If you were one of the major stars cast in the 1978 film version of Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie’s beloved Hercule Poirot romp, you got a vacation out of it, too. The entire production was filmed on location, in Egypt. If you were cast in the new, plagued version starring and directed by Kenneth Branagh, you weren’t as lucky. Despite taking place in North Africa, the entire film was shot on a studio lot in Surrey, England, far from the pyramids of Giza.
Of course, you’d never know that to look at it! Or would you? The long-delayed murder mystery, which didn’t performed as well as the last Branagh-Poirot outing, recently hit Hulu, and now people are noticing that its movie magic isn’t always so magical.
https://twitter.com/FantomasCinema/status/1511101077055229960
A clip recently went viral showing some of the CGI backgrounds an army of techies whipped up to create the illusion that it was filmed in Egypt, all while the cast, among them Branagh and Annette Bening, was stranded in less sunny England. And, well, it’s not terribly convincing.
“I believe CGI is getting worse even as the tech advances,” one person wrote. “I don’t know if it’s laziness or cost cutting but so many shots look so much worse now than in the nineties. Look at these shots from DEATH ON THE NILE. It looks like it was shot at a local tv station’s weather map set.”
The filmmakers can’t even blame the pandemic on the lack of real location shooting. Nile was filmed back in 2019, before COVID turned film shoots into social distancing land mines, and long before one of its stars, Armie Hammer, was outed as an alleged sex freak and was subsequently no long all that present in the advertising.
As the clip made its way across social media, there were tons of jokes at its expense.
I couldn't get over how much this looked like an FMV adventure game so I made this https://t.co/0jO1qZt3bX pic.twitter.com/17YOV6lzuj
— Video Attack (@Vidtack) April 5, 2022
There are backgrounds on Horrible Histories that look way better than this https://t.co/tKjHzZokwp
— Duc de Vinny (comms open) (@DucDeVinny) April 5, 2022
https://twitter.com/gabrielroth/status/1511375817057652746
I think some of us are vastly misremembering how bad cgi was in the 90s. I was there. I remember Xena and Buffy. Not saying it's great, but we would have seen this in the 90s and our minds would've been blown. https://t.co/dFsNv6mC2k
— Emily Clark (@emilyabclark) April 5, 2022
https://twitter.com/Java_jigga/status/1511344245667512323
I noted this in my review, but it’s worth reiterating how *incredibly cheap* this movie (that I actually liked!) looks. The Emma Mackey entrance highlighted in the next tweet should’ve cost someone somewhere their job. https://t.co/5YD6a0LRtl
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) April 5, 2022
in all honestly I don't get why you film an adaptation of Death on the Nile and not have it be on location. that novel exists to give British actors an excuse to film in Egypt https://t.co/VzwT8IyD0D
— tulsi gabber (@wolicyponk) April 5, 2022
Some pointed out the real problem is with the lighting of the real-life actors not matching the CGI.
It isn't CGI making it look terrible.
It's bad lighting.
This is on a chroma key stage. The effect doesn't work because the stage is lit wrong. It looks like indoor lighting, rather than sunlight. Like they're doing the weather report in front of pyramids. https://t.co/9eR45NyOVr
— ｢Dᴀɴ｣💗💛💙 Lustycomic.com (@lustycomic_) April 5, 2022
There were also other examples of bad CGI backgrounds from the movie.
https://twitter.com/FantomasCinema/status/1511101460074934281
The images look even worse when compared with the ’78 version of Nile with Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Mia Farrow, and more, which, again, was actually shot in Egypt.
It’s especially galling when you compare it to Jack Cardiff’s stunning location work for the 1978 film: pic.twitter.com/DvP94nZEm9
— Wife Guy Fawkes (@Paul_The_Cote) April 5, 2022
Some, though, came to its defense. Sort of.
https://twitter.com/quasimaddi/status/1511361486949605377