6 Reasons Modern Movie CGI Looks Surprisingly Crappy

dascoyne said:

Director James Gunn, for one, seems to recognize the pitfalls of CGI. Even with a giant budget, for Guardians of the Galaxy, he still used a lot of practical effects. In fact, the practicals often blended with the CGI making the "seams" harder to detect. This was a principle which he applied also in the (wonderful) film, Super when a certain sidekick gets killed.

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This is one of the reasons the late Stan Winston was considered to be a master of special effects. When CGI began to dominate over practical effects in the movie industry, a lot of practical effects artists began worrying about how much longer their chosen profession would last. Winston, on the other hand, realized there would be a need for practical effects for a long time to come, and he not only embraced CGI but worked happily with CGI artists so that audiences would not be able to determine where the CGI ended and the practical effects began. To him, it didn't matter how they achieved the final effects--his goal was simply to make them believable and seamless so movie audiences wouldn't be disappointed.

I still haven't seen Avatar, but based on people's reactions to it and its longevity at this point, I think the general sentiment is "AMAZING f/x. Pretty ho-hum story otherwise." As a result, Avatar is not a new classic. The new classics are the movies based around really good stories and where special effects are a tool used in telling that story, rather than the showcase around which the story is built.

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For the life of me I cannot put my finger on why Avatar hasn't resonated better. I agree, it hasn't resonated that well. It just seems like it should be doing better when taken on paper.

Yeah the story is simple & predictable. You could say the same thing about tons of classics. Indy & the Nazis chase that stupid Ark, eventually they open it, and Indy gets the girl & the Ark in the end. Romeo & Juliet fall in love against her family's wishes, the boat sinks, and tragedy ensues.

People say the plot feels really worn out. But when asked for other examples of it that are recent and/or well-remembered, nobody has any. I can barely remember "Dances with Wolves" and I've never seen "Pocahontas".


I think maybe Avatar's failing is that it combines things that are fine ingredients on their own but didn't play well together. The blue smurf cartoon people, the adult anti-corporate, anti-imperialism message, the simple plotline, the tone, etc.

Main reason:

The CGI artist today lacks a classical, "physical" education. I.e. where earlier concept artists usually had a classical background, today it´s mostly digital media. And their artistical education is probably just copying what had been done over the years. Where about 50 years ago you had centuries of art as a source of inspiration and artists had a very broad training it nowadays looks like they simply copy what is found in art within the last two or maybe three centuries, be it production design or costume design or digital visual design and vfx design.

agree on lots of things about bad cgi.

still i prefer a good told story in a film with bad cgi over perfect cgi in a crappy story.

heck i even like some of the syfy original movies/series. not because of the "high quality top end" cgi but the story and execution of it isnt bad at all.
seen alot worse high dollar perect CGI that are worse.

Several things here and a few people have touched on them.

First, I'd estimate that 90 percent of CG is never noticed. You only ever notice BAD CG.
-Unless of course it's something that your brain just cannot believe is real. In this case it's not BAD CG it's just impossible to fool the brain on occasion. (ie. in Guardians you KNOW that Rocket is CG but it definately is not bad CG in the slightest).

Second, it's EXTREMELY difficult to convince you that something living that you have seen in real life is real if it's been replaced with CG. The Planet of the Apes is an excellent example, great overall CG, great overall movemet, motion capture was superb, but there are a millions little tells that what you're looking at is not real. Have you ever seen someone standing still? There are still hundreds of little motions going on (it's one of the reasons that a dead body can really creep you out, there is NO movement whatsoever).

And as far as practicle effects being the greatest thing since sliced bread, I think there's quite a bit of selective/nostalgic recall going on. How many spaceships and puppets and animatronics and stop motion creatures and characters did you REALLY think were real? Even the sheet of glass between Indy and the cobra we picked up on eventually because of the reflection!

And just for the record, if you've ever been in a room full of animators, they do the motions themselves or ask the next guy to do the motions so they can study them. They even film the motions and the basically rotoscope over the top of it. So don't think for a minute that a good animator is just pulling these motions out of his head and saying "yeah, I'm positive that's what it looks like". Bad animators... well, that's a different story.

Now I'm not saying that either one is better than the other, in fact the combining of the two mediums is what REALLY sells the shot usually.

I'm sorry for the rant but I am so very tired of the "ALL CG SUCKS" mentality that sometimes goes around.

justanuthercap said:

And just for the record, if you've ever been in a room full of animators, they do the motions themselves or ask the next guy to do the motions so they can study them. They even film the motions and the basically rotoscope over the top of it. So don't think for a minute that a good animator is just pulling these motions out of his head and saying "yeah, I'm positive that's what it looks like". Bad animators... well, that's a different story.

Now I'm not saying that either one is better than the other, in fact the combining of the two mediums is what REALLY sells the shot usually.

I'm sorry for the rant but I am so very tired of the "ALL CG SUCKS" mentality that sometimes goes around.

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I agree wholeheartedly, just any behind the scenes videos of just about any Pixar movie and you'll see how the animators will actually go out to study animals in real life to get an idea of the motion as well as getting models in to pose or act out movements that they can't do themselves. More often the reason why you sometimes get unrealistic motions is because the motion desired itself is unrealistic (not the artists fault), or because they're under too tight of a deadline/budget to really do it right.

I don't recall reading here or anywhere else where anybody ever said "ALL CG SUCKS"

Personally I'm amazed at how far CG has come in the past few years. It's come a long way from Terminator 2 effects. It took them awhile to get water to look realistic... same with fire. But the algorithms they've come up with recently really do look believable. They are getting better at facial animation too. You can still tell that it's CG, but it's getting harder to tell. For example... I didn't realize that the young Jeff Bridges was CG until about 3/4 of the way thru the movie. Not too bad. Facial animation is tough thou... there are so many visual cues that are almost imperceptible that just give it away... maybe its because we see faces every day. It's hard for the computer to catch all those little subtle clues seeing as it does the rendering "in-between" frames to determine the best "guess" of where the next point will be and that always gives it away because many times it's wrong. Not all CG is bad... but it is a let down if it is discovered it is CG sometimes. Personally there are somethings that CG just cannot do. It hasn't quite figured out how to render thick fluids like oil or grease.... can always tell when those are animated. Honestly I would prefer to see a filmed model shot against a green/blue screen over a 3D rendering CG shot of the same model. I think its because the rendered version comes out looking too perfect... too rigid. When filming alot of little imperfections occur... like the glint of light off a shiney spot hits the lens and caused just the but it also hits several other parts on the same model and causes them to get brighter and others to get darker. Like happy little accidents. The computer software doesn't always go that deeply in light reflection... and sometimes to save money, the "bounce" level of light is constrained to only happen once or twice, the more levels, the longer it takes to render every frame... but in real life, there are no constraints... and the light goes where ever it wants to and it takes a fraction of the time to render. Does it help when budget and time matters, sure, but some directors think that everything should be done in CG and it totally ruins the feel of it.

I think the animals in Life of Pi were some of the best I've ever seen. There was only a shot or two in that movie where IMHO they were not 100% real looking. I think I read somewhere there was only one shot of the tiger that was a real tiger. Unfortunately the time and amount of money put into those CG animals bankrupted the vfx company I heard.

I can live with a lot of things, but the lack of gravity and physics makes me cringe.
Just watched The Hobbit films and they just did this again and again and again.
If I want that I'll stick to Wile E Coyote thanks.
Gravity they had the MMU flying around like a spastic moth.
They can make things look great but still utter fail on how things actually behave.

The waning thrills of CGI

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/05/24/the-waning-thrills-of-cgi/

Perhaps now that it's been an overused and abused tool for so long, it will fall more into being a useful tool in the toolbox.
When all the tools are used together wisely we get some great stuff.

Avatar's stunning visuals and CGI really only deliver when seen in 3D and on a big screen. It's not as strong as an in home experience.

This shot in "Air Force One" was so awful and embarrassing I cannot watch the film after the one time I did see it all the way through. It's just atrocious.....

niennumb1 said:

This shot in "Air Force One" was so awful and embarrassing I cannot watch the film after the one time I did see it all the way through. It's just atrocious.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4i8UYUpAKQ

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That was pretty bad but I doubt that it could have been done all that much better practically. Part of the problem with that shot was that it looked like they comped the CG model of the plane onto real water and added CG splashes and to be fair, CG was still relatively new at this point.

Personally I would much rather they used CGI as a way to enhance practical effects instead of trying to prove that practical effects can be replaced by them. When they use CGI to extend the set, or show a warship sinking in the distance it's good, but when the whole movie is centered around all the CGI, it just makes it too phony for me. Unless of course it's an animated movie like Up or Toy Story then its all good.

That was pretty bad but I doubt that it could have been done all that much better practically. Part of the problem with that shot was that it looked like they comped the CG model of the plane onto real water and added CG splashes and to be fair, CG was still relatively new at this point.

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I disagree.

Hollywood has been crashing airliners as long as there have been airliners. They have done many large-scale model shots that sold pretty well.

Here's an airliner hitting the water in Airport '77. (The extended crash starts at about 6:00)
The composite shots are weak but the actual model plane hitting the water is miles better than the Air Force One CGI shot. And it was done fully 20 years earlier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3JyEBM9ovk



I saw Air Force One in the theater back in 1997 and I remember the whole audience groaned along with me when that plane crashed. We would have bought a 1970s-quality miniature shot much more readily. It might not have looked 100% perfect but it wouldn't have been so bad it was distracting. The shot in the movie looked pretty bad even for the time.

If a studio wants to develop their CGI tech they can always do it on their own dime. In Air Force One it hurt the movie.

kegas76 said:

Man the opening scene of Ultron had me feeling like this. All the CGI HYDRA members getting tossed around in the woods, it just didn't look right.

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Same here. I was immediately taken out of the movie right at the start. The impossible camera moves and sketchy motion-tracking due to a seeming attempt at "opening BIG" just killed it right away for me. If you have to do so much that the tech starts to break down in what should have been one of THE biggest movie openings ever, it's time to scale back a bit. In comparison, the effects work in Guardians of the Galaxy was so much better. I can't think of anything in that film that really looked off or wrong, but Ultron was full of it.

I know its off topic, but in airport 77 if they knew they were crashing why were so many passengers and crew not wearing their seatbelts?

In Airport '77 they whacked an oil rig a few beats before they hit the water. Somehow this merely jolted the plane off balance instead of tearing half the wing off.

The plane was being hijacked. It's been a while since I watched the movie but I don't think the passengers had realized how low & close to danger they were yet.