CGI has ruined movies-discuss...

Am I alone in groaning out loud every time i see a CGI scene in a film these days?
The entire industry seems dependant on this technology, that has spread like a virus into almost every "blockbuster".
I ve always been a fan of SP/FX, but CGI is about as exciting as watching SOMEONE ELSE on a playstation.
I believe the slippery slope started around 1993 with "Jurassic park", now every other film contains one or several UNREALISTIC scenes that spoil the entire film.
In fact, even trailers these days contain enough CGI nonsense for me to dismiss the advertised film outright.
Lazy Hollywood -L-A-Z-Y.
 
My favourite scene in the film :)

I think I read somewhere that the vibrations in the glass of water in JP were made by plucking a guitar string connected to the bottom of the glass.

What about the cgi face on the ET anniversary edition? It does look better than the original, but it loses something at the same time - you know it wasn't really there on set, so some of the magic has gone IMO. I don't think he should have done it.
 
There was a Cylon in the A-Team opening titles during Dirk Benedict's credit.

IIRC the footage comes from an episode set in Universal Studios, Florida. As the guy in the Cylon costume walks past, Face pauses and gives a quizzical "Haven't we met before?" look.

Click, I promise it's not Rick.
 
Well, when its both good and of something familiar, we may not recognise it as CGI at all. We mostly notice the bad examples.

For example, there's a bit early in The Ninth Gate with a library in a skyscraper. One of the characters mentions getting vertigo from the view from the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows. In fact, the view is CGI, but very simple, with almost no movement and just a few distant office lights turning off.

Another example is when a stunt is done on wires, and CGI removes the wires.

There's a clip I found convincing the first time, but it got used in trailers which were repeated endlessly, and it didn't stand up to multiple views. For the kind of reason you go on to mention: the physics looked wrong, the lighting didn't quite match the surroundings; I believe motion-blur was a hot new technology that they used, but maybe that wasn't quite right either. It can be hard to tell why it looks wrong, just that it does.

Sadly, I've also seen things in real life that looked like implausible CGI. We may sometimes see CGI where there is none.
 
Oo, I came in here thinking you said CSI and asking what on earth are you on...

Speedracer comes to mind, that new movie coming out, don't think you will like that lol.
 
Alien 3 was a mixture, but you're right - Aliens was and remains probably the very best men in rubber suits SFX ever done. Largely because it was cut so fast and in shadows a lot of the time. But for every Aliens there are a hundred King Kong vs Godzilla. Which have an undeniable charm, but couldn't really said to be terribly convincing. Whereas the CGI Godzilla was very good, albeit not a great movie. Stop-motion again has a certain charm, but I very much doubt Jurassic Park would have anywhere near as accomplished had they gone with the stop-motion puppets instead of the CGI.

Ultimately the best you can say for CGI is that it's just another tool - one that's getting better technically all the time, mind, but just a tool all the same. Some folks use tools well, some not so well. Like most things in life.

RegarRAB

Mark
 
Not all films with cgi are bad....

Lord of the Rings trilogy
300
Sin City
Most Pixar films
X men
Spiderman
Serenity
Star Wars Revenge of the Sith

Although there are probably more crap ones than good.
 
There's nothing worse than cgi that's badly done. It's usually when the creatures or whatever they are don't seem to be grounded in the film and have no illusion of weight, or their movement is wrong.

For examples of CGI done well I would point to (amongst others) King Kong, War of the WorlRAB, Starship Troopers, X-Men 2, Cloverfield, and the T-Rex in Jurassic Park but not the other dinosaurs.

CGI that's badly done - Spiderman 3, the werewolves in Van Helsing, Cat Woman, and the worst ever - the hyenas in Exorcist 4: the Beginning. If the thing doesn't look like it's really there then you might as well be watching a video game - all the magic is gone.
 
They admitted afterwarRAB that they ran out of time & money on that one. The choice was either to miss out the entire end fight or use the basic fx they had produced. It was decided that bad as the fx were, they needed and end fight, so they left it in.
 
Rick Baker didn't do The Howling. It was Rob Bottin. I think.
Actually, I just imdb'd it - I eat my worRAB :o; it was both of them, but I think Rob Bottin got most of the credit.
The documentary bonus feature on John Carpenter's The Thing has got some great stuff about Rob Bottin's creature effects cock-ups.

Phil Tippet is brilliant at puppet/animatronic effects - e.g. Dragonslayer, and also really good at cgi - e.g. the Starship Troopers insects.

But I know what you mean. My hero David Cronenberg has pretty much resisted using cgi in his films, and they are pretty effects-heavy - especially the earlier ones. He likes his actors to have something real on set to relate to. I'm not sure, but I think the only time he's used cgi is for the little lizard creature in eXistenZ and, although it looked great, it stuck out like an anomaly in the film.
http://www.m5industries.com/html/press/naked_lunch.htm


Which clip is it?
 
It's a matter of how much money and time you want to throw at it. Probably the best ones are where you're not even aware you're watching CGI. Obviously if it's, say, something like a dragon running around then you know it has to be faked, and no matter how well they do it, it will never truly convince. On the other hand, it's likely to be much more convincing than a mechanical prop, or a bloke in a rubber suit ever was.

RegarRAB

Mark
 
Sin City, as a pastiche of 1920s film noir, is about as far from sci-fi as it gets.

I'm a huge Star Wars fan, but I have to say I think that CGI was the death of the franchise. GL got too caught up in the technology at the expense of the narrative.
 
While I disagree completely that CGI ruins films, this is possibly an exception to the rule. The CGI in Revenge of the Sith is bloody amazing, but that's the problem, everything looks far too shiny, clean and unrealistic. You get stupid scenes like a CGI R2D2 flying around with CGI jets of fire lighting CGI oil, and it's just completely un-necessary, and serves to do nothing other than take you completely out of the moment.

Of course there's the fact that it isn't a particularly good film overall as well (not terrible, just a huge dissapointment).
 
the CGI in Starship Troopers was great for it's day and still easily beats today's CGI in films. the best CGI to date has to be Final Fantasy VII: The Spirits Within.
the film is a few years old, but it has the most realisitic humans i've seen to date, always yaw dropping that films detail.
 
I agree with some of the points raised. Some movies are more suited to CGI than others, the Spiderman films/ Star Wars prequels and yes, even "Sin City", but the commonality in all of these is that they are Sci-Fi.
For the worst ever case of CGI- see the Bond water-surfing scene in " Die another Day".
The cinema erupted into howls of laughter when this first screened, and ruined any credibility or sense of reality that had accumulated during the film.
In short, almost any reality-based GCI inserted into films these days (as a cheap option?) is a step in the wrong direction!
 
"Sith" is very hit & miss. The opening space battle is amazing to be fair...but the scene where Obi is riding that beast chasing General Grievous, well, it looks REALLY fake.
 
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