CGI Is Starting to Suck

Which I think is a myth. Directors and Producers don't say "if we throw spectacular visuals at the audience, they won't notice how weak the story is, how there's not a lot of logic or common sense to the plot, and the characters are weak." They don't purposely make the story and characters weak. Spectacular CGI visuals aren't the cover for those things even though CGI critics want to believe so.

 

No they don't, but many of them have a failure of imagination to produce decent scripts to being with, especially when so many scripts are now 'designed' by committee around a quota of set action moves. They just fill in the blanks in between.

 

And yet we see this time and again. In addition to Transformers, I'd also point to the Fast & Furious movies as examples of this problem: huge, spectacular visuals combined with a lackluster story and one-dimensional characters. It's not so much that they deliberately write it badly (which I never said) -- it's that the producers, director, and studio know at some point in the development process they're going to have to go the extra mile visually because the story isn't there.

I've been involved with plenty of projects where they endlessly debate color on the mistaken belief that it can somehow elevate the show to compensate for everything from plots that don't make sense, comedy that isn't funny, drama that isn't very dramatic, and performances that are lackluster. There's many, many, many examples (even to the extent that the post supervisor pulls me aside and says, "I'm gonna try to rein them in -- they're just desperate to figure out a way to save this thing.") To some point, we don't care in post because we get paid by the hour, but it frequently gets to the point where the producers are so busy pulling the wings off flies, they don't see the leaves, the trees, or the forest. They obsess over minutia because it's too late to fix the biggest problems in the project.

And that very definitely happens in VFX as well, since most of those happen long after the live action is shot and it's too late in the game to fix the really serious problems. I would point to John Carter and Lone Ranger as past disasters that had enormous problems with story and character, so they kept piling on bigger and more elaborate visuals, on top of quite a few reshoots; I can't think of many westerns that had a $60 million budget for VFX, but Lone Ranger did.

But then there are also the happy projects where the show is fantastic, the story is compelling, the characters are memorable, and then the post crew just has to work on putting the frosting on top and lighting the candle. Everything works from top to bottom, and the pressure lightens up. And yet there's still an awful lot of empty movies and TV shows out there that are all flash and no real substance. A lot of them fail, but there are always exceptions.

 

The Fast and Furious series trajectory from small street racing movies to international blockbuster summer spectacular is a good example. I just watched the 1st last night, its such a SMALL concept movie -street racing honda civics hijaking DVD players- , a car scene movie. And even tho I admit to being a fan, I will concede '..a quarter mile at a time' isn't exactly fine-art.

A couple more even lower budget sequels, less original cast members, cheaper cars to crash and blow up, still corny car scene movies .

But by the time you get to 5-7, its like a satire on 'more extreme', like just think up the most ridiculous car idea, then make it MORE ridiculous. Got a tank? Get one, run over expensive cars, wait, JUMP from the tank, catch your girlfriend in midair, why not?. Supercars not enough, find a hypercar. Wait, how bout hypercar jumps through a skyscraper, from inside another skyscraper? No, thats ridiculous, make it 3 skyscrapers and 2 jumps. And add a UFC chick fight to spice it up! Etc, ad naseum.

I haven't even seen 8 yet, but wait , is that a SUBMARINE in the trailer? Something tells me fast 9 has a Space Shuttle race a monster truck full of sharks---sharks with freakin LAZERS!!!

 

Haha. I like the later Fast & Furious movies. they're awesome low brow entertainment.

Having said that - Mad Max Fury road shows you how it CAN be done, no CGI.

 

There's tons of CGI in "MMFR":

This guide to visual effects in 'Mad Max' will change the way you think about CGI

 

There are about 600 people credited for various visual effects positions in the end titles for Mad Max: Fury Road. I'm guessing they didn't get it by standing around and getting coffee on the set.

If you want a better example of seamless VFX used in a movie, go see Baby Driver. That's another movie that appears to the eye to be pretty much effect-free, but there's a ton of very subtle work done here and there -- even to the extent of erasing skid marks on the ground (so you won't know you're watching take 10), and changing billboards in the background and graffiti on the walls.

 

Pretty much every frame of Fury Road has some form of digital manipulation, construction or enhancement. You fell for the pre-release hype about doing practical effects (of which there certainly were), but really, the whole film is basically a digital masterpiece. It shows that CGI can be done well in the hands of the right people.

 

I just saw Wonder Woman (2 1/2 hours I'll never get back), and the CGI was awful-like NCIS awful, especially conflagration scenes. Totally took me out of the already weak story. I know I'm in the minority about this, so flame away, but I just wasn't feeling it.

 

I really enjoyed the use of CGI in Doctor Strange last year. Some creative set-pieces and fun gimmicks. Not usually a fan of the CGI extravaganza, however.

 

I like the movie but I agree with your argument: there is a point where the images start to have a very plasticky "unreal" kind of feel to them, but I think it goes beyond VFX. I think those are deliberate choices by the filmmakers. It's not a look I personally like. There are parts of the movie that look fine.

 

IMO, too much CG looks like concept art to me. You see sci-fi movies and all the ships look like drawings more than attempts to seem real.

This even infects real-world settings. Look at CG cityscapes - they often seem more like "artist's renderings" than reality.

And don't get me started how so many CG-created organic creatures - like the BFG or other artificial lifeforms - look like they're made of clay!

 

Weta Digital - a horse of course

 

more from WETA

 

"Overused" and "glaringly obvious" are my two main complaints about CGI. I s'pose those do not apply to young 'uns who've grown up with a steady diet of it.

 

There is a theory (repeated in some of the essays I've linked to earlier) that younger audiences have grown so used to the look of video games, they don't see it as a problem when movies start reproducing the same "unreal" look. And I agree it's overused and glaringly obvious.

 

I can also believe that younger audiences are cool with that "CG look" because it's all they know in movies, too. CG has been a major factor in movies for 20+ years now, so there are millions of people who grew up after the era of practical effects essentially ended...

 

Practical effects are still huge. Check out this very recent shot from Transformers, with Michael Bay behind the camera...



Bay has said before that 90% of all he does with VFX on this kind of film is just to drop the robots in -- everything else he wants to see in the frame for real. I think it's fair to say they would also erase crew members, boom mics, visible lights, and do set extensions (and sky replacement) where necessary, but 80% of the shot is essentially real.

 

Don't know about CGI, but films are starting to suck I'll take 2001/2010 to 2011/2017, admittedly a couple of years to go for a decade..can't see the teens topping the noughties.

 

The CGI work in the 2005 "King Kong" was pretty amazing, especially for Kong himself.

Unfathomably poor movie though...

 

Yah, I love classic special effects!

 

Classics, Yahhh!

 

You know, I didn't care for Peter Jackson's 2005 Kong remake, but I did wind up liking the recent Skull Island, which I thought was silly but a lot of fun. I expected it to be absolutely haaaaarible, and was pleasantly surprised that it was OK (to me). Let's put it this way: it was better than any Transformers movie I've seen, and it was better than the last few King Kong and Godzilla movies I've seen.

 

There's a reason why 50-year-old movies like these are still just as enjoyable and fun today as they were decades ago... the charm and realism of "actual objects occupying the space" is something that CGI will never be able to duplicate with 100% accuracy, no matter how good technology gets.

 

CGI is generally fine. The problem is storytelling. If the story/movie is good enough, use of CGI goes pretty much unnoticed. If the "bones" of the movie are poor, any CGI issues seem magnified.