Whatever happened to the cast of thousands?

Back in the day, an epic war movie really was epic. They used thousands of extras to recreate some pretty awesome battles. And the battles always looked better to me watching movies from back then when the people running around pretend stabbing and/or shooting each other really were people running around pretend stabbing and/or shooting each other. What ever happened to those days? These days in a war scene, you'd be lucky if 300 people in the battle are actually people. The rest are digitalized extras. And the battles have lost most of their gusto for me. So, what ever happened to the cast of thousands?

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Well in Braveheart at least they used thousands of extras....no CG people there.

But I know what you mean. Knowing that they used 100,000 extras is just plain awesome.

Imagine how expensive outfitting, training, hiring, managing, scheduling, and shooting thousands of extras must be when compared with digital effects that are getting cheaper and more realistic every year. It's gotten to the point that it rarely crosses my mind that these people are digital in some movies. King Kong and Lord of the Rings were pretty seamless.

I was watching one of the special features on the Alexander DVD the other day and Oliver Stone was bemoaning the fact that they couldn't afford extras, like they had in Spartacus (9,000), any more. At an average of $200 a day, plus benefits, in the USA, it was just more cost effective to use CGI.

What happened to the cast of thousands? They were ll cast in the LotR trilogy; according to wiki: "Background actors cast: 20,602"

I don't really see what the problem is, I mean, times have changed, technologies leaped forward and thousands of extras are just not necessary. For one, it's more expensive and secondly, it makes no difference. Are you seriously telling me that the CGI armies in LotR, Alexander, Troy or the Patriot looked unconvincing or unreal? On the contrary, they looked pretty good and certainly didn't have any less of an effect than the thousands of extras used in the old epics.
For me it's actually the way that with several old movies, it just becomes obvious that the battles are rather small just because they couldn't get that many extras, a problem that you just don't have with CGI. Even in Braveheart it's obvious, even though Gibson used a little bit of CGI to spice up a few scenes, it's pretty obvious how spaced out the scottish army stands to make them appear bigger. Nevertheless he managed a pretty good result with the right camera angles and editing.
I just don't see why I should shed a tear for real extras, it's not like everybody is CGI these days, they still usually have a hundred extras or more in uniform and wide battle shots simply don't require you to have 10,000 real people around.

Originally Posted by the Grim Squeaker

What happened to the cast of thousands? They were ll cast in the LotR trilogy; according to wiki: "Background actors cast: 20,602"

That's not enough, in War and Peace (1968) when they portrayed the Battle of Borodino, there were 120 000 extras as soldiers.

EDIT -
@ Mr Flint

Ah, apologies, I didn't see your post.

I still prefered the cast of thousands. Look at the movie 'Waterloo' that had to be the most spectacular battle movie in history and they didn't use a bit of cgi. There were 20,000 extras for that movie and it looks alot better to me than the new ones with 100 real people and 50,000 cg duplicates.

Originally Posted by Eric

I still prefered the cast of thousands. Look at the movie 'Waterloo' that had to be the most spectacular battle movie in history and they didn't use a bit of cgi. There were 20,000 extras for that movie and it looks alot better to me than the new ones with 100 real people and 50,000 cg duplicates.

The most spectacular was 1968 Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace. The battle of Borodino involved a cast of 120000 (A Guiness record).

I don't mind CGI when it's used right. By this I mean seamlessly intergrated and so it's not obvious. Take for example Lord of the Rings. It was rare you really felt "oh wow look at that clearly rendered army". They used extras when required to the point where by the time you had shots with CGI in, the camera had moved well away from them, meaning you couldnt really tell they were CGI. I actually think Alexander got it right to an extent. Take for example that shot where the armies are about to clash, and the camera is well above the soldiers- you really can't tell its all CGI at this point. When it got close the extras filled the gaps admirably (I think they had about 1500 for this). Its just a shame the camera men seemed to be on steroids for the battle sequences. It would have been so much better if each scene in the battles lasted more than 2-3 seconds...

The real epic for battles is Kolberg. 100,000 extras were used at the end of second world war for it. It's ironic that taking part in the film saved their lives from the rather bloody battles at the end of the war.

Originally Posted by Stalins Ghost

I don't mind CGI when it's used right.

That's what I mean. With today's technology it simply looks so good and convincing that there is no need for lots of extras, even if it were dirt cheap to hire them. Apart from that, "Last Samurai" actually used an interesting middleroad by simply duplicating the available extras. Instead of creating CGI soldiers, they just made several copies of that one group of extras they had and it looks pretty good on screen.

Modern Asian films still do it, a good example is the uncut, non-Americanised version of "The Legend of Surityothai." THOUSANDS of extras. In fact heres a list.

The Legend of Suriyothai (Thailand)
Heaven & Earth (Japan)
Ran (Japan)
Sema the Warrior of Ayyuthaya (Thailand)
Sino Dutch War of 1661 (China)
Bang Rajan (Thailand)

Thats just a few. Also note The Last Samurai had some pretty epic, all extras battles.

The biggest problem I would imagine is the Screen Actor's Guild and insurance system.

I have acting family members and friends who have told me they make bank on movie assignments. It's not uncommon for a non-speaking actor to make several hundred a day plus get meals comped. SAG ensures even extras are ridiculously overcompensated for studio pictures. Then think about the cost of insuring all those extras as they do rather dangerous battle scenes. It's a no-brainer for studios to opt out and use CGI.

I miss the old war movies too though - especially when horses and riders going flying. But when I found out they used tripwires and often killed horses in the process, I felt like a heartless bastard.

I will also say that while I didn't like Kingdom of Heaven overall, I found new respect for the movie when I realized a lot of the siege scenes were shot using real actors and trebuchets.