Human Head: Prey 2 - Bounty trailer

Human Head created a world by mixing the best of sci-fi western so far (most people identify the genre with Star Wars and Blade Runner which is a good guess but it still oversimplifies the issue). Primarily I would distinguish sci-fi western from the genre of Cowboys and Aliens. This is not the type of world where cowboys wear hats and ride horses. It is the future of that world where people and culture are the same but adopted to  a more advanced technical level.

They begin with a 20th century airplane scene, we do not know why we are there but clearly we are on a journey. Airplanes are the symbols of many things and I think it is a very strong thing for an overture. In one hand the airplane is the symbol of safe travel. This aspect is very strong in the trailer. In the other hand airplanes are the tools for conquering the world and make it similar to the wild west globally. This is less important here. And thirdly airplanes and the ability to fly altogether is the symbol of human capability to face and overcome any (sometimes impossible) challenges. This can be read into this but not a necessary part of the thing. 

However strong the different aspects are I believe that all are present among these cuts. 

On the airplane, we are safe and calm, this is emphasized by showing the air-marshal on the first shoot walking between the line of seats. We watch people looking out of the window. There are empty seats so we know that there is no emergency, just an ordinary Sunday flight from LA to New York (or whatever). By having the air-marshal on board we see that it is (still) the wild west where they had Marshals to accompany and defend the property of the state on travel (mainly cargo owned by the treasury or criminals as he does here). Just to clarify some confusions about this concept let me give a short historical summary of these services. United States Marshal Service was founded in 1789 while Federal Air Marshal services started by Kennedy (1963) to secure important or high risk flights. An air marshal in this sense is not to be confused with an air marshal in the military ranking system which is a high responsibility rank.  

The wild west aspect is emphasized by a historical confusion in the trailer. Our hero has the Federal Marshal Service badge instead of the Air Marshal Service badge. This can be considered as a mistake but since we are in the future the two services could have been merged by that time so this is not necessarily a mistake. I would understand this as being the artistic expression of the above detailed complex symbolism and therefore an alteration by intention. 

The two different badges

Of course suddenly something terrible happens and our Deputy U.S. Marshal crashes with his plane to somewhere out of Earth. Now this part is a little bit confusing. It looks great when earth is way behind the horizon but the audience just needs to make an intellectual jump about where we are at the moment.

This intellectual jump creates the atmosphere of being lost. We feel exactly the same as one would after such a crash. The only possible crash site seems to be the Moon. But wait a minute. On the moon our hero could not really survive. So where we are? And how a plane crashes to the moon. That thing cannot be that simple. Then comes the relief: "ah the aliens... that explains everything". 

Now if we stop for a minute. The highest expectations from the human capability to fly was to reach the stars or at least the moon. This was at the top of the twentieth century's technical advancement. We could say that we almost crashed into the moon (metaphorically speaking) by the speed of the technical development of the last few decades. There are people out there in their 40s who just could not catch up and are still shocked by the new world just have been built. A great number of people could not adapt to this new world and they feel like our hero in the trailer. They remember where they came from (Earth in the trailer, wild west of the '60s-'80s in their minds). If one thinks that this is an old generation one should think about the origin of the education and cultural heritage of our generation. Kids born around 1990 still played more cowboy games back in the garden then WOW. Now these kids face those aliens who were raised on e-mail, facebook, x-box. What can a wannabe cowboy guy do on this new planet? I think this is the question through which this genre should be understood. I know its sounds oldish but hello (!!!) its a PG18 game. 

So we are crashed into the future, where there are only aliens... and Johny Cash so the wild west survives as it always does. By the opening shot on this new world our deputy marshal jumps into this messy jungle and starts to kick ass. I think, but this is not the strongest claim about the trailer, that there is something supporting my interpretation in the appearance of the aliens he hunts down. Both suffer from the stereotypical physical symptoms of being an info-mage.

Our old-fashioned marshal arrives to a city merged from classic sci-fi visions like Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, Star Wars (Coruscant), Fifth Element. The interesting thing is that not much transport is present in the city so its a perfect site for freerun or parkour. 

This feature of the set is fully exploited later. The streets have several levels and they are more like little islands to gather on not real routes for handling everyday business or sell or serve any functions. It is true that at the beginning (at 1:36) there is a spot in yellow light what can be a bar or a small shop but it is clearly empty and nobody is there making it completely dead. Of course on could say that after a shootout its normal for the staff to hide but the rest of the civilians seem to be quite ignorant to the gunfire. If this is so then I would assume some of them would continue shopping as well not just standing around the gunfight. This calmness is a little strange though and its only function could be to make the criminal push them out of his way. Since there is even a pause of shock after the murder of the bodyguards one cannot say that they just have no time to react. So either the shop should function as well (even a shocked shopkeeper would be satisfactory) or everybody should break into panic. This all matters because despite the walls and some big functionless boxes I cannot pick any life on the street. Even if it is a getto there should be some citylife. The only people we cross are thugs. But thugs standing around does not make profit without the civilians being terrorized. This is like a bad video game. You reach a point, kill the thugs who just stand there without doing nothing and move on to the next stage. Of course this is a video game trailer but even if the game itself does not create a living city just a jungle of thugs to shoot at, the trailer as a short movie should be more realistic. 

The run through the city is really mad (in a good sense) and clearly shows a great deal of obsession. We don't even think about how this guy is going to get back where he started. That seems to be an other matter.
Thanks to the graduation of introducing new features of the world we are touched with the obsession of the bounty hunter all along the pursuit. First we see that electric bola then suddenly we see the target to teleport forward then a little shootout and the slow-motion/anti-gravity grenade. Then the railway system and finally the capturing device. This all happens under approximately one minute. This much information makes people tired and we feel that after the successful catch we had enough of action. We have that "oh not again" feeling when we see more thugs approaching. Fortunately our hero has additional new devastating weapons so our attention is at the top level again: "now he will blow them!". This is required for the final joke to hit. When we see the big monstrous alien approaching we think we are screwed, this is too much. But then the computer tells us that this is a target and from that time on its just an other job to do and it should be a piece of cake. And this is the point where we are bought completely.
The best novelty is the use of the camera and the cuts. The airplane scene is live action. The crash site is blurred out but its clearly CGI we just do not care because we cannot even see what is on the picture. At the opening pictures of the animation we have unusual lights so we cannot compare it to our everyday experiences. Actually they have a pretty nice leather texture there. At 1.10 when we look down before the jump the interaction of the different lights is just amazing. That richness of lights is taken back when we face the first target. I think that is the point when they switch back to the ordinary CGI visuality. Fortunately we have the helmet-camera to distract this experience.
At the closeup of the alien (1.25) they show its beautiful anatomy but what I miss is some imperfection. Not necessarily on the face but at least some on the clothes. However I love the blood spill onto the camera at 1.31. But if you check 2.36 you clearly see that the clothes of the villain are still sterilized after such a chase. I think this hangs out of the script. He was running, jumping, falling crashing in a getto. He cannot be so clean no matter what they made his clothes of.
About the lights I already mentioned that at 1.10 they are really pretty. Not just pretty but very realistic. But that ends when the villains get some focus. At 1.33 if you freeze its clearly the lighting of a video game. Whites spots are overemphasized and burnt out. This is clearly a conceptual problem since if they put lower lights onto the street this does not happen. If you check how realistic his cap is at 2.08 with only a little shine on it you know what I mean. That much of light intensity could have been enough (for shades not for the whole run).
On the final pictures (at 3.00) we see a very difficult task to accomplish. If you see the big monster's stomach there are smooth shadows while on its head there is a shining burnout surface. It is very difficult to make such a scene to be realistic and I think they did a very good job. But I am still puzzled why did they put so much light around and why are those so strong. I think they still did a nice job at 3.04 on the marshal's shading. But that is clearly not the artificial lighting we saw before. It is more like sunshine (since its completely white).
I think the render is almost perfect, no big mistakes, no messy parts. For the anatomy its funny that they have cut out almost the full brain of the aliens. People usually put more brain to aliens to explain why they are smarter than us. I agree with the creators that this is a stupid assumption. They might have been around for only a thousand years longer and then they could have built up a more advanced culture than we have. Its a good point. And emphasizes the brainless criminal metaphor as well. The design for all the aliens are very original which is a hard work nowadays. I am not  really convinced about the flat-head ones at the beginning though but anyway you never know what nature can produce (I think star wars legalized this type of biology).

The lights (despite the concept) are very consistent and the particle systems are very nice. The background is all deeply detailed even when you see a great landscape or a long tunnel in the background. A lot of leading companies don't do that, they cover up complex details with 2D visuals. 

The only mistake I have discovered in animation is at 2:32 when the marshal jumps onto his target from the train and they both fall back. I think this is not proper physics there. If the target falls into the wall (several meters forward) the marshal should have landed there as well. It is conceivable but I think people notice that it is at least rare to happen. Actually on this part, I just have to note that I love that the villain has some accent. This is a great detail however unlikely it is for an alien to have a Russian-like English accent. (Maybe when they first arrived to earth they considered Russia as the main market?)

Story: 9/10 (Not too much happening there but it still has a lot to tell in metaphors, definitely more than a simple shootout but we barely know anything about the people or the world or even what is happening there)
Director: 9/10 (Great smooth symbolism, nice gradual storytelling, its a shame that the city is that empty of real life)

Modelling: 10/10 (Great, creative anatomy, perfect details)

Animation: 9/10 (One minor mistake with the jumping capture, otherwise perfect)
Render and lights: 10/10 (I have not found any mistake, still looking. Great job)
Material/textures: 10/10 (Same thing for the materials and textures but hey its easy for a sci-fi)
Photography: 10/10 (Dynamic camera movement. I love the switches between first person and ordinary cameras. And it is used creatively.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (I think the switching between the different types of cameras is very demanding for the editor. More would have been too much since the action is already very exhausting to watch.)
Music: 7/10 (Not the greatest toon, but perfectly fits to the rest of the movie. However it gives too much resemblance to chasing scene from Public Enemies. The reference is very nice, its the too much part only which could have been avoided.)
Visual concept: 8/10 (The overall visual concept is not that original however it uses great reference and I love it. The anatomy is super-original but the city itself does not really show anything new. Its really similar to Star Wars and especially the video games. This is supported by the lack of real life of civilians. I cannot even see real doors on the street. How these people get there where they are? The embarrassing thing is that a few more detail would have been completely enough. But our job here is to push these things not to overlook them. And I still insist that they should have lower the lights of the city a little bit.)

___________________

Overall: 9.2

EpicGames: Fortnite cinematic trailer

Epic Games' new cinematic trailer on the under-development new game Fortnite. A lot of people does not like the concept but I still love the fun side of zombie breakouts. Since this is a cartoon trailer there is a great space to move around the concept.

Developer: Epic Games Inc


Its style resembles to Toy Story very much. Well actually a mixture of Toy Story and Walt Disney. A very good marriage. The story is very simple: some guys go and get garbage to build a junk-bunker in a city then zombies arrive and they have to defend it against them. I love the handheld camera effect. Why would they record it? Because they gone mad? Since there is no youtube anymore... :). Anyway they blow up a big house and then they collect the... road-signs from it? :) Well, lovely madness. I am sure there are easier ways to get road-signs than blowing up a three-level building.

But they are in a rush so they do not think... at all. Again if I was building a bunker I would use something heavier than... road-signs.
Okay the way that black guy comes up from the ground is a little bit weird. I think even in a Disney animation you would have some surface scratches for such an event. So the dark smoke is, I think a little bit thin as a solution.
Anyway I love the way they rush-build that bunker. Of course electricity goes down just before the zombies appear. Well, actually I don't know what kind of creatures are they, but something similar as the ones appeared in I am Legend.
And they get the camera. And it turns out that they are mad as well.
Yeah I think I would be one of the mad guys on both sides. And most of us would be.
So this thing does not want anything else just to show us how we rush to hide from the problems. We do not think but fuss around no matter how big the problem is. I love that it is so important to make the video for them even if it takes time while they apparently in a hurry. And finally they just leave the camera outside.
And what happens when the zombies find it? They hold it and they bawl into it. Very funny. Maybe just for me.

And we clearly feel I think that it is a caricature of the daily routine aspect of living in a zombie-breakout.
The nicest thing about this video is that they just do not want to do anything more than they supposed to. They just want to make us laugh on the zombie-breakout thing and if we think deep about the metaphor we may have a good laugh on the social issue the zombie genre aims to picture. Very original concept and great fun. :).


Scores: 
Story: 10/10 (What can be funny about zombies. Here is your answer :) A world of full of idiot survivors and mad zombies hahaha!!!)

Director: 9/10( (Perfectly illustrative and modest direction.) )

Modelling: 9/10 ( Hard to take any concept on those creatures. Even in a cartoon we need to get some idea what could they be. Zombies? Aliens? That popping up thing again is shared with concept and animation. )

Animation: 9/10 (Perfect animation. Still that popping up thing...)
Render and lights: 8/10 (consistent, cartoonish render sometimes slides into ingame graphics lights and projected shadows are good but there should have been some particle systems like flying dust)
Material/textures: 5/10 (a lot of details are missing and they are definitely ingame style materials - almost complete lack of bump shaders)
Photography: 10/10 (I love that the camera is hand-held, animated perfectly)
Editing/effects: 8/10 (Edit? Well yes! I love the fast-winding of the tape. I forgot the time I have seen that thing. Good video-tapes. The video-noise is a little bit too much for me.)
Music: 8/10 (The music contributes very much to the dawn-tension like in a Dracula movie. Well not too much though but I don't miss anything it is just not a great track. The overall audio is perfect.)
Visual concept: 7/10 (I think this is great concept some details still missing though. And the zombies are too cartoonish. Even in a cartoon we need some bones and anatomy. And what is that smoke?)

____________________

Overall: 8.3

Transformers Fall of Cybertron Cinematic Trailer

So in my Monday post I promised that I will tell you which brand new game trailer uses the Puscifer track: The Humbling River as its soundtrack. It is the new cinematic trailer of the under development transformers game: Fall of Cybertron. This is not an epic trailer, neither it is intended to be one. It is really a teaser since we just have the feeling that it is too short. However with the smooth music of Puscifer we are satisfied and relaxed. So it make the feeling that it is a complete and finished thing. We only know that the big robots are in a deperate fight and one of their best (everybody"s favourite) Bumblebee. We easily figure it out that this is a futile and already lost battle. So the set is very dramatic (and in this sense epic). We see that these robots have a good standard of camaraderie so they help the wounded Bumblebee (actually it is Optimus Prime himself if I 

am right).

Created by: High Moon Studios (Activision, Blizzard,) Hasbro,
Release date: 2011.dec.06.
Official title: Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - Cinematic Trailer

Well Transformers is a franchise where you can easily lost. A lot of complex and difficult things are going on. Mechanical life forms, time fluctuations, planet-transformers, great upgrades etc. So I will not try to untangle the lines (actually time fluctuation allows the story to be inconsistent as well so no hope to get around in one round).But the trailer is nicely done. In general you have smooth music with fitting slow motion animation of a great battle. It has a very heroic atmosphere which fits the story and the set.
We see some blue smoke or mist and the eyes of Optimus are slowly unfolding of this blue mist. The camera starts to pane back from his head and in the background we see some explosions so we realize that it is a war. I think this gradual way of composition is very smooth. Then we have our first shock. Oh My Dear Old... Bumblebee!!!! Cries out the kid in our heart. "WHAT HAPPENED WITH BUMBLEBEE?!!!" And we are already bought.Very cheap buy but certainly effective. Not only seeing them in a great war, but in such an EPIC!, GREAT!!, APOCALYPTIC!!! war where Bumblebee is injured so badly. And we see the robot with an injury and fading (by the loss of sparks?). Anyway the scene from the blue, uninteresting mist elevates to the highest tension in 20 seconds. Hm... that is an acceleration. Well done. The incoming attacking robots cannot reach Optimus and he does not fight for everybody's greatest concern is poor Bumblebee. Well all of us (you can admit) agree with those guys. NO MATTER WHAT BUT DEFEND BUMBLEBEE!

And again! Optimus puts him down and like a father (well a father robot at least) blinks his eyes and "tells him" that everything will be all right. Really touching scene. No matter whether robots can have feelings, no matter what will happen next we now know that it is all safe.

I think this trailer just lets us be kids again. And this is a good thing. It is really innocent. We have those feelings don't we? That these robots are strong allies of us. And we admire them for that.
Of course the final battle is not on the set. They leave us here obviously because the final battle will be included in the game. We only see the higher upgraded dinosour-like robot to throw some fire onto the enemy. And we know that everything will be ok now.

Concerning the render there are some nice things to mention. I think the lights are very evenly distributed while it is really hard to decide how such lights would look like this a good way to make the light-set. It is believable so it might be true. And that is well-enough. Same is true for the animation. This is an other planet (it is not really determined by the comic book how big it is exactly but it is determined definitely that it is indereminate what material builds it up :) no more puzzle please!) where strange creatures live. So we have no idea what is the proper setting for the gravitation. I think they could have been a little bit heavier. But how would you show that? You cannot show it by the damage they make to the environment (it is their own planet) and nor by mass movement (they should have develop some proper muscle-like things to move smoothly). So this is a really difficult task. My suggestion would be that explosion-fire should work the same way as they do on earth since we know that the atmosphere is very similar to our owns. So I think if things blow up the same way there as they do here but everything is more massive and heavier than here then there should be some different relation between explosion there and here. Maybe if bigger explosions would happen and if they would move them to less distance than they would on earth the whole thing would get a better, more alien-like framing.
The textures and materials are good enough, they are mostly the usual damaged metal. The fast changes of light makes it hard to judge what we see but I am sure about one thing. At the beginning Optimus' head looks like as if it was made of plastic. This is an easy mistake since most of us remember these guys from the toys we used to get. But I think this mistake especially for the beginning, and for a closeup and for a slow-motion is just too much. Of course we do not care but they are apparently able to make good materials so they should have corrected this.
The models are of course perfect, they are vividly animated, always turn and tumble and move their parts. So that is really nice. Huge amount of beautiful fires of explosions pampers the eye.
The only thing I miss is some particle systems. So much explosion and fire would certainly produce some soot flying in the air. And a lot of smoke probably. That would improve the visual a lot.
And two more things. One is that if there is fire on this planet there must be flammables as well. But nothing actually burns or heats (so many explosions but no heated or melted metal on the set). And if this is a war, at least some wounded dead robots would be nice since now there is only one wound on the scene the one of Bumblebee. Megatron beats one to death but then it disappears from the set. And if one is beaten to death some external marks are usually present. Like sparks, or short circuits, twitches of the body, malfunction, etc. Something indicating their agony. I think this is important for every fight scene.


Scores:

Story: 8/10 (Heroic, Romantic, Innocently touching. The "I am big but we are bigger" cliché at the end is a usual transformers thing but not necessarily applicable.)
Director: 10/10 (Nice gradual elaboration of the story and the set, and even the transformers universe.)

Modelling: 10/10 (Perfect Meshes.)

Animation: 8/10 (Consistently animated characters but no particle systems. Really rich fire animation but again no smoke or dust.)
Render and lights: 10/10 (There are no inconsistencies in lights they affect beautifully the environment.)
Material/textures: 7/10 (Good overall performance but one serious mistake at the beginning.)
Photography: 9/10 (Nice composition, no messy or empty spaces, no imbalances but there are some "we are posing together on the placard of the game" settings.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Very tough work. In such a short video a lot of thing happens. And we don't even feel that we are switching.)
Music: 10/10 (I have been listening to this music for almost a whole day. Great choice. And the audio is again very nicely attached to the music. I appreciate that the music set is not mute but in accordance with the track.)
Visual concept: 7/10 (Overall transformers illustration with some already mentioned mistakes - wounds, smoke.)

____________________
Overall: 8.9

Copyright Notice: The video is made available by http://www.transformersgame.com's youtube channel transformersgame1 by leaving the embed option open for everyone. All intellectual rights for the video are reserved for Activision and High Moon Studios. I only claim the copyright for its interpretation and evaluation.

HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS, and its associated characters are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. © 2011 Hasbro. All rights reserved. Game © 2011 Activision Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Activision is a registered trademark of Activision Publishing, Inc.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations Cinematic Trailer by Digic Pictures

Cinematic Trailer of Assassin's Creed Revelations

Copyright (c) 2010Digic Pictures Ltd. All rights reserved.

Digic Pictures, a small garage company from the EU, Hungary now one of the best if not the best of 3d animation companies of the world. They innovate and elevate 3d animation to a new level in every videos. Not only great modelling and render but excellent direction and music. Not just now but most of the time. I should make a special event for them as well but not this year, since this year is for an other excellent team: Blizzard.

But until next week's Blizzard anniversary event let us erect our first idol with the "inspirational standard" title hanging on it. This means that you can hardly do anything better than this. Of course we always keep the 0.2 points to state that this is possibly only the second best video. As they say, "always know that you are the second best since the first can't be better."

Forecast for the week

Check out what will happen this week!!

Diablo 3 opening cinematic 2011

The new intense cinematic intro of Diablo3 is introduced by Blizzard. It develops new artistic means by combining traditional fantasy art with Manga animation for the beginning few seconds. As far as all this is set  to be appeared in a book which turns out to be the dream of someone it makes reference to rich symbolism.
and rather new visual experience.

Of course we could think that this prophetic dream is just the sign of a shortage of production time where concept art cannot develop to a higher CGI level. But anyway let turn ourselves into a charitable interpreter and say that this is an artistic solution no matter how necessary it was.

Anyway the solution is very nice, even if it has some immodest symmetry to Hellboy II's animated prologue scene in its originality (and the origin of all such thing: Fallout2). It is a good start to try Maya3d’s capability of producing cartoons made of pure concept art.And it is nice that they have the classic blizzard crow for the beginning.

The dream or prophecy is of a young girl, one of the few very realistic woman characters of the history of cgi. This makes this trailer extraordinary already. Very professional modelling and render as it has been always with Blizzard. So if you want a school example of CGI animation you should check this out no matter what. It is really hard to find any mistake in it. Maybe the first cartoon part is a little bit too long and perspective space is not really working everywhere there. Maybe it is so by the authors intention to develop some tension by the imperfect perspectivity, I don’t have any answers for these questions.

The script is little bit too ordinary but well this is this game anyway. So there comes apocalypse and BUMM. And that will be of course terrible. The orphan living with his uncle (it is the grandfather type actually so they have about 60 years between them which is a little bit too much) is not the most shockingly new idea I have ever came across with but the realization is really nice. They have a very intimate connection. So I did not feel that I am jumping into a cliché.

I find a little bit... well I don’t know. When it happens we all know that something will happen with the old folk and his niece and when the small drops of wood and stone starts to pour from the roof we all know that a big boom will happen very-very soon. I think the cuts here could have been different to elevate tension. It has the slight feeling that the old folk just too slow for this. Actually this frustration is a nice artistic tool to emphasize that the he is just too old for this.
There is however one undeniable problem with the intro. We have a big scene of apocalyptic war with godlike heroes where we hear that the world ends soon. And what happens? It begins... with a meteorite striking the earth? C’mon! Is that all?

I think technically it is a perfect clip those guys made everything they could and what they were told to picture they did very well. But that guy who figured out the story could have had a little more time to think a little bit out of the box of fantasy clichés. 

So here the come the numbers:

Story: 6/10 (good old story, no surprises)
Director: 6/10 (we know what will happen next for the whole time of the clip)
Modelling: 10/10 (great, detailed job, phenomenal!) 
Animation: 10/10 (All bodies move differently, perfect weight control, eye-movement, they can be alive!)
Render and lights: (10/10) (Fantastic in all good sense. I could not pick a lost ray of light there)
Material/textures: 10/10 (Beautiful despite the low light set of the clip. Even next to the fire, materials looks nice.)
Photography: 10/10 (Nice heroic compositions)
Editing/effects: 8/10 (that do you believe me part could have been edited out easily)
Music: 9/10 (Nice composition in accordance with the rest of the audio but nothing extraordinary)
Visual concept: 10/10 (nice classic fantasy art just the way we all like it)

____________________
Overall: 9.0

Copyright notice for Diablo:
©1996 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Diablo and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer II. (Director Cut)

"These people Adam, they are like ghosts..." says the oracle, expressing our own feelings about today's social life. Of course we want to hear that these guys are the past and they cannot stop us, the future.
I think most of us are in when he says that. And of course even more enthusiasm comes when he says that to Adam who is the first man created by God, and the hero we would very like to identify ourselves.
continued from Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer I.  (Director Cut)

Deus ex 2011

Terminator 2 1991

Here the render is just great. The reflection of the face on the window with the beautiful sight of the city and the sides of the great neo-neo-gothic window pillars. And for the word "future" a plane from Terminator 2 flies away from the window. And most of us do not care because the moment is just great despite of the unnoticeable window frames (which looked so great from the side). These frame is alike a UI frame which is pretty bad if you re-start the video from that point as I just did :). But in the flow of the trailer you just do not notice it for there are so many things happening there.

Then we change to the view where Adam is recreated by the machines. This is again a great metaphor. Since originally God created Adam, now Adam is created (or at least re-formed) by machines. Only one doctor is there with the machines not the bunch of people as they used to be in the renaissance scene. And meanwhile the doctor says that the body may heal after recreation but the mind... Well the mind is not simply weaker but "not always so resilient". This leads us to the social aspect of the metaphor: society may find new ways of existence but the mind of the people remains the same so humanity falls back again and again to the same historical states as we see from the scope of the trailer. And after this a short reference to psychology as Adam is shown in two short shots. The first when he faces the camera the looks into it. The other is when the camera shows us the side view and he turns to us, and suddenly shots his shades and his face becomes aggressive. This shows exactly the former statement of the doctor on a personal level and makes reference to the historical heritage of humanity of aggression and war (well I am not sure whether on this point I go too far about this).
And that old way of living is of course the Darwinian struggle for survival. As Adam attacks the wall and breaks a hole into it the next picture suggests that he breaks through the web of secrets of this world and again he breaks through ourselves.
This claim is supported by the next event with the hacker. Adam cannot save him for the web is stronger and faster than him. Before going further let us have a look at the view for a second.

After the beautiful city view we see the landing air plane and I just cannot decide whether it is made of painted steel or plastic. And I am tempted to the latter one. Its not even chromed which is a shame. Even the 20 years older terminator plane looks more realistic at least on this picture above. It does not take a long time so it can be considered as a minor problem, but still it is not a real big deal to chrome a surface with maya 3d either...
The robots re-framing Adam have the same little bit of strange materials on them but well they are hi-tech  medical tools so they can be built from any UFO metals. However I still think that the arms are beautiful but I think the their chrome-rubbery material is a little bit too original. Its seems to be just strange and it is not introduced well enough to make sense in the context. I only mean here that I had to think what they look like for the first time. The x-ray see is nice and the movement of the soldier is dynamic enough. And now the break through. Well I think it is really hard to sneak-break-through a wall. I think most of you agree with me :). I would have used faster and stronger moves and rapid-cut for this. If one blows the bricks off the walls just behind you, you would be thrown away by the bricks only unless he is fast enough to grab the soldier before he is knocked down by the bricks. The hole and the lights are nice afterwards and the little pace is again a good catch. But the way the bricks fall down from nothing is... well believable but it would have been nicer if they extend the hole I think. The sparks are on the other side not realistic and while I understand that they are the wires in the wall or some security system, they are really unnecessary. So I think if there are any major ones, this is a major mistake in the trailer. However for this far you are way behind the line when you are already bought by the authors so you just don't listen to such details. The disappearance is again a very nice thing after this. And if I'm at my charity-side of understanding I think the sparks emphasize that phenomena. But well they are again unnecessary.
The 2d footage is nice again while the music elevates to a next level of intensity. I think the sparks of electricity at the hackers head are much nicer than the ones from the wall (that is again a puzzle in understanding the former ones). However again I think those are unnecessary, almost stupid. Since Adam shouts "No!" we know that he is not the killer. But such sparks should burn the hacker so much we should see some smoke and way more pain on his face.

The transition to the fight is beautiful, first everybody thinks that these two are the same scene. The animation is a nice combination of rapid-cutting and motion capture. Fast camera movements emphasize the heroic pictures of the scene and I am soo glad that we do not see some ugly animation of the smashed head of one of the soldiers.
Then again the riot view. I just cannot identify the mats of the people's clothes. I admit that I don't care about the mats on Adam and the soldiers for those may be of special tissue. Again nice sparks on the disappearing girl but her face is expressing too much pleasure (like a child) and less concentration. Of course she must be mad, but this madness is not analysed deeply. She could have a personality as well. She is now simply an idiot. But still a professional. It has the Mad Max atmosphere. I doubt that in such a world of "ghosts" such mad people gain high-tech equipment. The feeling of the "enemy" is way more professional during the whole intro than her face in the crowd.

The riot-scene and Adam's struggle merges into one big chaotic battle which clears away at into the clean picture of the sun.I again don't really understand this "sun against the black sky" thing. This could be a reference to Blade Runner again where in the night-rain-scene a pigeon flies towards the blue sky but that mistake has been corrected since that time.

So as an overview I really liked this clip. The details are much better at the beginning than in the end, but I think this is not from a lack of attention but maybe some open-air render mistake which is responsible for some constant minor mistakes. But it is a hard task to render night-scenes in artificial futuristic lights. I think less light would make a great deal of improvement on those scenes. If the authors had some night-riot footage from youtube as reference they would have added fewer lights maybe.

So my final evaluation:

Story: 10/10 (epic!)
Director: 10/10 (great job!)
Modelling: 10/10 (great job while simplified surfaces) 
Animation: 9/10 (Minor mistakes in details)
Render and lights: (7/10) (Could not reach some almost impossible goals. One major mistake. Some mistakes in details)
Material/textures: 8/10 (constant but minor ambivalences)
Photography: 10/10 (nice sets and pictures)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Despite that one cutting mistake great)
Music: 10/10 (I have the soundtrack on my playlist now on youtube, check the piano version as well)
Visual concept: 9/10 (minor mistakes, some non-contextual reference)
____________________
Overall: 9.3

Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer I. (Director Cut)

It is great to have so much remakes these days. This can be either a historical reflection or a cultural self-reinterpretation. Whatever is the case, it is a great gift to the middle aged guys to revive their childhood. Deus Ex (2000) was one of the enigmatic games of the millennia taking place in 2052's cyberpunk future. However it is only a ten years old game, it already has the sense of a remake and a nostalgic ambience. However it is a sequel to the old game and a prequel to the story of the 2000 game. But actually it is not why I am talking about its trailer. No my friends, the reason is that this is supposedly one of the best cgi clips of these days.