LOS ANGELES -- Computer graphics, once the rising stars of Hollywood for resurrecting dinosaurs and creating lifelike aliens, face a key test of their role in two films opening Friday.
Filmmakers will be closely watching the box-office returns for Antz and What Dreams May Come, which both rely heavily on computer graphics, industry experts said.
Some filmmakers fear too many computer-generated effects may make stories and characters unbelievable. As Sony Pictures Entertainment learned this summer with Godzilla, if the effects don't look real, audiences won't turn out.
Sony reportedly spent about US$175 million to make and market Godzilla, but the fact that some effects looked pixelated on the big screen left some moviegoers laughing at the picture, not with it.
"There's been so much hardware publicity and so many movies get produced as 'now see the world's largest computer generated (effect)' that it really has a tendency to destroy suspension of disbelief, and I think that's a real danger in films today," said Stuart Robertson of POP Film, one of three visual effects companies working on What Dreams May Come.
In What Dreams May Come, Robin Williams plays the central character, Chris, who is killed in a car accident. His spirit searches the afterlife for his deceased wife.
Early reviews have praised the movie and the effects, which place actors inside paintings inspired by masters like Claude Monet, artworks Chris believes depict the afterlife.
Robertson calls the film "a daring movie" that "tries to overwhelm people with beautiful environments," then he adds with a chuckle, "I hope it works."
Antz is far less complicated, but just as compelling. Woody Allen does the voice for 'Z,' an ant whose individuality conflicts with his duty to work for the good of the colony.
It is the first computer-animated movie from DreamWorks -- the studio founded by Steven Spielberg, record mogul David Geffen, and ex-Walt Disney Co. studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg -- and it is only the second full-length, computer-animated movie ever made, after Disney's 1996 hit, Toy Story.
Disney has its own computer-animated movie about an ant, called A Bug's Life, set to debut in November.
If Antz and A Bug's Life prove as successful as Toy Story, it's a sure bet Hollywood will keep making computer-animated movies because they are less costly to make than traditional animation, using hand drawings and paintings.
Executives at Pacific Data Images, the Silicon Valley computer company partly owned by DreamWorks, said they were able to make Antz with about half the people -- 200 -- in half the time -- 1 1/2 years -- that most animated features require.
If Antz sounds like a children's movie, it's not. Much of the comedy relies on adults for laughs, and industry watchers believe that fact may prove its undoing at the box office.
"I disagree," said Tim Johnson, the movie's other PDI-based director. "We weren't so much about making an adult film as about not making a film that compromised itself for toddlers."
Animated movies traditionally target kids, however. Whether adults want to see a movie built completely on computer animation remains the big question.
