So, the other night I was watching I Am Legend on HBO and I was struck by how stupid and bad the vampire monsters looked. As far as I can tell, CGI sometimes looks marginally good on the big screen, but consistently looks bad on the small screen.

Since there are several film buffs (and -makers) here on the board, I'd love to know if there are good examples of CGI; movies that justify the pervasiveness of the technology. It seems to me, if it's a good or decent movie (like, say, Spider-Man), people ignore the obvious cartoon qualities and awkward movements of CGI. Is that the case, or do some people feel CGI is good?

Like anything, it can be good in moderation, but when it is relied upon rather than having a coherent or compelling story (I'm looking at you George Lucas) it can really distract from a film.

yeah it was cringeworthy in I am Legend - they were such a let down when you saw them properly

CGI is good for backgrounds and filling in scenes. i think when it's put front and center, it fails bigtime.

i'm also starting to think it's just a lazy approach to FX...i'm sure a lot of work goes into CGI, but there's just so much character lost.

Whatever CGI was used in The Dark Knight for Harvey Dent's face post-accident deserved an Oscar or something (in my opinion)

in excess, it annoys me. a big part of the reason i hated the new star wars was damn near everyhting was cgi. i felt like i was trapped in a computer.

but i like pixar movies.

Reply to 'Does anyone like CGI?'

I love it.

Used sparingly it can be amazing, but when it's the star I'm never very interested...

Let's go way back the only reason I paid $ to see Titanic wasn't for the sappy fucking love story, I wanted to see that ship take a nosedive into the water. Of course I can't find a still from the movie online, but there's a shot in the trailer that shows the rear of the ship in the air:



That shot got me in line to see it...

The Perfect Storm looked pretty good too... & I thought the first Jurasic Park was well done.

Crowd scenes always seem detectable though, but I'm sure some good ones have been done & I just haven't seen them (I don't watch a lot of CGI type flicks)

Excessive or improper use of CGI in movies is really, really...bad.

I cannot stand it almost everytime I notice it.





George Lucas.

thekidsgirl said:

Was that CGI? I thought that was just good old-fashioned special effects.

It's hit and miss. When it hits, it's awesome. When it misses, it's awful.

It often looks good, but is rarely impressive from anything other than a technical standpoint.

I was watching Narnia, and the lion looked good but watching an actual lion sleeping is more amazing than a fake lion fighting & talking.

Certainly CGI is an improvement over the guy in the Godzilla suit, or the Gorn fighting Captain Kirk, but I don't prefer it to the miniatures that they used in the space scenes of Star Wars.

That's something that I was very pleasantly surprised to not see much of in the last Indiana Jones movie. The film wasn't great, but it was still, to a large extent, real, and not totally animated.

Great for Transformers, horrible for I am Legend.

It especially bothers me when filmmakers use CGI when it's not necessary. Those creatures were supposed to be humans infected with a virus. So they should have used humans to play them. The CGI creatures were totally unrealistic and took me out of the film.

I hated it in Spiderman 2. Granted I saw it on the small screen, but it looked like animation. I like animation, but not in a live action movie. It was even more disappointing considering how much hype there had been for the movie.

NDRU said:

It's definitely bad in the Spider-Man movies. It reminded me of those old Superman serials where whenever Clark Kent changed into Superman he would just suddenly become a cartoon.

NDRU said:

It's necessary for characters like Doc Oc.

IMHO, CGI is seriously overused.

When done well it is great.

When done poorly it is cheesy as hell...just like all bad fx's can be.

Usernamed said:

It was the scenes of him swinging through the city that looked really bad to me--again on the small screen

I saw #3 in the theater and the sand guy was pretty damn impressive, and I don't see a way to do that without CGI.

NDRU said:

Exactly. It's worth it when it's done well.

thekidsgirl said:

ummmm Stacey that was not CGI. That was a reality movie. A group of film makers followed me for 48 hours
[Edited 12/31/08 12:55pm]

kpowers said:

The CGI in the first Hulk was horrible
[Edited 12/31/08 14:56pm]

ZombieKitten said:

The omega man was better

I just saw Benjamin Button - seeing Brad Pitt's head on that little body was pretty impressive, & the treatment to make he & Cate look like teenagers...