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On wrecking buildings? Partial agreement.

The partial is yes, CGI has made “grand spectacle” easy to achieve. And in some circumstances, such grand spectacles being easy to include does seem to be the only reason they were put into the film. Ref Man of Steel with the casual destruction of bits of Metropolis.

But. Compare that to Pacific Rim and Kong Vs Godzilla.

Those two are Kaiju movies, so building destruction is just on the cards regardless. Indeed I argue watching Matchstick City get flattened again is such a compulsory part of Kaiju Movies, we’d feel cheated if we didn’t get it.

I mean, I’ll watch Kaiju slap each other silly anytime. But if they’re doing it in a featureless desert it just wouldn’t be the same.

And, when done well, CGI there is superior to model work and men in suits. Not dumping on the latter or being snobby. I’d double argue some of the fun of seeing Matchstick City getting wrecked is precisely because it’s Matchsticks.

But Kong Vs Godzilla nailed it for me. It helped sell the scale of the Kaiju. And there was enough thought to physics included for me to “ooof, I felt that” with every bone crunching impact.

So yes. Partial agreement. As ever, when done poorly, or because you’ve run out of ideas, mass destruction via CGI can be crap, and an unwelcome inclusion.

But done well, and for the right reasons? It can be glorious. It can also help with novel scenes. Ref Dr Strange with the dimension folding stuff.

CGI is a tool, and like most tools, it can both do new things old tools couldn't, and do things old tools could do, but can do them in a different way or at a different cost.

I think the best uses of CGI are for things that simply could not be done with practical effects. Kaiju fights, physically impossible aeiral moves, that sort of thing.

Next are things that could be done practically, but are way, way cheaper than with CGI. Crowd scenes, background explosions, that sort of stuff. Moves like Gettysburg could show thousands of soldiers only because they literally trucked in reenactors, and Waterloo used the Soviet Army.

Dead last are things that were done really well, and while expensive, weren't cost prohibitive. This is traditional practical effects and stunt work. Even streaming on a basic TV, you can tell in a New Hope when the shots switch from CGI to models, and the models look better (well, aside from some shots of the Death Star surface).

In a show like Deep Space Nine, which has hilariously bad CGI, without it we'd never see Odo shapeshift, and we'd probably never get a space battle beyond two ships flying past each other. The CGI is bad, but essential.

 Polonius wrote:


In a show like Deep Space Nine, which has hilariously bad CGI, without it we'd never see Odo shapeshift, and we'd probably never get a space battle beyond two ships flying past each other. The CGI is bad, but essential.

Fun fact about DS9 and CGI. The show started when practical effects were the norm, and lasted well into the CGI era. Literally EVERY shot you see of the station itself is practical effects with a miniature, with the sole exception of the last few seconds of the very last episode. Apparently they had the AGI model ready to go since early season 3.

I’d argue DS9 didn’t have poor CGI, just early TV CGI.

Yes it looks dodgy, but at the time it was pretty impressive. Certainly superior to many contemporary uses, all the more so for it being used sparingly, and arguably only when absolutely necessary.

 Flinty wrote:
IMDB has a list for 2010s, and its dominated by the various big franchises.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls083229144/

I certainly enjoyed a lot of the films on that list.

In my opinion, Kingsman has a good claim to being a pretty iconic adventure film from that period. Its even derivative of other adventure properties from previous eras

I loved Kingsman, and The Golden Circle to a lesser extent because it was a bit too cheesy, because it had that perfect mix of action and comedy that just makes things fun. Just like Deadpool and the MCU stuff trying to cash in on Deadpools success.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The partial is yes, CGI has made “grand spectacle” easy to achieve. And in some circumstances, such grand spectacles being easy to include does seem to be the only reason they were put into the film. Ref Man of Steel with the casual destruction of bits of Metropolis.

But. Compare that to Pacific Rim and Kong Vs Godzilla.

Right, but that's a very genre-specific situation. You need something to show the scale of the critters otherwise the fight appears to be a CGI version of two dudes boxing in rubber suits (I can't recall which Godzilla movie where he actually does boxing fancy footwork - clearly they weren't taking themselves too seriously).

But it is very much overused today and its used in lazy ways. For example, CGI allows the use of period-appropriate vehicles and ships like never before. How many WW II movies had to use repainted modern tanks? Or the famous T-6 Texan with a meatball on the side pretending to be a Zero? Now that can be completely fixed, and yet I'm told that the Midway movie used the wrong model of the B-25.

I think the easy availability of CGI causes people to make botches like that, or - again to throw shade at Peter Jackson - film stuff that didn't need to be filmed, like the Tomb Raider sequence in Moria. If he had to build an actual set for that sort of thing, it wouldn't have happened and the movie would have been better as a result.

That's the larger point - constraints make for better filmmaking. George Lucas got better results when he was under tight constraints. Once he was playing with his own money, there was no one to tell him how awful some of his choices were.

Interesting that Spielberg has come out and said that "re-editing" films to add or remove things is a mistake and he regrets tinkering with "E.T." after the fact.

Oh, and since someone brought up DS9, I'll give a shout-out to the far superior Babylon 5 that also used CGI and it improved by leaps and bounds during the course of the show, rising to the point of making some really need effects, such as the reflection on Londo's face as he watches mass drivers destroy the Narn home world.

Because it was still expensive, acting and story were what made the show.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On wrecking buildings? Partial agreement.

The partial is yes, CGI has made “grand spectacle” easy to achieve. And in some circumstances, such grand spectacles being easy to include does seem to be the only reason they were put into the film. Ref Man of Steel with the casual destruction of bits of Metropolis.

It also makes some scenes possible in the first place. For instance, in Independence Day, if you want a REAL chopper taking off of a real patch of grass in front of a "real" white house being blown to smithereens by the big bad alien threat. . . . well, some people are going to take issue with the white house getting blown to smithereens. That movie did, IMHO and IIRC make a few missteps with CGI in terms of using too much of it, but there are a few instances where it sort of makes the film really work

And I think that's part of that grey area of film making. As you said, having Kaiju crash through all the buildings is part of the "rules" of making a kaiju movie. No building destruction, and youre gonna have pissed off fans. In Independence day, it's similar (IMHO) in that you need to have spectacle to illustrate just how bad the big bad aliens are. Is the eye-laser trimming of Metropolis really necessary to that whole sequence though, or does the director owe a favor to his cousin who's a CGI worker??