Face & Fighting CGI: Believable or Disturbing?

[Imp_Emissary]

Warning: Spoilers for Logan and Rogue One, maybe other films in the comments. Nothing really important, but if you haven't seen these yet and want to know nothing before you do, you have been warned.

Spoiler: Stuff's in here!

So I got to see Logan last week, really liked it, and while watching a few people talk about it I noticed something coming up that came up with Rough One: A Star Wars Story. The issue being the believability (or lack thereof) of the CGI.

In Rogue One the issue was with the CGI faces of Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia. For Logan, it was the CGI in the fight scenes with Laura(X-23).

Not the first time I've heard about problems with CGI in movies, but what I found odd was the many different opinions on if or where the CGI worked. In Logan, I just heard people either say the CGI in fights were good or bad, but in Rouge One there was much more variety.

Some people said it was all bad or good, some said Tarkin worked but Leia didn't (and vice versa), some said that Tarkin worked as long as he wasn't talking (mouth issues), and some even said that Leia went from working to failing a few times (found that odd since her part is pretty short).

Personally, I didn't have an issue with either movie's CGI, but I do think that this may be happening in part due to people's own perceptions. I'm actually curious if this may be a less serious version of the issue some people have where the effects of 3D movies won't work for them.

So, for discussion; Have you seen some CGI that you didn't have a problem with in something, but others did (or the other way around)?

Also, have you heard of anything explaining why people can all go see the same CGI, yet have different experiences with finding it either believable or disturbing?

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Persoanlly I prefer all CGI movies that have this photo realistic look like these:

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah the whole Tarkin and Leia cgi faces in Rogue One never bother me when I was watching it. In saying so however I was NOT paying attention to their facial when they appear on screen.

 

[Hawki]

Tarkin and Leia bothered me, X-24 didn't (I thought it was Hugh Jackman taking on the same role?)

I think part of the reason is that Tarkin's actor is no longer alive and Carrie Fisher no longer looks like that, so I knew they had to be CGI, whereas Jackman, I could see him looking like X-24. It might also help that X-24 doesn't have to emote beyond yells and grunts, while Tarkin and Leia have some character.

So, Tarkin, I found offputting. Leia, I was fine with - it was one scene, and if I wasn't aware of Fisher's age, it would have fooled me into thinking it was the real deal. X-24, if it was CGI, I was fine with. Same with Tron: Legacy, BTW, what with CLU having the younger Bridges look via CGI face composite.

CGI is like any other tool, it can be used well or poorly. It's only when it's used poorly that it becomes an issue.

 

[Queen Michael]

Tarkin and Leia bothered me, X-24 didn't (I thought it was Hugh Jackman taking on the same role?)

I think part of the reason is that Tarkin's actor is no longer alive and Carrie Fisher no longer looks like that, so I knew they had to be CGI, whereas Jackman, I could see him looking like X-24. It might also help that X-24 doesn't have to emote beyond yells and grunts, while Tarkin and Leia have some character.

So, Tarkin, I found offputting. Leia, I was fine with - it was one scene, and if I wasn't aware of Fisher's age, it would have fooled me into thinking it was the real deal. X-24, if it was CGI, I was fine with. Same with Tron: Legacy, BTW, what with CLU having the younger Bridges look via CGI face composite.

CGI is like any other tool, it can be used well or poorly. It's only when it's used poorly that it becomes an issue.

X-24 was Hugh Jackman again. So to the best of my knowledge, he wasn't CGI at all (apart from the claws, perhaps, which in my opinion looked completely plausible).

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I find CGI works best when it is used to create the fantastical and the impossible. Things that either don't exist in reality or that we have no way of experiencing firsthand. Because we have no frame of reference for that, no expectations on how it should look, how it should move and interact, and all those other fine details.

It's when you recreate real things, or have CGI interact with real things, that the flaws of CGI become more apparent. It's easier to get away with it in a still image. I've seen entirely CG still images where I really couldn't see it if I hadn't been told. When things start moving though, that's when it starts falling apart. And that is magnified with CGI people, because we have all spent a lifetime interacting with others. Suddenly the uncanny valley is in full effect. Facial expressions and general body language are a little off. The environment doesn't respond to interaction with the CGI person the way we know from experience it should.

Same with Tron: Legacy, BTW, what with CLU having the younger Bridges look via CGI face composite.

I find CLU an odd case, since he's not supposed to be young Jeff Bridges, but a program in the image of young Jeff Bridges. In a way, I find it fitting that a character that is literally CG in-universe looks the part. Unfortunately, none of the other program characters look that way, so CLU still stands out like a sore thumb.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I had my problems with Tarkin in Rogue One as well. Leia was... fine, on the virtue of only being on screen for a few second but Tarkin was not only a fairly important secondary character who had quite a few scenes, what really destroyed his scenes was that in most of them there were real actors on screen with him. And if you have a CGI character talking to an actual human being it looks kinda phony. I still maintain that if they were smart, they would have had him appear only as a hologram.

 

[King Billi]

Am I allowed to say that I was still impressed and fascinated by the CGI used to recreate Tarkin in Rogue One even while I was never once fooled into thinking it was a real human being?

 

[FalloutJack]

Some people are able to pick out the CGI of people's faces when they're going stuff to make them look younger, say. I don't really see that, so I either don't know the signs or am not visually capable of picking them up.