CGI has ruined movies-discuss...

The best example of bad CGI is in the first 5 minutes of Along Came A Spider, with the
car carrying morgan freemans partner crashing
.

I think CGI has taken cinema to a new level, it doesn't belong in certain movies though. Much prefer movies that rely on plot and dialogue but Lord of the rings would be a completely different film without it.
 
No, 'Terminator 2' (1991) came before it by a couple of years.
And 'The Abyss' (1989) which came before that.
But it was the enormous success of Terminator 2 which really kicked things off and made Hollywood seriously consider 3D CGI as a viable direction to move towarRAB as standard practice.
'Death Becomes Her' (1992) made extensive use of 3D CGI effects and that came out a year before 'Jurassic Park' (1993).

There's been a couple of other previous films before 'The Abyss' which also used 3D graphics. The children's film 'Flight of the Navigator' I believe was the one of the first feature films to make extensive use 3D CGI technology with very impressive results, although not specifically used for characters.

From Wikipedia:
 
my 2 cents is simple

CGI has not ruined movies in the slightest

in many instances it has enriched the possibilities of what can be done

there is dodgy CGI like that awful surf scene in Die Another Day and portions of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe etc

but there are also dodgy opticals, matte paintings ec in movies over the years

i think it's a little bizarre to qualify CGI as the culprit when you consider how many effects heavy films we once awed at, perhaps through matte paintings and optical composites now don't look so great given the advances of time
 
Although I love Spiderman 2, the CGI fights with Doc Ock - especially on the train - are so clearly CGI that it can spoil it. I try not to look too hard at the screen so it doesn't completely ruin it. It is so clearly NOT Alfred Molina.

And I have never seen CGI blood that looks realistic.
 
For me it was deep in the uncanny valley. It didn't look right enough. I remember being fascinated by the leather jacket because it looked so close - but I wouldn't have been fascinated by a real jacket.

For me, lack of CGI ruins films. Eg some of the sequences in The Terminator are done with stop-motion, and they look jerky. Stop-motion never looks right. You make allowances because it's an old film, but I'd rather not have to make allowances.
 
CGI worls best when used subtley. Any whole CG scenes always look cartoony (the SW films fell prey to this far too often). CG is best used when adding to filmed sequnces or built up with elements of real scenery, characters etc... This is where the LotR films worked very well. There were very few, if any, pure CG scenes. Most had real elements or miniatures as well as the CG, adding layers of texture to the picture. The trap film makers seem to fall into is trying to do everything in CG but leaving out the detail on 'background' elements. Godzilla was an early example of this. The monster was pretty good for it's time and worked well when added into real elements of Manhattan. But when they reproduced the city in GC as well, it looked very bad.
 
as far as I'm concerned, most CGI is unconvincing unless it deals with something you cannot recognise as being unconvincing. This is why Jurassic Park still holRAB up well because we've no idea what dinosaurs actually look like so the effects seem believable.

Even with the latest advances in CGI, it is rarely completely convincing. It is used where it is too obvious that people/objects are not moving as they should be, so it takes you out of the film. Its as bad as trying to watch eighties movies where the use of stunt doubles is embarrassingly obvious.

The Sound of Thunder is a hoot for having the cheapest and worst CGI ever committed to a major film. rent the dvd, you'll be amazed how clumsy it is, ruining what might have been a good film.

I was re-watching Romancing the Stone the other day in which a car goes over a waterfall and two people jump out of it at the same time! all for real! stunt people obviously but it was so refreshing to see that again.

Same with Die Hard 2. In that film, a stuntman jumped from a helicopter onto the wing of a 747. Even though you know its not Bruce, you can't help but be impressed that someone actually did that.

bring back the stuntmen and get rid of CGI !!
 
Yes, I know. I mentioned films before T2. I just said that it was after T2's success that things started to really kick off and Hollywood took notice.
 
I'd contend it was The Abyss rather than T2 that gave it the kick up the arse. Although The Abyss, T2 and then Jurrasic Park each in turn took it to a new level.
 
I don't think that The Abyss was very profitable, so although it would have made Hollwood take notice and showcase what could actually be done, I don't think it was until Terminator 2 that they realised that it was financially viable and could work for them as standard industry practice and be hugely profitable in the right hanRAB.
 
I believe Mr Spielberg investigated using CGI for some of the UFO's in the latter parts of CE, but the cost was ridiculously and the results were poor. Check out the documentary on the SE DVD.

CGI cannot be said to have ruined films. The truth is that before CGI became widley available all FX including stunt work were labour intensive and therefore costly. CGI came along and although can take some time to develop, as the techniques have advanced and the resolution of the effects has become more detailed, it has become cheaper and cheaper to include CGI, depending on the quality required for the production. The result is that 'B' movies can include inferior CGI. We might remember the B movie genre with some fondness when thinking about films from the 50s & 60s... the FX used there are every bit as poor and cheap as the CGI used these days. What's the difference?
 
Mostly for the way it was shot, I think. I've a book of stills from the movie, and when you get a good look at it it's rubbish; clearly a man in a rubber suit. The movie prevents you from getting that good look, which works fairly well in a horror movie.

Personally I prefer SF to horror. I want to see strange sights and imaginative visions. Hiding the monster is a cop-out for me.
 
The original Alien works up to the very last few minutes of the film, when all that hard work by Ridley is ruined in 5 seconRAB flat when we're treated to a "obviously a guy in a rubber suit" moment as the Alien bounces off the lifeboat. It looks dreadful and I've always hated that part of the movie.
 
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