Why is CGI considered bad?

[FLHerne]

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.

Partly, but CGI allows directors to run with that kind of silliness, often without even realising.

With practical effects, you're using real objects and people that obey the laws of physics by default. The ground state is reality, you explicitly pay for each 'impossible' aspect in wires or hollow rocks or a thousand retakes, and there's an upper limit when the budget runs out and the stuntmen quit.

The ground state of CGI objects is a blank screen. They do not follow the laws of physics by default. Every realistic aspect you add has a cost in skilled animators' time, starting from the most mundane things like the way clothing moves or whether the chandeliers should balance.

Even if you want to make a real-world scene, you'd need an infinite budget to make every detail work the same as real life, and you'd still forget something (which is why CGI tends to look subtly wrong even as background).

Once you decide to add something cool-but-unrealistic, like Legolas' jumping thing, there's no reference for how impossible you're getting; the effects team won't come to you and say they can't make the bricks fly like that without crushing Orlando Bloom's feet.

So, in modern movies with CGI, you see a lot of things where the director didn't choose to be silly and over-the-top -- the small details are unrealistic whenever someone forgot about them, and the bigger scenes get so ridiculous because there's no sanity-check built into the process.

[Rodin]

A great example of the above would be Matrix Reloaded vs. Revolutions. The Chateau fight is a lot of fun - there's some superhuman strength going on and some wire-jumps, but that's about it. The fight scene looks awesome and it's a lot of fun. Then there's the final fight with Smith - they're flying around all over the place and the whole thing just looks kinda goofy, because we've come unstuck from real-world physics.

I would also say that medium matters. The floating-rocks-jump thing happens all the time in anime. It just isn't that noticeable there. When you translate to live action, suspension of disbelief starts hitting and it no longer looks good.

[Leewei]

Practical effects can be horrible, and can utterly ruin a movie. When well-done, though, they age very well. Computer effects are far more prevalent now, and there certainly are some that haven't aged well. The Last Starfighter was a pretty decent movie, but ouch, the ship effects.

Blatant CG can even be so bad they're good. Tron is pretty fun on account of how cheesy some of the graphics in the movie are.

Compare old kaiju man-in-rubber-suit movies with Ocean Pacific. Here, we have an example of CG being objectively better than practical effects.

Computerized effects get a bad reputation due to the worst of the category, but I see them as yet another variant of Hollywood magic.

[Aedilred]

I think people have covered most of the things so far. I think the thing to remember is that CGI is a tool, and like any tool it can be used well or used badly. Also, like most tools, it's most effective when you don't notice it's being used.

When critics complain about CGI, most of the time what they mean is "bad CGI" or "excessively noticeable CGI". When CGI is done well, it's not really noticeable, and even in retrospect people will talk about it positively. For instance, one of the things some critics like about the Sam Raimi Spiderman films is that the CGI has "weight": the characters and objects seem like they have a physical relationship with their surroundings and the laws of physics and give the figures verisimilitude, where some of the more technically advanced CGI of newer films somehow isn't believable for the opposite reason. It's rare to find a critic these days who'll criticise Andy Serkis and motion capture as a technique, which is basically CGI. But there's also the uncanny valley and if you get it wrong it can be unsettling. To an earlier poster who said that critics will complain about bad CGI in action films but not in, say, Benjamin Button, I'm not sure. I think that bad visual effects, especially when it comes to altered character appearance, will always be criticised, sometimes especially in drama or character pieces. I don't know if it was practical make-up or CGI but the Harry Potter epilogue drew hoots of derision in the cinema, for instance.

There is also a school of thought which seems to think, with some justification, that the increasing ubiquity of CGI is endangering careers and damaging skillsets in other areas of cinema: practical effects, cinematography, and indeed acting. It's harder to act against a green screen than against another actor, and this sometimes seems to cause some difficulty. Cinematography is in popular terms one of the most neglected areas of filmmaking but also one of the most important, but that's increasingly being delegated to virtual cameras. The same goes for projectionists: digital projection has completely killed them off, which has had a levelling effect on cinema. Often, a computer will raises the floor, but has a tendency to lower the ceiling too. When people complain about the homogenisation and mediocrity of mainstream entertainment, one has to wonder if computers are a part of that. Films like those of Ed Wood were atrocious, but kind of charming in retrospect. Bad films these days, by contrast, are almost never as bad, because with modern technology it's almost impossible to make films that bad on any kind of a budget, but they feel soulless and bland instead. That's the case quite widely, to be fair, not just in film.

So when people complain about CGI I think all of that is involved on some level.

[TeChameleon]

Gotta say that I think FLHerne nailed it in one; CGI will never be perfect, and some part of us will always recognize it when it is in use, even if we would have a great deal of trouble expressing what, exactly, tipped us off. To return to the Rogue One example, digital-face Grand Moff Tarkin didn't bother me, while CGI Leia creeped me right out. I couldn't tell you what, exactly, about the animated young Carrie Fisher felt so wrong, but there was very clearly something off.

My best guess is that the actor playing young(-ish) Peter Cushing had studied his facial mannerisms as well as his vocal inflections, body language etc., and the animators were able to follow off that, keeping the animation firmly grounded in the realities of the human face, whilst whoever was playing young Carrie Fisher maybe didn't do that, and so ended up looking like a partially-animated plastic doll.

On a semi-related note... many, if not most, of those who are working in CGI are extremely talented artists; unfortunately, this (probably) means that they are not physicists or pyrotechnicians or architects etc., and as such, have their manipulated 'reality' behaving in ways that we can often semi-instinctively recognize as unrealistic.

[Eldan]

A great example of CGI in movies recently? Fury Road. Universally praised for pratical effects, but the entire landscape around the actual car stunts is CG.

[Peelee]

A great example of CGI in movies recently? Fury Road. Universally praised for pratical effects, but the entire landscape around the actual car stunts is CG.

Universally praised for damn near everything, really.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

the entire landscape around the actual car stunts is CG.

"Chaotic" and "Good" definitely describes Fury Road, yes.

CGI will never be perfect, and some part of us will always recognize it when it is in use, even if we would have a great deal of trouble expressing what, exactly, tipped us off

I think you will find that is not the case. There is plenty of CGI that you're not going to even realise it's there. In The Martian, they used CGI to slow down any object dropped by Matt Damon to .4 of its falling speed, to simulate the reduced gravity of Mars. They also added the transparent facial plate of his helmet (because they are a pain to work with: they tend to reflect the lights & cameras). I doubt you could tell watching it the first time - and even in rewatches, armed with the knowledge, I still cannot "see" the CGI.

Grey Wolf

[Seppl]

I think you will find that is not the case. There is plenty of CGI that you're not going to even realise it's there. In The Martian, they used CGI to slow down any object dropped by Matt Damon to .4 of its falling speed, to simulate the reduced gravity of Mars. They also added the transparent facial plate of his helmet (because they are a pain to work with: they tend to reflect the lights & cameras). I doubt you could tell watching it the first time - and even in rewatches, armed with the knowledge, I still cannot "see" the CGI.

That is not really what people mean by CGI, I think. This is rearranging and enhancing existing footage with special effects, done by a computer. I would say, this is the kind of effect where computers really shine and produce much better results than one could achieve with traditional methods. Movies like Lord of the Rings and Fury Road, which were praised several times in this thread, also use a lot of these kind of effects. Many people probably do not realize that each shot in those movies is composed of many layers of footage from different sources, all rearranged, composited and filtered by the computer. As the computer does all of these things perfectly, the effects really enhance the movie, especially if practical effects are involved. Without those filters one would notice almost immediately that something is a miniature. But with the computer controlling the lighting and focus, inserting real images around the miniature, and inserting particle effects like fog or dust, it takes a much longer time for the viewer to notice that something is not quite right.

On the other hand, when people talk about bad CGI they are usually talking about the term in the traditional sense, as in the computer generates the image from nothing. These are the kind of effects that always feel fake. Everything is too shiny, the surfaces are too smooth, the shapes are too mathematically perfect, and oftentimes the animation is slightly off. Because hiring computer artists to model every tiny crack and imperfection, while possible in theory, would be much too expensive for most movie budgets. As a result, most of these images look very sterile. With practical effects you get these imperfections for free and can then use comparatively cheap computer effects to correct the shortcomings of the practical effect.

Lord of the Rings and Fury Road also include such CGI from nothing. And it looks pretty awful if you know where it is and focus on it. The difference compared too many other movies is, that these two films - for the most part - do not revel in their fake images. They are mostly in the background. So many movies today include just the actors surrounded by fake images for rather long times. Sometimes everything is CGI for minutes! One cannot help but notice these effects.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That is not really what people mean by CGI, I think.

I cannot possibly guess what "people" "mean" by CGI. The post I was answering made the bold claim that "CGI will never be perfect, and some part of us will always recognize it when it is in use", not something about "bad" CGI. Yes, of course you can tell bad CGI when you see it - that is what makes it bad. But contra the quoted claim, and contra your own claims, there are films where CGI is used and is pretty much impossible to tell where - say, Iron Man films where we transition from RDJ in a plastic suit to CGI Iron Man and back seamlessly.

ETA: And again, my broader point is that CGI is no different from any other cinema technique. When used well, you don't notice it. But every technique can be overused, to the point where the audience notices it. Heck, watch some of the "historical" films from the golden era of Hollywood - the sets look really fake. Like "That's supposed to be a marble column? I can tell its a flat cardboard cutout" bad.

CGI just happens to be the newest such technique, so it is going through its learning period, while the others have been honed to perfection for the last 50+ years. In another generation, I expect most CGI, like most sound effects and most costume techniques will be perfected and you won't be able to tell.

GW

[Legato Endless]

Another aspect that probably leads to CGI getting criticized less for its own sake and more of its usage is we still arguably haven't completely come out of the backwater of its excesses. How do you ruin someone creatively? Give them everything they could possibly want. Limitations are part of the creative process, and grappling with them often leads to unexpected places. A director learns to be disciplined and pick their battles, getting the absolutes down in telling a tight knit story.

Give them the keys to the Kingdom, and there's a real risk in losing themselves in the horizon. The Sandbox is so big now I can fill it with all manner of things not for the story but for the sake of the box. With CGI you can make spread yourself too thin, creating a dozen half assed unnecessary scenes instead of doubling down and making two good ones, only one of which you really needed.

CGI isn't special to the creative process in this regard, but it is one of the most visible to the audience. When "Man of Steel" hammers into us the reality that a half hour city busting battle can indeed bore you tears, it's a misstep driven by letting the creators' indulge themselves no different than how a great writer becomes merely mediocre when you remove their editor. The CGI isn't the real culprit here, but it is the most recognizable of the factors that enabled us to reach this point. The CGI isn't bad itself, but its ease of implementation is one the more common magnifiers of the storyteller's sins.

[Porthos]

Gotta say that I think FLHerne nailed it in one; CGI will never be perfect, and some part of us will always recognize it when it is in use, even if we would have a great deal of trouble expressing what, exactly, tipped us off.

I live over a hundred miles away from the Bay Area, and I think I can still faintly hear all the folks over at ILM banging their heads against the wall in frustration.

[TeChameleon]

I suppose I would qualify my statement about 'CGI never being perfect' by making a distinction between Computer Generated Imaging, where the object or environment is created wholesale by the computer, and what I guess I'd call Computer Enhanced Imaging, where the computer work is used to manipulate the visuals of an existing effect, object, or environment. Simply put, there is a level of granularity to reality that, with all due respect to the talented, possibly even brilliant, folks at ILM, computer science is a very, very long ways away from being able to simulate on any kind of practical scale. Thus, CGI is extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible (at least at this point in history; if we end up with planetmind-sized computers devoted to making movies, who knows what they'll look like?) to make entirely convincing.

With CEI (if there's a less clunky way of putting that, let me know; just the best I could come up with on short notice), the granularity is already in place; you're altering already-present impossible levels of complexity it rather than trying to create them.

[Peelee]

I suppose I would qualify my statement about 'CGI never being perfect' by making a distinction between Computer Generated Imaging, where the object or environment is created wholesale by the computer, and what I guess I'd call Computer Enhanced Imaging, where the computer work is used to manipulate the visuals of an existing effect, object, or environment. Simply put, there is a level of granularity to reality that, with all due respect to the talented, possibly even brilliant, folks at ILM, computer science is a very, very long ways away from being able to simulate on any kind of practical scale. Thus, CGI is extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible (at least at this point in history; if we end up with planetmind-sized computers devoted to making movies, who knows what they'll look like?) to make entirely convincing.

Ooooh, let's play a game! It's called, computer-generated (not enhanced. Generated.) or real. So, the ground rules real quick:

1.) This isn't a trick question where all are one or the other to try to trip you up, there's at least one real and at least one computer-generated.
2.) No searching for the answer, gotta guess. This includes searching the watermarks, reverse image searching, and checking the image URLs.
3.) They are either CGI or real, to the best of my knowledge. If there is proof I'm incorrect, I'd be more than happy to know.
4.) Obviously, you're no obligation to play if you don't want to.

Spoiler: Game on!

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Spoiler: A

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Spoiler: C

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Spoiler: D

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Spoiler: E

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Spoiler: F

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Spoiler: G

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Spoiler: I

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Spoiler: M

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[Thinker]

Aside from poorly done CGI, I think that a primary complaint about its use is that it is often used to replace plot. Don't bother with a good storyline. Just use 30 minutes of CGI special effects filler to distract the audience with explosions.

[Aedilred]

Ooooh, let's play a game! It's called, computer-generated (not enhanced. Generated.) or real. So, the ground rules real quick:

1.) This isn't a trick question where all are one or the other to try to trip you up, there's at least one real and at least one computer-generated.
2.) No searching for the answer, gotta guess. This includes searching the watermarks, reverse image searching, and checking the image URLs.
3.) They are either CGI or real, to the best of my knowledge. If there is proof I'm incorrect, I'd be more than happy to know.
4.) Obviously, you're no obligation to play if you don't want to.

So I'm willing to bet that at least some of those are real photographs which have been digitally colour-corrected. Not CGI, but not wholly real either.

Also, I didn't mean to "cheat", but when I quoted your post it displayed the image urls, many of which give the game away

[Peelee]

So I'm willing to bet that at least some of those are real photographs which have been digitally colour-corrected. Not CGI, but not wholly real either.

Also, I didn't mean to "cheat", but when I quoted your post it displayed the image urls, many of which give the game away

No problem. PM with answers inbound!

Also, whoops! It does seem like the URLs cab be a bit of a giveaway. I'll try to see if I can't get different sources when I get to a real computer.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Its not like badly written action and spectacle movies didn't exist before CGI became the dominant way of making them.

Ooooh, let's play a game! It's called, computer-generated (not enhanced. Generated.) or real. So, the ground rules real quick:

Still images are easier to pull off than animation. The best of those are nothing you couldn't do with physical paint. The more angles you have to present the more the mistakes will be obvious.

I can tell that at least a third of those are CG, though I would guess its probably closer to 80%. I couldn't tell you which were real because the obvious tell tale clues are specific enough to make them easier to fake.

Spoiler

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A: feels fake, could be real
B: Its on the moon, of course its fake.
C: I'd be very confused if this was real.
D: Real or deliberately filtered in a quite clever way.
E: So fake. Its like the artist can't see animals for their texture. Background might be a photo.
F: Would have to be a very specific Camera technique to do it from a physical tree. Could be CG pretty easily but I'd say its not.
G: Probably real, could just have had the resolution deliberately dropped to hide some bad CG.
H: I'm guessing CG but can't tell.
I: Could be CG, would probably be a difficult to get photograph.
J: If this is CG its the best one in the bunch.
K: Probably fake, can't tell.
L: Almost certainly CG.
M: So CG.

HD cameras make everything look fake anyway.

[Vinyadan]

CGI, even bad CGI, has its room. Immortal ad Vitam has deliberately fake characters. It is a bit weird to see them handled as real people, but it meshes well with the setting.

I personally am against using cgi to produce water. It just doesn't work, unless you are ready to pay tens of millions. It might be OK with calm water, but with rain, streams, waves, you can see it is fake. You can see it doesn't behave like water, and water isn't like explosions, it's something we deal with very often. There also are huge problems with light rendition during rain and heavy rain.

Which is part of the darkness problem, btw. Some movies go way too dark.

[Legato Endless]

Rain is something of a quagmire anyway though as properly lighting for it, especially at night, usually doesn't look particularly naturalistic.

[Grinner]

CGI, even bad CGI, has its room. Immortal ad Vitam has deliberately fake characters. It is a bit weird to see them handled as real people, but it meshes well with the setting.

I saw a movie Thursday, Beasts of the Southern Wild, which could have benefited greatly from CGI. There's a couple shots in the film meant to depict the advance of the aurochs. Instead of generating some majestic bovine megafauna, they made the unfortunate decision to use digitally enlarged live animals. Specifically, they glued horns to a bunch of hogs and filmed them; it didn't have quite the impact the filmmaker seemed to have been going for.

[MohawkNelf]

CGI has made a lot of advancements that I think the "CGI is bad" narrative is starting to turn old.

[Vinyadan]

CGI has made a lot of advancements that I think the "CGI is bad" narrative is starting to turn old.

Some of the best computer effects are the oldest ones: in Predator, the cigar in the beginning scene wouldn't light up, and the embers are computer made.

[Psyren]

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

This. Generally if people are commenting on it it's because it's very noticeable, which is the opposite of what the creator should be striving for.

Part of the issue is that when CGI is good, the CGI rarely gets credit - people compliment the "special effects" instead. Inception was loaded with CGI, but almost nobody says "the CGI in Inception was great!" They talk about the effects instead.

[Seppl]

Part of the issue is that when CGI is good, the CGI rarely gets credit - people compliment the "special effects" instead. Inception was loaded with CGI, but almost nobody says "the CGI in Inception was great!" They talk about the effects instead.

But Inception is famous for using truly astonishing practical effects instead of CGI!

[Vinyadan]

But Inception is famous for using truly astonishing practical effects instead of CGI!

Like when they cut up pieces of Paris and turned them on giant hinges, that was GREAT.



If you hadn't said it, I wouldn't have noticed how little CGI there is in that movie, and in the Batman movies too. Compared to movies of the same genre, there are 1/3 of the CG shots.

https://www.wired.com/2010/07/inception-visual-effects/

[Mato]

Q: Why is CGI considered bad?
A: Propaganda, costume designers, set creators, makeup artists, and other such laborers didn't want to be replaced by machines used by a couple of intellectuals running a sweat shop of unskilled minimum wage workers putting dots on recordings.

Q: Why is 3D considered bad?
A: Like the CGI fad 3D was simply the next stage of development that many companies hastily applied to poor films as a cash grab based on the attraction of "3D" it's self and the increased ticket price but since it didn't threaten to replace workers none one cared and barely anyone treats 3D as anything more than an option.

Q: Why is bullet-time considered bad?
A: Because it is often overused to drag out less than impressive scenes.

Q: Why is color-filtration considered bad?
A: Because it is often overused to typecast certain film genres at the expense of a full color palette.

Q: Why is too many cuts considered bad?
A: Because it is often overused to cover up an actor's inability to properly choreographed a decent fight scene.

Q: Why is X considered bad?
A: Because you can think of an example where it was overused and tacky.

Q: Wolves howl and the moon!
A: No they don't. Also finding a bad movie with certain effects doesn't mean the effects are to blame.

[Peelee]

Q: Why is too many cuts considered bad?
A: Because it is often overused to cover up an actor's inability to properly choreographed a decent fight scene.

For anyone wanting a more in-depth explanation, here is a great breakdown (10 mins).

[Rodin]

Once the "too many cuts" fad is pointed out to you, it's pretty much impossible to not start counting the cuts in every fight scene. It's a really obvious cheat and destroys action sequences. The only thing worse is the shaky cam, where you can't see what's going on AND you get motion sickness.

[Honest Tiefling]

Because of Star Wars.

I don't agree fully with this. I do agree that there is backlash to special effects.

But the problem with the special effects in the prequels is that the actors have said in interviews they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know what they were looking at and often got confused. I'm not blaming them, I'd be pretty confused talking to a tennis ball too.

The characters were often confined to smaller environments that didn't make sense in open fields and the sprawling cities. They didn't interact with the CGI, it was just a back drop. Good effects feel and look real, and the characters look like they are a part of it.

Some of the worlds also lacked bits that the originals had. As a semi-famous internet reviewer has said, the models looked dirty and used as was appropriate for military equipment. A lot of things in the prequels end up looking fake due to not having scuff marks and lacking that 'used' look to them. Things look pretty, but fake.

I will note that I do believe that the Star Wars prequels did advance techniques, and is partially responsible for good CGI use today. But it doesn't mean it used good effects to good means.