question for psyclops!action scenes in rough cut

[gouniara]

could you please tell us how the action looked in the rough cut with more detail?

were all of the action scenes extended? did u see everything happening in all of them? did they flow like in EQ?

that scene especially where violet lands on the pavement and gets surrounded by guards. she changes hair colour and gets her sword out and u just see corpses falling. nothing else.

same when she gets in that room (tube?) and we see daxus and a long shot of six's body while we hear whats happening and just see the doors open and violet enters the room with corpses behind her.

were those 2 scenes intentionally like that? or were they cut to death as well?

[gouniara]

also in the beginning with the ninjas (spheres) as they enter the room they attack the doctors and we dont see a thing!!!!just a quick shot, and them putting their swords away one by one (i liked that last shot by the way).

and then another one as they are being shot to death by the humans (too fast) and that guy that gets shot in the head for getting blood on him (that was so resident evil shot!)

most were too fast to realise whats going on.

plus the library fighting in the end. Where is milla's pose with the guns and the stuff flying around like in the screensaver? all i saw was a long shot of that i think.

bear in mind i watched a really crap downloaded version which made the film even worse. the cam was out of place and everything looked zoomed in as well. so i cant really tell. i want to see it on the big screen, when it gets released over here.

[Serra]

You can tell all action scenes have been butchered and sometimes it’s a bit painful for the eye, specially the library scene, there’s meat and potatoes but they took the sauce away.

I’m looking forward to watching the Unrated Director’s cut 12 months from now after both the theatrical and the special edition get released.

[Psyclops]

First, the shootings and stabbing were bloodless. There may have been a few scenes that got a little messy but the lack of blood was one of the first things I noticed about the film.

The fights did feel a little choppy in the studio cut. I'm assuming that seconds of footage featuring guys getting sliced or stabbed might have been removed to make the action seem less graphic. A handful of seconds removed from a fight sequence can make the whole thing seem uneven, which is what it felt like in this theatrical version.

The one scene that did suffer the most was the first battle that Violet has with the "glass" armored soldiers at the start of the film. When Milla twists the arms of the two guards around like pretzels it was much more visceral with the sounds of bones breaking and the two guards screaming like little girls. There was a great joke in there about the armor, which I've already mentioned a couple of times.

The scene with the stealth ninjas attacking the lab coats at the beginning was the same. The swords would slice but you couldn't see a wound or any blood.

The scene where the cop gets the blood on him just featured some additional dialogue where the older cop gets upset at a younger officer (who kept chewing gum in the scene and was a terrible actor) because he used the word Vampires instead of Hemophages. It was just really poorly acted, the first truly bad scene in the whole movie. That's one of the first things I mentioned to the director when he had our conversation.

The scene with the guards surrounding her after she hits the pavement is one that I can't really remember. I think it may have played out the same as in the rough cut since it looked like more of a stylized shot than a violent action moment.

I do remember one action sequence that took place off screen. All you heard was sound effects and people dying, and I'm pretty sure it's the same as the rough cut.

The Library fight was a little longer and it showed more of Milla spinning around and stabbing the soldiers with her gun-blades, including one guy that gets it in the crotch and is then flipped on his back. I do remember that one being a hell of a lot more impressive, with Milla going crazy using guys as sheilds and making them shoot the crap out of each other.

That's about all I can remember.

[gouniara]

cool. thank u for your answer psyclops

[gouniara]

just imagine if there was blood in the lobby scene.

it would look so much more impressive!

so that party invitation card was a fake image then?

[Psyclops]

I'm not sure if this is accurate but my brother, who went with me to the test screening, says that there was an alternate version of one scene. It's during the mausoleum fight. He says that when all of the Hemophages surround Violet and she jumps up and spins her sword around, that she actually "scalps" everyone around her. He clearly remembers the very tops of there heads flying off. I don't remember this but I do know that there appears to be a head or something that pops off in the studio cut (it's hard to tell).

[JenGe]

psyclops said:

I'm not sure if this is accurate but my brother, who went with me to the test screening, says that there was an alternate version of one scene. It's during the mausoleum fight. He says that when all of the Hemophages surround Violet and she jumps up and spins her sword around, that she actually "scalps" everyone around her. He clearly remembers the very tops of there heads flying off. I don't remember this but I do know that there appears to be a head or something that pops off in the studio cut (it's hard to tell).

That's still partially there. I noticed the heads tops going flying today but when you get to the overhead shot all the heads are back on. It looks really odd like they skipped a special effects shot with that one.

I could plainly see Violet's fingers gone this time.

[jackmode211]

so its fair to say that ALL of the film has been cut to hell....

...yea jen...your eyes have to be right there to notice they are gone.....

....if your looking at anything else in the shot...you wont notice....and after that she hardly uses that hand...and even then....it would seem as tho the studio made sure her stubs stayed out of the picture....

[Psyclops]

Yeah, you could hardly tell they were missing in the studio cut. I'm positive they had a close up of her wounded hand in the original version because I remember it being pretty obvious what happened to her. I also remember a couple of guys around me at the test screening have an audible reaction to that shot since she seemed so invincible throughout the movie.

[CGenro]

yes i noticed this as well when I saw the film on opening night. She spins and the top of their heads go flying yet they all look fine in the next shot. man they really screwed this film up.

[jackmode211]

and yea...it looks like there are scalps in the air.....and kurt would have shown that better....

....and on the overhead shot.....no scalps on the ground....


....kinda reminds me of one of the comic book covers in the begining of the movie....

[Serra]

All the heads are back on?

I disagree. There's 3 guys in the overhead shot with their heads on, the others are in the dark.

These 3 could have lost their scalps but there's no cgi blood there to be seen.

Like in the Sword Fight in white, not a single drop of blood on their suits.

[jackmode211]

violets the only one that bleeds....

.....so no blood dosent suprise me.....

[chevron07]

Pysclops...The impression that I'm getting, is that although you originaly saw what was supposed to be the rough-cut (pre effects), what you saw was a more complete movie than we saw. Where many more effects added to the final version (fuzzy face aside)? Heck, it almost sounds like there were more effects in the rough-cut than the final cut.

I guess what I'm getting at is, could it possible that Wimmer had pulled the purse strings real tight durring filming, and had like 10mil left to put into killer CGI and gore at the point that you saw the rough-cut...and then for whatever reason (PG13/R issues or something), the studio pulled out the rug, and banked the left-over budget?

Was the CGI improved from rough to final; and if not, did you get the impression from talking with Wimmer that he still had more money to play with for effects and re-shoots?

If Wimmer went over budget, then so be it, shame on him...BUT, what if we're really seeing a 20mill dollar rough-cut that the studio is telling us Wimmer spent 30mill on?

[Psyclops]

I got the distinct impression from talking to Wimmer that reshoots were completely out of the question. He had to work with the existing footage and I don't think Sony/Sreen Gems was going to pony up the cash to fix anything other than the FX, which were incomplete (some were gray models with no texture). I was kind of shocked to see that the motorcycle chase looked incredibly similar to what was seen last year, I thought what we saw was a rough version of the scene which is part of why I enjoyed it. I figured the finished product would look much better but I still loved the very idea of a gravity defying vehicle that could race up buildings.

I honestly love some of the things Wimmer was trying to do with this movie and I've noticed that critics and fanboys seem to dismiss those things as silly and unworthy of cinematic interpretation. It's almost as if Kurt's imagination was working overtime and he put down even the most absurd action sequences on paper and then filmed everything exactly as he imagined it. It's a gutsy move because there's no guarantee that an audience will respond to it but I loved the fact that he was willing to go to those places and throw something at us that we've never seen on screen before. I think there's a lot of bad in ULTRAVIOLET and I'm no fan of either cut, but it would be a damn shame if people just dismiss it entirely because there are things that work, or could almost work, and those things deserve to be recognized.

[chevron07]

It's almost as if Kurt's imagination was working overtime and he put down even the most absurd action sequences on paper and then filmed everything exactly as he imagined it. It's a gutsy move because there's no guarantee that an audience will respond to it but I loved the fact that he was willing to go to those places and throw something at us that we've never seen on screen before.

I completely agree with this assessment. I felt like I was watching a sci-fi/action version of an art-house movie.

For me, it was hard watching this with my wife. She had this baffled look the whole time, but I was trying to be as objective as possible. I just wish it had been cleaned up so it wouldn't have been so embarrassing to to bring someone along with me to watch it. The lack of blood was alarming (I really want to hope that Wimmer had plans to add it in like the online game and invitation), and the effects were jarring (particularly the motorcycle chase and the very end of the movie).

It's like a master chef who has this great recipe but runs out of time/money and has to serve it in a strofoam container. If I close my eyes and overlook the presentation, it's real good. But I can't recommend it to a friend, or take someone out on a date to eat it.

Part of being a director is knowing your limits, and he should have left money for the polish. If the studio changed the limits for post production, than that's a different story, and Wimmer should be completely absolved.