with me. I enjoyed 2005's Zathura but didn't really key into Favreau as a director until Iron Man. I didn't really like the "live action" Jungle Book and have had no desire to watch the remake of Lion King. I enjoy animation and how talented animators can get humor and expression from characters beyond what acutal people and creatures can perform, so the more realistic versions seem to be lesser versions to me. I have been very impressed, though, with some of this other work like Iron Man and the Mandalorian.
Very well done!
I didn’t know that the lion king was dine that way, now im really curious about it, was it good?
General opinion is not really.
I read the title as "Is an idiot" and was waiting for the 'but' for 3/4 of the video
3:10 those matrix scenes look weird (low res) because of the computing power required for the matrix to maintain all those copies of Agent Smith. It’s an “in universe” rendering issue.. the matrix had to downscale to keep the program running.
Still takes you out of the story.
There are certain narratives that people keep telling about the film industry that really bother me because they are not true but people keep repeating them like they are. One of those is that Hollywood doesn't make any original content. In particular for this video, it's Disney that are criticised for not making any original content. So I looked up a list of their movies. Here is just 2026 back to 2015:
Hoppers, Elio, Wish, Elemental, Strange World, Turning Red, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Encanto, Luca, Raya and the Last Dragon, Soul, Onward, Spies in Disguise, Coco, Moana, Zootropolis, The Good Dinosaur, Inside Out.
Toy Story 5, Zootopia 2, Moana 2, Inside Out 2, Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Lightyear, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Frozen II, Toy Story 4, Ralph Breaks the Internet, The Incredibles 2, Cars 3, Finding Dory.
I guess the list I found with a quick search is only their animated content, but it still illustrates the point. 18 original movies to 14 franchise movies in a little over 10 years. They are making plenty of original content and we should be celebrating that content.
you are right but toy story 4 & 5!? part five? :D
remove most of the series from the list (from part 2 or from later? i dont know)
you listed 32 titles, i removed the ones i know to be a sequel, now it's 19, and i may have missed some
Chef is such a good film
3:01 that was my reaction after watching Iron man
I still like chef the most, it's a labor of love about love and you can tell.
I first read it as ‘is an idiot’ and when I saw who was being mentioned, I re-read the title and smiled to myself with a nod and said ‘yes, that is correct’
I think the MCU was a net positive, but they should have stopped like 10 movies ago (or however many there have been since Endgame). The development of technical aspects in movie making is in great parts thanks to the MCU, but unfortunately it also had the effect that almost everything has to be a franchise now. Older franchises suddenly got new releases (Indiana Jones, Star Wars) or got remakes (Disney classics), which is definiteley more of a negative development. But overall a net positive imo.
The amount of tech and stuff that people straight up invent for the sake of improving the QOL or just quality in general both for actors and the rest of the crew is what allows for great innovative stuff with movies...
But then you have those people up top that would rather grab an IP, churn out some low-mid budget slop and try to maximize profit off of the IP's fame/name and in the process killing it.
Then reboot it to wring the towel completely dry, and because of this focus on 'safe bets', we don't get anything new or creative either in technique for filming, or interesting writing.
Instead we get rebooted shit with straight up "against-the-source-material" woke-ifying just for the sake of being woke, rather than y'know... Them writing some original stuff in which this woke character makes sense or otherwise fits - and is more interesting than the surface DEI, instead of crudely trying to hammer a cube into a slot that has been established, and accepted as a sphere.
He also directed The Lion King, let that sink in.
Damn, I misread the title. I read it as 'When the director is an idiot.'
I came for the roast and was waiting for it for 10mins...
7:30 So... You know VR room-scale? If you do - that's what it is.
The VR headset position is the cameras point of view in the VR-world.
Then you can on top of this use the visuals from the virtual space and project those environments onto the actors in this room-scale room - and then add CGI onto the environment afterwards.
What these projections does is that they make the lighting/reflections that comes off the actors that are genuinely being captured by an actual camera sync with the world that is ultimately going to me CGI'd in.
That makes this able to (without too much hassle) look a lot more convincing than a classic green-screen.
Where the actors are being lit separately from the environment that will be added in later.
The best CGI is the stuff you never see. Why Wolf of Wallstreet & Zodiac are a couple of my favorite VFX movies of all time.