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How do?

So going on a bit of a ramble here folks. Hopefully it’ll prove thoughtful and entertaining enough for you to read the whole post. If not, only got myself to blame.

Been thinking about this thread for a couple of weeks now, and I imagined it in various forms. But the singular fact that I’m not actually qualified beyond being a movie fan for the subject means it’s best presented as a simple opinion piece. And as ever, I’m very into having my opinions challenged and myself educated. But here goes.

Ready?

CGI is all too often lazy.

Now, done well, it’s seemless. I don’t even really think at the time ‘cool CGI’. Take the last two Avengers movies. That to me is how you do it. Some stuff (Hulk, baddies etc) are of course mocap type CGI. That’s largely unavoidable. But there is so much in those movies ( like the time suits from Endgame) which I learned long after the fact to be CGI. FactFiend did a video about it on YouTube if you want to know more. I’ll always recommend FactFiend, me.

But.....it’s also the single worst source of cinematic laziness. Because it’s becoming ever cheaper, ever cheaper movies are employing it.

I’m not ragging on shonky CGI, where it doesn’t look at all realistic. I’m not even ragging on objectively crap CGI, such as the digital removal of Henry Cavill’s tache during Justice League reshoots. That’s broadly fine with me.

It’s when it actively discourages or outright replaces the story being good.

When I look back, most of my favourite horror movies of yore were cheaply made fare. From stonecold classics such as Alien, to very, very silly gorefests like Street Trash. And they all used practical effects. No, they’re not always good. But they’re typically inventive. For monster movies, it seems often true that where the puppet or suit was limited, the film maker followed the ‘less is more’ approach. That, when done right (and I fully accept my glasses are on and indeed rose tinted), the resultant dark and dingey palette served to increase the tension.

But, cheap CGI? Yeah. You can do pretty much whatever now. It doesn’t matter. Make it as gory as you can, and hang the actual plot. The poor rules are just going to see crap effect after ludicrous ‘we only wrote this because CGI allows us to be this bloody stupid’ scene.

Going further back, we naturally find stop motion. I watched Jason and the Argonauts yesterday. What a cracker. Genuinely a classic for good reason. Sure, when Jason and his men are fighting say, the Harpies, there’s a lot of wild flailing going on. But the creature effects work just about right in that scene for suspension of disbelief. Talos, Hydra and the Skellingtons? Far more convincing. And because they’re physical models superimposed, they have a certain ‘on screen weight’ I favour.

CGI has all but replaced that. Yes, there is the happy middle ground of practical spruced up and polished with CGI. But then we come to god awful trash like the fairly recent prequel (I’d say insult) to The Thing - an absolute masterclass in practical effect horror. Worst bit there, apparently they went down the practical root, but some prick in a suit demanded it be dubbed over with CGI (again, there’s a FactFiend video about that. Go. Watch. Binge the lot. You won’t regret it).

It does have its uses. Absolutely, 100%. I’m not being a snob about it and demanding all movies somehow meet my standards.

But where many practical effect films were made cheaply? Tripe like Sharknado were made on the cheap. Crap and ill advised CGI seems to be used in place of actual film making talent.

I cannot look at hokey nonsense such as Street Trash, The Stuff, Frankenh**ker, Basketcase etc and not see the love that went into them. No they were never going to set the box office ablaze, but at least they were as well crafted as the budget allowed. CGI? Sharknado. A movie trying so hard to be a B-Movie, it overshoots, goes under the shark, and lands square in the bin.

Hopefully this is somewhat coherent!

I watched a YouTube video that laid it out pretty nicely a couple of months back, and put forward the idea that I can't really disagree with.

When CGI started, I mean proper CGI...it was done by a handful of companies in the world, who were at the cutting edge of technology. Huge investments, insanely expensive, etc. There was a stunning fact, something like Jurassic Park featuring only 4-5 minutes of CGI on screen, etc. Some CGI wasn't great, but it was being done at the highest level it could be.

Since then, the tech has become cheaper, easier, and more available...and studios are battling for contracts and work, offering up CGI work for cheap. The market is basically flooded with mediocre CGI studios - willing to put in thousands of CGI shots within a few months, and willing to work their employees 14-16 hours a day in the crunch time before a film is released (not dissimilar from how video games companies "crunch" to release a game). Hell, look at what people can do with apps on their phones....let alone a supremely expensive computer with mega-expensive software.

This has led to consistently "meh" CGI that gets the job done but is not pushing boundaries. The best CGI is the CGI you don't notice, but I think we can all agree it's supremely easy to pick out constant CGI in large action films. The Marvel films are a how-to in making mediocre CGI "explosions", etc. etc.

I think you make an excellent point. CGI done properly is indeed seamless and looks phenomenal - Transformers from way back in 2007 is a prime (no pun intended!) example. Avatar was decent, too.

But yes, most of the time it's lazy and not done well. Which is why many Sci-Fi film from say the 70s and 80s actually hold up better than their counterparts from say the 2000s.

Sometimes just having something physical not only works better, but it helps the actors work better. Jaws vs Deep Blue Sea...

In comfort for earlier CGI efforts?

I think some of the ‘what is that?’ stems from just how quickly it’s developed, spread and become economical.

Breaking away from movies, Babylon 5. A wonderful series I will not hear a bad word against. But the CGI? That’s really not aged well. Thankfully, it’s the exact opposite of the CGI I hate - solid scripts and plots with slightly ropey CGI is infinitely preferable to solid CGI and ropey scripts and plots.

CGI should be a cherry on the top of the pudding. Not a manky old Elastoplast you found in an abandoned swimming pool you figured would fix your car tyre puncture. To use a bizarre analogy.

Elbows, if you could find me a link to that vid, I’d love to watch it!

I was just going to bring up Babylon 5. Low quality CGI that is used well is far more preferable than top notch CGI used poorly for me. The example I would give is a space battle from B5 vs a space battle from The Rise of Skywalker. The B5 battle is coherent, advances the story, gives characters a chance to be characterful, and feels like it has stakes. The battle of Exigol had none of that.

Look at the brief spaceship and explosion effects at the end of the episode Z’Ha’Dum. That CGI is sub-children’s cartoon quality. And the audience is too busy holding their breath on the edge of their seat to notice.

Exigol I enjoyed for different reasons to B5.

B5, it’s very elegant. A ‘proper’ Space Battle, including obvious pressure burst things for star fighter manoeuvres. When it comes to capital ships, I effing love the beam weapons. They look deadly, and are deadly. As are the pulse type weapons (sorry, probably using the wrong in universe terms), just in a different, almost primitive way.

Exigol? A wonderful brawl. The enemy (now, for this, let’s put aside the whole no shields thing) was large, powerful. But lumbering. So swamping them with star fighters (faster, nippier, highly precise attacks by design) was very, very Star Wars.

So not at all knocking your take, I enjoy both for different reasons.

Which do I prefer? Genuinely couldn’t say. I’m very much an ‘in the moment’ man. Even Star Trek, where I cannot get my head around why there’s the lack of fighters and everyone starts off so neatly lined up and nobody really manoeuvres worth a damn I bloody love when watching it.

Anyways. I’ve taken my own topic off topic.

Bad Grotsnik! Dirty Grotsnik! In my bed, on my rug!

Right, the topic.

Best example I can think of where a single franchise got both practical and CGI AND Stop Motion right, then effed it up? Terminator and Terminator 2, vs Terminator 3.

The Terminator? Absolutely wonderful effects. We’re first told exactly what Arnie is by Hicks. Then, bit by bit, we the audience almost get a cyborg striptease, proving Reese right. All practical effects, because they had no alternative.

Terminator 2? That used CGI cleverly. And I dare say had the technology never existed, there’d have been no good sequels at all, because even if the studio farted out a Retainer movie just to hold on to the rights? Would’ve just been more of the same from the first.

After that? Terminator 3 relied too heavily on it. Yes I still like the film. I’ve liked all of them barring Salvation. But the contrast between pushing effects to their limit, and just sort of, using it in place of plot? The terminator series paints it nice and bright.

Wish I’d used that earlier!

The one that always gets me as a negative when it comes to CGI, is Ian McKellen in tears on the set of the hobbit. Acting on his own with a bunch of light up pictures of who he was supposed to be acting with.

The CGI in Fury Road was awesome in how it was utilized. I actually had to have it proven to me that most of the special effects weren't just practical effects (aside from the obvious CGI like the tornado storm, because....duh.).

After Midway, I definitely think the issue with CGi is that when it stands out, it produces an uncanny valley effect.

At this point modern CGI is a good thing/bad thing. When a big CGI sequence starts, its a sign I can stop paying attention and do something else (get snacks, go to the bathroom, check email or whatever), because nothing of importance will happen and no character or story development will dare interrupt the 'action scenes.'

In the big budget movies, it functionally cuts the run time of the story by anywhere from a third to a half. Since I rarely see anything in theatres anymore, this is pretty much a positive, as I'm wasting less time watching the film. And yeah, its gotten to the point that watching a whole film feels like a waste of time, between all the remakes, rehashes and the emphasis on explosions over storytelling.

we're acting like bad movies that attempt to wow us with special effects until we notice we're not watching a bad movie is somehow a new development with CGI.
it's not.

BrianDavion wrote:
we're acting like bad movies that attempt to wow us with special effects until we notice we're not watching a bad movie is somehow a new development with CGI.
it's not.

It is, because it isn't about 'not noticing' a bad movie. Bad 'classic' special effects weren't multiple 15-20 minute sequences just dropped into films to pad out two to three hour run times. Neither did they put the story on break to bring pointless filler.
They were often really cheesy effects, but they served the story. That simply isn't the case any more.

Take the Hobbit films as pretty much the perfect example. That's about a two hour film stretched over _three_ films by completely pointless CGI sequences, the highlight being the 'gold chase' where Smaug could have killed any number of characters at any point, but didn't because the script said so. The repeated fake orcs fights that infest all three films aren't any better. Just mock-people running and jumping and swinging, accomplishing nothing but run-time.

Watched GEMINI recently where will smith is fighting a CGI younger will smith. At certain points both will smiths are CGI and you can tell it quite obviously. So it was cool because you were watching a CGI willsmith fighting another CGI will smith pretending to be a real willsmith which if you think about it is pretty cool...

No matter how good CGI is its rare you get what its meant to do unless the whole thing is CGI in wich case some of the work has been indistinguishable from reality... As soon as you have non rendered reality in the same shot you can tell where the CGI begins and the real world ends. Vats majority is competent and with the Computing power and software going in leaps and bounds its becoming more accessible. As mentioned above. look at what they managed to do with the hobbit! All CGI... No substance.

Why then I ask, was the gold dragon in the Wittcher so damn aweful !? WHY!!!!!! Grr..... Ruined what would have been a near perfect series for me.. (apart from the bard actor who sucks and his writing sucks and jst sucks)

Its overused like you say. theres also evidence to suggest that if we're watching something, and we're just constantly assailed by CGI for pretty much everything, It actually makes you engage with it less, and almost switch off. This is part of the reason why I find most of the modern superhero films flat and uninspiring.

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a827565/heres-why-you-dont-enjoy-blockbusters-like-you-used-to/

Now that being said, insane CGI chase and background sequences like Inception and Doctor Strange are tye anchor for what made the movies function, so I give them a pass.

But scifi movies suck when the monster is bad CGI, when Aliens did so much 30+ years ago with practical effects aggravates me to no end.

We went on the Harry Potter Studios tour recently, and I was surprised to see just how many things were CGI. Most of the Hogwarts exterior scenes, for instance, were filmed on a green screen and then had the scenery inserted afterwards using a model of the castle.

Incidentally, the model of Hogwarts is bloody awesome. It was hard not to imagine overrunning it with Chaos Marines...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_hAVzwfhoM

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Now that being said, insane CGI chase and background sequences like Inception and Doctor Strange are tye anchor for what made the movies function, so I give them a pass.
.

Can't speak for Inception, but don't agree that the CGI in Dr. Strange is the anchor. Its what dragged that movie down for me. Both the wacky mirror realm battles (no stakes, because nothing real existed there) and the 'spells equal glowing fist martial arts' was entirely missing the point.

I get that they felt the chants from the Dr Strange comics would be goofy to audiences, but instead they pointlessly punched their way through a movie that wasn't about punching, then randomly ended up with a completely unrecognizable Dark Dimension and 'real villain' that was functionally tricked with a 'Gordian Knot' that didn't really exist in its space-time. All the punching and spinning lights meant nothing at all to the film- they were just a shiny distraction from the main plot (Strange accepts being a wizard) and the secondary plot at the end of the film (shooing Dormammu off the doorstep)

Voss wrote:
At this point modern CGI is a good thing/bad thing. When a big CGI sequence starts, its a sign I can stop paying attention and do something else (get snacks, go to the bathroom, check email or whatever), because nothing of importance will happen and no character or story development will dare interrupt the 'action scenes.'

One of the big issues with modern CGI sequences is they're time intensive to develop and render, so they have to plan and start them ahead of filming and more often than not, ahead of a final script. This results in the mini-movie effect, where you feel like the movie stops to watch a tangent play out. Most of the time the characters in the CGI are placeholders through most of it and there's a number of notable examples of someone being inserted in a slot because the intended character was cut or changed and they had to put someone there.

Voss wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
we're acting like bad movies that attempt to wow us with special effects until we notice we're not watching a bad movie is somehow a new development with CGI.
it's not.

It is, because it isn't about 'not noticing' a bad movie. Bad 'classic' special effects weren't multiple 15-20 minute sequences just dropped into films to pad out two to three hour run times. Neither did they put the story on break to bring pointless filler.
They were often really cheesy effects, but they served the story. That simply isn't the case any more.

Take the Hobbit films as pretty much the perfect example. That's about a two hour film stretched over _three_ films by completely pointless CGI sequences, the highlight being the 'gold chase' where Smaug could have killed any number of characters at any point, but didn't because the script said so. The repeated fake orcs fights that infest all three films aren't any better. Just mock-people running and jumping and swinging, accomplishing nothing but run-time.

I've actually watched the fancut that was made a while back chopping out all the fat and rendering all 3 films in the hobbit into 1 more standard-length (for LOTR) 3 hour film, and...honestly it was still not any good.

Riddles in the Dark and the conversation between Smaug and Frodo remain the only two redeeming scenes in the movie.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be brutally honest, I think complaints about CGI are mostly based in pure nostalgia. A lot of practical effect low budget films were irredeemable crap (Just go watch the series Best of the Worst on youtube for near infinite examples...) and CGI doesn't really change that.

In the same way that you have a budding younger generation looking back fondly at the star wars prequels, accepting their shlocky badness and laughing along with them, people who enjoyed the old practical effect low budget horror movies of the 80s look back on them the same way. They make us feel the way we felt as kids. I remember running around the house with custom built lego podracers with my best friend, recreating the weird engine noises and explosions of that horrible dated CGI shlockfest in episode 1.

I still feel that joy now as a grown ass adult when I watch that scene. I recognize it's pure nostalgia and it's objectively just...not good, but I still feel it.

And now, when I watch good recent films that use even cheap, limited CGI to its fullest like Fury Road, Annihilation, and Arrival, I can't not think it's added something by giving the ability to make things in truly epic scope even for lower budget studios.

Practical effects over CGI for me. CGI should be seasoning, not the main course...if that makes sense.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Practical effects over CGI for me. CGI should be seasoning, not the main course...if that makes sense.

STORY should be the main course, not the special effects. You can have the greatest special effects in the history of mankind, but if the story sucks the story still sucks.

The Scotsman, you bring up Best of the Worst, but I feel like it makes a different point than you think. Typically, the practical effects are the highlights of the worst films. I think there are a few reasons for this.

1. Practical effects are present in the set, which allows for actors to interact with them in a more organic way, giving more of a chance to figure out what works and even improvising. CGI requires all of the live actIon acting to be complete before the director can see what works and doesn't.

2. The amount of time spent on the effects matters. Harryhausen famously spent months animating his stop motion characters, giving him plenty of time to plan their personalities and how to express them through movement. Puppetry effects often had teams of people working on animating a single creature, requiring thought and planning. Good CGI is typically well-planned CGI, but when there are a thousand shots in a film, there's not as much effort put into each shot, and it shows.

3. Once a miniature or puppet is built, the filmmakers can film additional scenes with it for not much additional cost. The puppet costs nothing when it just sits there. CGI costs a lot of money whenever it is on screen, even if it is just sitting there. CGI is less forgiving.

4. How do they fail? When CGI fails, often it looks stiff, underanimated, ethereal or uncanny valley. When puppetry fails, it can be hilarious, goofy, campy, or easy to overlook because the actors lend the effects gravitas with their performances. (For example, the Ceti Eel larvae from Wrath of Khan are pretty dodgy effects, but the tension of the scene makes them terrifying anyway.). A combination of bad CGI and bad acting is boring and cringeworthy. A combination of bad acTing and bad puppetry effects can be oddly compelling.
(For example, I find the final battle of Rock n Roll Nightmare more memorable than CGI Black Panther fighting CGI Killmonger.)

5. PractIcal effects can make for more stylistic approaches. With CGI, the effects always strive for convincing realism or else take on a cartoonish "painted over the action" quality. (In this clip you can see that the miniatures are convincing while the plants are deliberately made not to be in order to capture the feel of a stage-musical homage to 50's B movies. The final scene with Seymore is a good examp,e of something that looks stylized in practical effects but would be very difficult to pull off with CGI.)

 Vulcan wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Practical effects over CGI for me. CGI should be seasoning, not the main course...if that makes sense.

STORY should be the main course, not the special effects. You can have the greatest special effects in the history of mankind, but if the story sucks the story still sucks.

Ah, good point. I forgot to factor that in in the cgi versus practical effects debate.

OK, the story is the main course then, with practical effects as the side dishes and cgi as the dressing.

CGI - and special effects in general - have to be the servant of the story. When it is not, then the film does not interest me.

the_scotsman wrote:

Voss wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
we're acting like bad movies that attempt to wow us with special effects until we notice we're not watching a bad movie is somehow a new development with CGI.
it's not.

It is, because it isn't about 'not noticing' a bad movie. Bad 'classic' special effects weren't multiple 15-20 minute sequences just dropped into films to pad out two to three hour run times. Neither did they put the story on break to bring pointless filler.
They were often really cheesy effects, but they served the story. That simply isn't the case any more.

Take the Hobbit films as pretty much the perfect example. That's about a two hour film stretched over _three_ films by completely pointless CGI sequences, the highlight being the 'gold chase' where Smaug could have killed any number of characters at any point, but didn't because the script said so. The repeated fake orcs fights that infest all three films aren't any better. Just mock-people running and jumping and swinging, accomplishing nothing but run-time.

I've actually watched the fancut that was made a while back chopping out all the fat and rendering all 3 films in the hobbit into 1 more standard-length (for LOTR) 3 hour film, and...honestly it was still not any good..

Of course it isn't. The Hobbit trilogy is missing chunks of story that was replaced by CGI nothings. Chopping out more isn't going to replace the story that's missing, or add in the gradual transformation of Bilbo from an unnecessary sidekick to the expert with a moral compass.
Just splicing random stuff together is the problem with CGI films in the first place. No 'supercut' is going to magically find story and character development that wasn't filmed.


Or add in character development to the dwarves that aren't Balin or Thorin, since that's lacking in the book as well.

 Frazzled wrote:
CGI - and special effects in general - have to be the servant of the story. When it is not, then the film does not interest me.

You. Good sir. May have nailed my sentiment.

For instance, Dr Strange and Inception? CGI made those films possible, but weren’t the driving force.

CGi will smith fighting a CGI will smith trying to pass of as a real will smith... Yeah I think you guys are right..

That being said, (and a little of a tangent) some of the best CGI characters I have seen to overcome the uncanny valley were from Love Death And Robots, after watching it again last night on Netflix. The blonde female character from Beyond the Aquila Rift was amazingly human. Which is supremely ironic, considering that episode AND her being CGI.


I personally like movies that are either ENTIRELY CGI, or that go the other way and rely on heavy practical effects.

A bit late, but I caught the heavy (almost total) CGI flick - Alita: Battle Angel. I think they did an excellent job of developing a fully immersive world along with impressive cyborg creations, even if some scenes and characters felt a bit contrived and forced.

Overall, excellent eye-candy and it does have its issues with character and story, but I really enjoyed it.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Scotsman, you bring up Best of the Worst, but I feel like it makes a different point than you think. Typically, the practical effects are the highlights of the worst films. I think there are a few reasons for this.

1. Practical effects are present in the set, which allows for actors to interact with them in a more organic way, giving more of a chance to figure out what works and even improvising. CGI requires all of the live actIon acting to be complete before the director can see what works and doesn't.

2. The amount of time spent on the effects matters. Harryhausen famously spent months animating his stop motion characters, giving him plenty of time to plan their personalities and how to express them through movement. Puppetry effects often had teams of people working on animating a single creature, requiring thought and planning. Good CGI is typically well-planned CGI, but when there are a thousand shots in a film, there's not as much effort put into each shot, and it shows.

3. Once a miniature or puppet is built, the filmmakers can film additional scenes with it for not much additional cost. The puppet costs nothing when it just sits there. CGI costs a lot of money whenever it is on screen, even if it is just sitting there. CGI is less forgiving.

4. How do they fail? When CGI fails, often it looks stiff, underanimated, ethereal or uncanny valley. When puppetry fails, it can be hilarious, goofy, campy, or easy to overlook because the actors lend the effects gravitas with their performances. (For example, the Ceti Eel larvae from Wrath of Khan are pretty dodgy effects, but the tension of the scene makes them terrifying anyway.). A combination of bad CGI and bad acting is boring and cringeworthy. A combination of bad acTing and bad puppetry effects can be oddly compelling.
(For example, I find the final battle of Rock n Roll Nightmare more memorable than CGI Black Panther fighting CGI Killmonger.)

5. PractIcal effects can make for more stylistic approaches. With CGI, the effects always strive for convincing realism or else take on a cartoonish "painted over the action" quality. (In this clip you can see that the miniatures are convincing while the plants are deliberately made not to be in order to capture the feel of a stage-musical homage to 50's B movies. The final scene with Seymore is a good examp,e of something that looks stylized in practical effects but would be very difficult to pull off with CGI.)

...Practical effects are the highlights of the worst films BECAUSE they're the best things you can laugh at. A bunch of terrible actors wandering through the woods for 2 hours while you can barely make anything out because the sound design is gak is boring as hell, but a gigantic rubber monster suit that flops around pathetically while people have to try and pretend to be scared of it is hilarious.

BOTW absolutely does not prove the supremacy of practical effects over CGI, it proves that idiots can still be laughed at no matter what tools they're given.They laugh at idiots with horrible CGI and idiots with horrible practical effects. Sometimes (often) both.

Comparing practical effect masterpieces with tossed-together CGI shlock is an easy, lazy argument that people have been making for decades. Quality film teams give their actors things to work with and act against even if they use CGI, and they plan their CGI into their m ovies just as good practical effect artists plan their suits and creatures into theirs. often they combine the two to transcend the limitations of practical effects in really masterful ways.

"CGI Bad, not CGI good" is a lazy argument of pure nostalgia. It's the "they haven't made good music since the 70s, I only listen to the same 100 classic rock songs on the radio because all music now is bad rap noise" of the movie world.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
That being said, (and a little of a tangent) some of the best CGI characters I have seen to overcome the uncanny valley were from Love Death And Robots, after watching it again last night on Netflix. The blonde female character from Beyond the Aquila Rift was amazingly human. Which is supremely ironic, considering that episode AND her being CGI.


I personally like movies that are either ENTIRELY CGI, or that go the other way and rely on heavy practical effects.

I thought that series was...fine. IMO it leaned way too heavily on being Edgy and Transgressive in ways that are fairly acceptable and commonplace in modern media.

"Woooah, watch out, we got some real hyper-violence and potty humor over here! Almost as much as there is in the average episode of south park - look how crazzzzy and controversial we are! You might see about as many animated boobies as you see in the ad sidebars of a website"

The best shorts were, unsurprisingly, the the ones that least relied on those things to generate interest and just did a cool art or story bit.