CGI Is Starting to Suck

Just wanted to say that audiences going to the movies have to see whatever is put on the screen (or whatever is "presented on the menu", so to speak). Back in the days where they still used mechanical props or men in suits, or whatever, audiences also paid to go to the movies to see whatever was "current" on the marquees. I don't think they go to see something like JURASSIC WORLD with a mindset of "I really am going for the CGI".

 

Actually they don't "have to" see whatever is put on the screen. They make choices. Not every movie makes 1.5 billion dollars. Clearly Jurassic world is a movie the audience wanted to go see.

Something that seems to be going unmentioned is the fact that, very much like the first Jurassic Park, there was plenty of practical FX.
What some might find interesting is just how much CGI is used in practical fx

 

Well, yes. But my point was, they would go to see such a movie regardless of how the dinosaurs were rendered. They don't go to see JW "just to see CGI" .

 

I never said they did. But when someone claims that the audiences *don't* want CGI I would say that one would have to ignore major facts like what the audiences are choosing to actually see to believe that. CGI clearly did not keep audiences away from Jurassic World nor did the deliberate choice to use as much practical fx bring them into the theaters to see Mad Max. We can all speak for ourselves as to what we want. But if anyone wants to speak for the "audience" they have to use the box office and the widely published fan ratings such as can be found on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

This just got me thinking... I can't recall certain people ever having stayed away from movies at the theater purely due to whatever sfx were being used. But 'some' people deciding to stay out of theaters "because I don't want to see an overblown CGI-fest" just may be a first.

 

I do that all the time. But I am clearly not representative of the average movie goer.

 

Having recently seen Jaws in the theater for a 40th anniversary screening, it was refreshing to see a movie that was free of CGI. Sure, there were some scenes where you could tell the shark was not real, but those scenes didn't strike me as any less worse than many of the CGI creatures in todays movies.

Perhaps one problem with CGI is that it's too easy to create OK (but not great) renditions of creatures, then overuse them in the movie...to the point where they have little impact on the viewer. The best thing is often to NOT show the creatures (at least not until the end) and let the audience's imagination do the work. The buildup is much more suspenseful...and much more entertaining.

 

Agreed. As I said, the people generally go to see whatever the new movie is, without any thought or care regarding exactly how its effects are rendered. Which is why the fact that JURASSIC WORLD made so much money is not relevant to its CGI, and would have done the same even if it was all physical effects-driven.

 

Here's an interesting article that talks about how movie technology is getting so sophisticated (particularly frame rates), it's making the visuals look more fake because you can see too much of the magic:

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-property-master/

If you thought it looked fake in HD, wait until you see it in 4K.

 

Pretty interesting read on the article. Obviously the more advance the movie tech is, the harder it will be to distinguish what's real and what isn't. Its like the 'mystery' in modern movies at such higher framerates are lost since higher resolutions tend to reveal much, much more and often more than we want to see as an audience.

This is one of the reasons that I don't have much interest in getting into 4K because it makes the movies and even some TV shows have more of a 'video' look and not that of film with the film grain. For me personally I am content with 1080p and even watching movies in that resolution tends to reveal more than it should technically. I'd like to enjoy a movie with the 'mystery' still left in.

Even as something old as the original "Three Stooges", watching the DVD sets on my plasma certain scenes I can see where they used wire to lift objects like the beds or when Moe tossed a pineapple and you can see it move across the room on a wire. Yet when watched on an analog TV say like VHS, one would never notice or even see the wire.

 

I have to say, I've worked on more and more projects lately where they've had me sneak some film grain in and superimpose it on the digital image just to "dirty" it up a little bit. It's very subtle, but it does add a little grunge. We're also always taking super-clean lenses and futzing with the image, like making it a little darker and softer in the corners, reminiscent of classic Panavision glass from the 1960s. I would equate this to taking a modern microphone and then putting it through an analogue tube stage before running it into Pro Tools -- kind of a combination of analogue and digital.

The last film-shot-on-film production I saw was Love & Mercy, and I thought it was as grainy as hell. By the same token, Jurassic World was also shot entirely on film, but there's so much digital processing and digital VFX in it, to me there was zero grain and it felt very digital-ish. Some of it was haaaarible, a lot of it was pretty good.

There have been discussions as to whether we should clean up those shots and eliminate the wires, but generally a) the studio doesn't want to pay for it, and b) revisionist history is frowned upon. My take is a little bit of improving the picture is fine -- for example, I cleaned up a lot of garbage mattes on Black Hole that had been there for 35 years. But the wires are all plain as day.

 

As an update: I don't agree with all of this critic's views on how and why modern CGI sucks, but he raises some interesting points...



His main opinion is that some CGI done in the past decade takes beauty & impressiveness and puts those factors over believability, creating images that feel way, way too phony. And I think that's particularly true for buildings, smoke, skies, water, and fire. His examples of The Hulk and Yoda make a lot of sense to me.

 

And this one on the Top 10 Worst CGI Movie Effects makes some very good points:



I think the worst very expensive movie VFX I've seen that I can recall would be Peter Jackson's King Kong remake, which had some brilliant shots and some horrible shots, sometimes within the same sequence. I had a lot of WTF moments in that film.

 

That was a fun top 10. The Wolverine Claws really looked bad, but the fact Green Lantern even CGI'd his mask really said a lot about the situation, wow.

 

Green Lantern is one of the rare films I got about half an hour through and then said, "OK, I'm done," and just killed it and shipped the Blu-ray back to Netflix. Totally sucked. This is what happens when you have bad Hollywood executives who think they know how to make comic book movies. So far, for my money the only two who did it right were Richard Donner in the 1970s with the first two Superman movies, and Kevin Feige with Marvel in the last 10 years. Everything else, I had problems with -- though the first couple of Spiderman films were tolerable, and the first Batman film was OK. I have mixed feelings on the Chris Nolan Dark Knight movies; I think they started off OK and then got worse as time went on.

 

I totally agree, remember in Alien how you barely ever saw the actual monster? It was always fleeting, in the dark with steam hiding it. You THOUGHT you saw it, but didn't REALLY see it. Or the first 'Predator' movie was similar, you waited till the end to see it. Seems like they try to SHOW the FX now, instead of creating the 'illusion' that its real. They forget that magical element of filmaking, the suspension of disbelief. When people watch Hitchcock's 'Psycho', they THINK they saw her get stabbed in the shower, but the blade never touches her REALLY. If you added in a 'updated version' a CGI'd knife actually stabbing her, it would be LESS scary, less believable, it would look FAKE.

 

Top 10 Worst CGI Movie Effects: https://youtu.be/5ZlOn9V_MmE

This is so bad. I saw the mummy returns in the theater and while it was a bad movie, the cgi was totally laughable

 

Yeah, both of the first 2 modern "Mummy" flicks had bad CG. The CG "Scorpion King" in "MR" was especially awful.

I watched the 2002 "Scooby-Doo" again yesterday - I'd forgotten how bad the CG Scooby looked. That was a bad effect 13 years ago - it ain't gotten better with age!

 

Correct -- I think audiences went so they could see people chased around by dinosaurs. They know on some level the dinosaurs are fake, but they buy into it enough so the adventure works. My problem with that movie is that the CGI was very uneven and the story wasn't very good, with huge lapses in logic and very superficial characters. The original Jurassic movie made far more sense and had much more interesting characters, IMHO.

 

I am not so sure that CGI itself sucks in today's movie universe, but the implementation of it, has become less and less well thought out.

Most movies I watch, there are always a few scenes that are almost painfully aware that a character is performing moves that just do not seem realistic, or seem at odds with how things naturally move or appear.

 

I think that Peter Jackson's King Kong featured great work on Kong. I really felt for him, he seemed alive. But I guess the big money and time all went to that because the dinosaurs doesn't look good at all. That's annoying, you make something really good and then **** it up by doing some less **** on other stuff

 

I really agree with your point, its not that CGI is getting less 'resolution' or worse as a technology, definitely the processing power increases all the time. Its all about the implementation and 'over use', similar to the 'loudness wars' in audio, were the technology advanced, but the IMPLEMENTATION of it, and over use, were the real culprit.

 

I do.

 

I went to see Jurassic World, and honestly did not like it or hate it. It just felt kinda Blah.
I have seen the original one and it had a lot more feeling and heart. Not sure about the effects, but the new one did make me roll my eyes a few times. Especially how the raptors looked when in their cage towards the beginning.
Somewhat fake lighting around them or something, just made me say Fake in my mind.
The original movie for being old, had effects that worked better, not cause of sheer betterness, but they seemed to awe me a bit and excite and scare me.

Not sure what that all means, but the new movie came off as more of an amusement park ride, not quite real.

 

Yes, so do I - today.
But I meant before CGI, say in the '70s or '80s?