Has CGI gotten stale?

[Casual Shinji]

I can still remember the day I saw the first footage of Jurassic Park. It was summer vacation and I'd gotten up early to watch cartoons. The 7 o'clock News was on and instead of changing the channel I decided to wait it out to the end. Now, the last news item was about this new movie. Wich struck me as odd since in those days the News was serious and didn't really pay any mind to the world of movies. So whatever it was it had to be something big, and it was.
It was a new movie by Steven Spielberg called; Jurassic Park. And what I saw then absolutely blew my little brain through my skull in orbit around the Moon. Right there, was a Tyrannosaurus Rex walking leisurely from one car to another in a nighttime setting. I was only 8 or 9 and knew little about special effects. Sure, I knew some things about stop-motion or putting cartoon characters among real people. But this was different, this was REAL; no janky or twitchy movement, but a real dinosaur with fluid motion. And not just A dinosaur, but a motherf*king Tyrannosaurus Rex. This was a living breathing prehisitoric creature and my 8 year old mind could not understand how this was possible. Before that I'd never heard of computer animation. I had, no doubt, seen it in commercials, but those were just big letters and inanimate objects. Plus of course the fact that as a little kid you just don't see the link between what is on screen, and the people that make it happen behind the scenes. Just as you don't see the link between Santa Claus, and a guy dressed up as Santa Claus.
I went to see it on my tenth birthday party with my family and some schoolmates. And at the end they had to carry me out of the theatre in a punchbowl. I had literally liquifid out of shear euphoria.

And so, CGI became the new big thing and everybody started using it. More and new technologies became available to make the effects sparkle like never before and we saw it was good. But having lived through 16 years CGI I've become somewhat tired of it. The last movies to really amaze were Spider-man 2, Lord of the Rings & King Kong. These days it's easy to make something look real, but not as easy to make something look beautiful. I've seen the trailers for Transformers 2, 2012 and many other special effects extravaganzas, but it just doesn't for me anymore. Apparently James Cameron's Avatar is set to show us something we've never seen before in CGI. In the end these are just pretty words. But it does make me slightly hopeful that I may once again feel my brain blow through my skull and orbit around the Moon.

So, do you feel that CGI has gotten stale?

 

[Hutchy_Bear]

short answer - yes.

slightly longer answer but still short - yes it has been overdone and now looks boring.

 

[rdaleric]

I've never been that keen on CGI really

 

[Joshimodo]

I think it's about time we did something else with it.

It's always either cutesy, bug-eyed kid's stuff or some scenery.

 

[effilctar]

Jurassic Park was revolutionary, it is why to this day I am still afraid of velociraptors. But yes CGI has gotten terrible from 2000 onwards. Watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine, poor old Hugh doesn't know where the claws are meant to be half the time

 

[Slycne]

The problem with CGI is that it doesn't age well. Some of the effects from the original Star Wars still look pretty decent because they were all done practically with miniatures. Not every effect is it economical, effective or even possible to produce practically. But more and more films have become to reliant on the CGI crutch.

 

[Pandalisk]

CGI is amazing, to be fair we've just uppeded our visual standareds, ps3 and xbox 360 graphics are the norm, going to the later consoles is like rubbing dirt in my eyes.

I still think what they do with CGI is amazing, I love the stargate CGI, its always been one of my favourites.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Jurassic Park was mostly animatronics I believe. The thing is with animation that there's always been good and bad. See District 9 for some good CGI.

Remember what you remember, it's Jurassic Park not Mac and Me.

 

[Turtleboy1017]

CGI is like a bowl of cereal. You take the first bites, and think AWESOME.

4 bowls later you feel like throwing up.

 

[Anachronism]

CGI has gotten stale, mainly because we expect a lot more of it. Because it is used so much in films these days, we expect it to look completely real all the time, when, of course, it can't and won't. In my experience, the only people able to consistently make CGI look real are WETA. Watch the LotR films and it's almost impossible to tell that Gollum is CG.

Watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine, poor old Hugh doesn't know where the claws are meant to be half the time

It's the scene where he's trying out his new claws in that old couple's bathroom that made me laugh. Those claws looked terrible.

Some of the effects from the original Star Wars still look pretty decent because they were all done practically with miniatures.

Now, I'd actually disagree with this. I would argue that all of the effects form the Original Trilogy still look as good now as they did back when the films first came out, precisely because they were done with miniatures and models. That's something which practical effects will always have and CG won't: they're real. Ok, they're obviously on a much smaller scale than the real thing would be, but they're still actually there. Compare the space battles in the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy: the ones in the OT look like they're actually happening, while the ones in the PT look like a videogame cutscene. Compare Yoda in the OT to him in the PT: the former looks like a living, breathing creature, while the latter looks like a character in a PC game.

This is the thing I love about practical effects, and I always admire a film a lot more for using them rather than choosing to use CG instead. Blade Runner was one of the last great films made without CG, and it benefits hugely from it, in my opinion. And now, to close with a quotation which perfectly sums up my views on CG vs. practical effects.

I hate CG. I hate knowing the actors are talking to a tennis ball on a stick.

 

[Squarez]

I think that CGI has taken the realism out of films, in the past if you saw a car chase scene with a huge explosion with power-slides around tight corners with a tracking shot as it raced through the street, you'd know that although it's a film, this actually happened, (albiet probably on a specially designed set, but whatever) because they needed to film it, but now everyone just assumes everything is CGI, because 90% of the time it is.

It's also taken the imagination out of films, instead of animatronics or actualy special effects it's all CGI because it's much much cheaper. I mean when I saw the ads for the new Walking with Dinosaurs Live show (http://www.dinosaurlive.com/funstuff/) the animatronics blew my mind in a way that CGI never could now.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The problem with CGI is that it doesn't age well. Some of the effects from the original Star Wars still look pretty decent because they were all done practically with miniatures. Not every effect is it economical, effective or even possible to produce practically. But more and more films have become to reliant on the CGI crutch.

I saw Army of Darkness for the first time last week.(I know, I'm ashamed.) And seeing all the animatronic and puppet action was just fantastic. Unlike with CGI you could really feel the impact. Same as with Team America.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think that CGI has taken the realism out of films, in the past if you saw a car chase scene with a huge explosion with power-slides around tight corners with a tracking shot as it raced through the street, you'd know that although it's a film, this actually happened, (albiet probably on a specially designed set, but whatever) because they needed to film it, but now everyone just assumes everything is CGI, because 90% of the time it is.

It's also taken the imagination out of films, instead of animatronics or actualy special effects it's all CGI because it's much much cheaper. I mean when I saw the ads for the new Walking with Dinosaurs Live show (http://www.dinosaurlive.com/funstuff/) the animatronics blew my mind in a way that CGI never could now.

I know what you mean. When I saw a clip of a real dinosaur walking in the museum interacting with people and growling, I had that old fashion feeling of; HOW THE F*CK DID THEY DO THAT?

 

[Avaholic03]

Stale? No. Predictable? Yes. Mostly because the audience has gotten used to CGI to the point that we expect it. But they continue to polish and refine CGI so it looks more "realistic" and blends more seamlessly with the live-action shots. Looking back at Jurassic Park era CGI, I can see the roughness or the computer parts. Just subtle things like textures that have since been worked on and look better.

Still, there are some films (I'm looking at you Michael Bay) that grossly overuse CGI and give everyone a bad taste in their mouth.

 

[Casual Shinji]

In my experience, the only people able to consistently make CGI look real are WETA. Watch the LotR films and it's almost impossible to tell that Gollum is CG.

Because you can't just have realistic looking CGI. You need a good visual effects designer.

That's why, in my opinion, the CGI in Spider-Man 2 looked amazing and the CGI in Spider-Man 3 looked boring. John Dyksta was the visual effects designer for the first two movies but turned down the third. Randall William Cook was the visual effects designer on LotR. He certainly knows his stuff.

 

[Wilfy]

I don't think has gotten stale as such, it's just a lot harder for films to stand out nowadays because the CGI really has to be something incredible to be noticed above all the other movies.

 

[hermes]

The problem is not that it got stale, the problem is that it has lost its novelty.

CGI are a tool, not a selling point. Early movies could get to that because CGI was so rare that they could use it to justify the movie (relaying other "secondary" stuff, like characters or story); but now CGI is commonplace, so filmmakers have to focus in that stuff instead of just throwing money into 3D studio... That's why audience don't fall for that "great movie, great FX" fallacy so much.

 

[fix-the-spade]

No.

The problem is it's over used. Films use far far too much green screen and it creates a very slightly odd effect on film, characters don't quite interact properly. If they started bringing back real sets and animatronics (see the Alien queen, every seen with it in is as shot without post production), then only used cgi when necessary, the effects would be greatly improved.

 

[bluepilot]

I think that CGI is vastly overused and has indeed become stale.

I prefer effects that are created without relying on computers. Somehow, this makes the movie more interesting because of the level of thinking that has gone into an effect to make it look realistic.

Movies are a kind of magic and CGI took that magic away because now we all know that what we are seeing is generated by lines of programming.

 

[LimeJester]

Bad CGI where it makes you realize for just that moment that it's CGI and not real - Yes
Seamless CGI where it meshes in with the film and enhances the film overall - No

It's just a tool, can be used well or not.