Why is CGI considered bad?

[Sapphire Guard]

In reviews of movies these days, I keep coming across disparaging comments re CGI, as though it's a bad thing in itself. But CGI is a tool like any other, it can be good or bad the same way practical effects can be good or bad. Why do people seem to think so often that the presence of CGI in itself is such a bad thing?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Because the CGI is often done very poorly, and it's being used as a substitute for decent writing, directing, cinematography, acting etc.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

In reviews of movies these days, I keep coming across disparaging comments re CGI, as though it's a bad thing in itself. But CGI is a tool like any other, it can be good or bad the same way practical effects can be good or bad. Why do people seem to think so often that the presence of CGI in itself is such a bad thing?

Impossible to answer without references that exemplify the point; "reviews these days" being too broad a field to even attempt to derive a common answer - why, Rotten tomatoes might compile several hundred reviews for a major blockbuster. Attempting to paint all such people with a single broad brush would be ludicrous.

What I can say is that the subset of reviewers that I generally trust to guide me (i.e. their likes and dislikes are close enough to mine that I am not often mislead by their recommendations) seldom complain about CGI for its own sake; they remark upon it when it breaks immersion. And this is fair enough: like all other effects in a film, they work best when no-one notices them at all. If the Foley artist was terrible at their jobs, you might complain that the horse sounds like a guy clapping coconut half-shells together. Similarly, CGI that is noticed is akin to seeing the strings of a puppet or the face of the stunt double: bad cinematographic practice.

Grey Wolf

[Starbuck_II]

Because the CGI is often done very poorly, and it's being used as a substitute for decent writing, directing, cinematography, acting etc.

True, but also sometimes it looks less real than Claymation or other techniques.

[Scowling Dragon]

I feel like so much of it is too much. I feel like we have been burned by what's allowed by special effects, so nothing really wows me anymore.

On top of that, so many things better just flat out animated are now shoven into live action films because....People hate animation unless a famous actor can be on the side to grant it legitimacy.

[BRC]

Once upon a time, Special Effects were a magic trick. Film Audiences were awed by the way films like Star Wars, Alien, Jurassic Park, and Blade Runner showed us impossible things. Models and camera tricks and costumes transported us to magical worlds. In addition to the Spectacle of the events on screen, there was the Wonder of "How did they make that happen?". Spectacle and Wonder were inseperable, the more amazing and impossible the visuals on screen, the more we enjoyed them.

Then, CGI happened, and the Magic Trick was over. There was a period where Spectacle and Wonder were still mixed, where it was still amazing that they could use computers to conjure such fantastical images. But, we got used to it. Now, we just accept that you can make basically any image onscreen using computers.

So, CGI is still a fantastical tool, but all it delivers these days is Spectacle. We know how it happens. The Magic Show has been replaced with Acrobats. Still Impressive, but you're not wondering how they made it happen.

Consider, for example, the opening shot of Blade Runner:
https://youtu.be/-fu7jN2_2pE?t=3m1s

Blade Runner came out in 1982. It opens with over a minute of what I'll call an Impossible Shot. A grim, flame-belching, cyberpunk Los Angeles with flying Taxicabs zooming past the screen. Such a city does not exist in real life, certainly not in 1982.

There is a bit of Spectacle, but there is also Wonder. We know what we're seeing, which means that somebody created this image and put it in front of a camera. But, this city does not exist. How did they put a city that does not exist in front of a camera. That's the Wonder. The Film is showing off, giving us far more than a simple establishing shot of the city, because they created an impossible thing, and it wants us to spend some time being amazed by that. We get roughly a full minute of panning, no narration, just bask and take it in.

Now that CGI is a thing, there's no Wonder anymore. Consider our first look at another impossible city, Asgard, in the first Thor movie:
https://youtu.be/hxlZ4OvfsXE?t=2m29s

The camera pans over the city for about 30 seconds before cutting to an Interior shot. Visually, Asgard is just, if not more impossible than 2019 LA, but the movie doesn't expect us to be impressed by the fact that they put an impossible city in front of our eyeballs.

The blowback to the use of CGI comes in when the Spectacle alone is not enough. Part of it is Filmmakers using pre-CGI techniques (like long shots over impossible cities) and expecting Wonder to prop up Spectacle. Part of it is Critics bemoaning how Wonder has been taken out of the movie watching experience. Part of it is how, since everybody is aware that CGI can be indistinguishable from practical effects, when Practical effects DO happen (Like in Mad Max Fury Road, or BB8 in The Force Awakens), we're especially amazed. Not only did they put this Impossible Thing in front of a camera, they did so when they didn't need to.

And a good deal of it is, yeah, Bad CGI. It does happen, and it takes us out of the movie, removing both Spectacle and Wonder.

[Kitten Champion]

Because of Star Wars.

There are always snobbish critics who think genre entertainment is trash in any circumstance and deride the effects-heavy summer blockbuster whenever possible, and sometimes they're warranted and others not. CGI in something with broad critical praise like Forrest Gump or Benjamin Buttons is going to get a free pass, while it's likely going to be thrown out as a failing of something like Transformers. The critique of visuals is a stand-in I think, to heavily suggest the lack of artistic merits of the work as a whole.

Among fans however, the most ubiquitous complaints regarding CGI ruining a good thing that I can point to is the Star Wars Special Edition and the Prequels and that's reshaped the discourse surrounding it.

No one really complains about Star Trek's CGI because of how quickly and thoroughly the franchise entrenched itself into a mostly computer-based visual aesthetic and remained so for thirty-plus years. Sure, there are some laughable duds with Trek's visuals over the years, but it's rarely a cogent complaint made against it as a franchise.

Star Wars however, was renowned for its intricate model work, elaborate costumes, and whole range of practical effects that still stand the test of time. Then, twenty-plus years later, George Lucas showed up with a series of movies that pushed CGI to new limits with their scope along with a remastered version of his beloved movies with CGI-inserted within. Which for a wide swath of the audience were not well received. This had a kind of ripple effect where the mechanism were as subject to critique as their implementation.

This is why in the promotional lead up to The Force Awakens, J.J. "Mystery Box" Abrams was showing up with alien puppets, full-sized X-Wings, and live sets to hammer the point home that he and Disney "got it".

[Kato]

A lot of good points have been made, including the fact that not all cgi is criticized by decent reviewers.
I'd like to add the people who think cgi is some cheap magic where you push a button and amazing art appears, ignoring the hard work that goes into decent animation even today.

[The Second]

A lot of good points have been made, including the fact that not all cgi is criticized by decent reviewers.
I'd like to add the people who think cgi is some cheap magic where you push a button and amazing art appears, ignoring the hard work that goes into decent animation even today.

Agreed, and would like to add that CGI at it's best when you can't tell it's being used.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

A lot of good points have been made, including the fact that not all cgi is criticized by decent reviewers.

I think that is a bit unfair. There are, certainly, good reviewers and bad reviewers, but I can imagine that certain decent reviewers might not find CGI of any kind a plus to a movie, in the same way others don't find any kind of shoehorned romance plus. That doesn't make them less decent, just not the appropriate type of reviewer you'd trust.

I'd like to add the people who think cgi is some cheap magic where you push a button and amazing art appears, ignoring the hard work that goes into decent animation even today.

It feels like you are missing the verb of the sentence's main clause. You'd like to add that such people... what? Should be ignored? Be considered bygones of a long-lost era? Shot at the moon?

GW

[Dalinale]

In a discussion like this, using visual examples might be helpful; here's two shots from the same movie series, both considered good examples of special effects and CGI respectively. This particular one has a lot of stuff written on it, so I think it's even better for a starting point;

The Jurassic Park T Rex attack still holds up today; for a movie that is nearly twenty five years old, this is astounding. While it's movements may be jerky and it lacks the more subtle details that could be created in later years, it still has a sense of weight and, for a lack of a better term, 'realness'. While CGI is obviously present, most of the scenes regarding the attack on the car involve some degree of special effects as apposed to CGI, and the 'roar' scene that's present at 3:13 involves a large special effect puppet that gives the Rex a sense of weight and realness. The rain coming down on the creature is real, the lighting is real, and the 'face' is real, to degree that cannot be matched with traditional CGI.

The Jurassic World raptors are fine examples of good CGI, but they do not feel real in the slightest and it's doubtful that the average person would question if they were real or not. While a well-done animation is going to feel more real than something made through CGI. The raptors might have 'weight', they certainly move like how they might have done so in real life, but they still look fake as fake can get and the actors were obviously acting in front of green balls on sticks.

[Kato]

I think that is a bit unfair. There are, certainly, good reviewers and bad reviewers, but I can imagine that certain decent reviewers might not find CGI of any kind a plus to a movie, in the same way others don't find any kind of shoehorned romance plus. That doesn't make them less decent, just not the appropriate type of reviewer you'd trust.

I'm sorry if my point was unclear. Of course a good reviewer can criticize use of CGI, and two good reviewers can disagree on a single use of cgi because these things are at least to a degree subjective. I was merely saying, a good reviewer should not generally be against all uses of cgi.

It feels like you are missing the verb of the sentence's main clause. You'd like to add that such people... what? Should be ignored? Be considered bygones of a long-lost era? Shot at the moon?

GW

Eh, yes, I did leave out the verb, kind of intentionally. I was merely referring to the existence of such people. What one should do with them is of course up to personal preference. I feel a good thing might be to have them try to create a decent cg image, to get a feeling how much work goes into it. But shooting them to the moon... Hm...

[Quiver]

I think it took me seeing the Hobbit to finally "get" all the complaints people have about the Star Wars prequels.

So far as effects and stuff go... Lord of the Rings was amazing. The practical effects all helped to immerse me in that world, made it all feel "real". There was CGI in Lord of the Rings, sure... but the fact that it set itself up using practical stuff, and that a lot of it was practial effects, made me ignore the CGI. I wasn't looking at pixels on a screen, I was watching an Oliphaunt, or a Fell Beast, or an army of the dead!

With the Hobbit... there isn't any "weight" to things. The orcs look like plastic, whereas the original trilogy looked realistic and rough. The overuse of CGI made it seem almost more like a cartoon than a living, breathing world. The CGI could be impressive -see, Smaug- but there was so much of it that I didn't buy it the way I did the OG Middle-Earth.

I think that's most people's complaints with CGI; it damages immersion if handled poorly.

[Kalmageddon]

Because in general, CGI is noticeable enough to seem fake. Practical effects are harder to make and more time consuming but when done right the results are better than modern CGI, if only because what you are seeing is actually there.

[Darth Ultron]

I think the big problem with CGI is that it replaces everything else.

Batman vs Superman is a great example: the last third of the movie is just CGI spam. No actors or acting or drama or anything other then what can some animators scribble all over a film while saying ''pew pew''.

Worse, move makers can't control themselves. With CGI you can do ''super duper awesome pew pew anything'', and that is great....but you don't want to spam it all over the movie. Enhance the movie, not over run it.

[Peelee]

I think it took me seeing the Hobbit to finally "get" all the complaints people have about the Star Wars prequels.

So far as effects and stuff go... Lord of the Rings was amazing. The practical effects all helped to immerse me in that world, made it all feel "real". There was CGI in Lord of the Rings, sure... but the fact that it set itself up using practical stuff, and that a lot of it was practial effects, made me ignore the CGI. I wasn't looking at pixels on a screen, I was watching an Oliphaunt, or a Fell Beast, or an army of the dead!

With the Hobbit... there isn't any "weight" to things. The orcs look like plastic, whereas the original trilogy looked realistic and rough. The overuse of CGI made it seem almost more like a cartoon than a living, breathing world. The CGI could be impressive -see, Smaug- but there was so much of it that I didn't buy it the way I did the OG Middle-Earth.

I think that's most people's complaints with CGI; it damages immersion if handled poorly.

You forgot Legolas running up the falling stones. Gravity works faster on him!

[Traab]

To me, cgi gets a bad rap when its used in place of practical effects excessively. For an example, lets say you have an entire city being destroyed in slow motion. It was done mostly with models and camera angles but they used cgi to embellish things a bit, to put some polish on the final product. Thats a good use of cgi. Doing the entire scene with nothing but cgi looks fake, no matter how advanced the work is. There will always be that uncanny valley effect that to me wrecks immersion. Plus it makes it much harder for actors to properly interact with the sets, the other actors, the environment, etc etc etc. It detracts from their ability to perform because they are talking to themselves in a giant green room instead of addressing an army of troops out on a windy battlefield.

[HasSIn]

I don't think people have problem with CGI when it's done right, when it's not over the top. A good example is this. ((Warning: potential spoilers for The Wolf of Wall Street))

[Talar]

CGI as some others have touched upon is for the most part over used, and does not age well at all. Putting the life span of a movie down to maybe two years if it is lucky. I do believe that CGI will eventually reach the point where it seems seamless and the aging problem will be reduced but growing pains make audiences bitter. As an example the LotR movies still hold up fantastically well cause they used practical effects, whereas the Hobbit movies look like crap already. I maintain that if the Hobbit movies used practical effects that despite numerous other problems they would be loads better for the practical effects.

The other thing is that CGI is quicker than practical effects though way more expensive for some reason. Again the LotR vs. the Hobbit movies illustrate this budget difference. But studios want and need to shovel movies through the line, so CGI is their answer to making movies quicker and throwing more product out there.

CGI is best when it is used to enhance practical effects. Sadly, this is not how it is used often.

[Telonius]

Sometimes CGI can still bring the "Wonder." I'm thinking of Rogue One here, that shot of Moff Tarkin. I knew going into it that they'd CGI'd him, and that the original actor had been dead for years. But human faces are something they've never really been able to get right before. Seeing it fully realized - combined with an actor who'd obviously done his homework for the role - was pretty breathtaking.

[Kyberwulf]

Man, I thought Moffie boy looked fake. I didn't even know they were going to use cgi until I saw it. Him and Leia.

I think CGI is considered bad, Because there area a lot of purists out there who are still gaga for practical effects. Nevermind that even practical effects look dated as well, unless it's done really really. well. same with Cgi to be honest.

Personally I like it best when both are combined.

[cobaltstarfire]

The other thing is that CGI is quicker than practical effects though way more expensive for some reason.

It takes a larger pile of people to do all the CGI bits than it does to craft/paint models and amazing matte paintings? (I don't know just a guess). I'm not sure that CGI is necessarily quicker than practical effects though. Or maybe part of the time variable is rendering periods? I know Dragons: Riders of Berk had trouble releasing each episode on time at first because the animation houses they were farmed out to had trouble with that.

[Scowling Dragon]

I think with CGI you just can keep shoveling human labor at an issue until it looks nice.

With practical effects you will eventually just reach a limit where more people won't speed the process up.

[sktarq]

Because the use of CGI by itself is often used to replace stuff. Things become CGI-fests. Thus you end up with holes in everything else. CGI is not a replacement for good writing, directing, and acting. When used this way to gets a bad rap. I think it earns it.

[Peelee]

I think with CGI you just can keep shoveling human labor at an issue until it looks nice.

With practical effects you will eventually just reach a limit where more people won't speed the process up.

Lies and falsehoods. You can always speed up the process with more people. You just need the right people. For instance, enforcers with shock prods to shock people not working fast enough. After that, level 2 enforcers with bull whips. They make sure the level 1 enforcers aren't slacking off. And so on. And at the glorious top is a lone person, red-faced and hyperventilating, screaming "FAAAASTTEEEERRRRRR" constantly between gasps for air, perpetually on the cusp of an aneurism. He is never pleased. This is also how most governments are run.

[DigoDragon]

I think of CGI in a (non-animated) film as putting on make up. It looks better the less noticeable it is. The real art to the effect is getting the audience to see it and not notice it was done by a computer. :3

[Sapphire Guard]

Some great commentary here, folks, thanks.

So... it's how its used, not the tool itself? Makes sense. Legolas' brick climbing in itself wasn't bad, it's just that it was a silly idea in the first place. CGI Tarkin was a slight problem for me mostly because they made him a dramatic reveal, rather than just another character.

But I don't think Doomsday would have been better if it was a man in a rubber suit (not a shot at BVS, as I liked it)

[Peelee]

Some great commentary here, folks, thanks.

So... it's how its used, not the tool itself? Makes sense. Legolas' brick climbing in itself wasn't bad, it's just that it was a silly idea in the first place.

Exactly. A film sells an illusion. If a tool breaks the illusion, then the use of that tool is subject to scrutiny.

[tomandtish]

Exactly. A film sells an illusion. If a tool breaks the illusion, then the use of that tool is subject to scrutiny.

Some great commentary here, folks, thanks.

So... it's how its used, not the tool itself? Makes sense. Legolas' brick climbing in itself wasn't bad, it's just that it was a silly idea in the first place. CGI Tarkin was a slight problem for me mostly because they made him a dramatic reveal, rather than just another character.

But I don't think Doomsday would have been better if it was a man in a rubber suit (not a shot at BVS, as I liked it)

Yep.

Case in point, let's compare a few movies.

Avatar: Despite the bulk of the movie's special effects being CGI, they really added to the experience. In fact, a lot of people say the effects were the only good thing about the movie. There was some ground breaking work there, and the effects were what sold that movie (as much as possible anyway). Yes, it was CGI and you knew it was CGI, but it didn't take you out of the experience.

BvS (as you mentioned above): An overuse of CGI meant that fight scenes seemed off kilter and unreal. Doomsday never seemed like a real body, but neither did any of our heroes in the middle of battle (Man of Steel had the same problem). There are too many times where you can tell that ALL the characters fighting are CGI.

Asylum films (Sharknado for example): These films have CGI effects so bad that it and the horrific plots are why people watch them (they hit the "so bad it is good" for some people). They are prime examples of how bad CGI can be, because some of the smaller errors that annoy us in other films? Are the norm for every shot in an Asylum film. 10 foot sharks completely submerged in 18 inches of water. Blood splatter that disappears when it hits the ground. The list is endless. If something can be done poorly in CGI, an Asylum film has done it, either as one of their own nature disaster films or as one of their rushed knockoffs of a mainstream film (Atlantic Rim, Jack the Giant Killer, etc.).

[Sapphire Guard]

I... didn't have that problem with BVS? To show off the characters properly, you honestly need it, because pulling that with practical effects is impossible, and otherwise you have to downplay the abilities of your leads and be much less ambitious.