Is cgi ruining films?

[ScarBrow07]

I love movies but nowadays directors are getting lazy and using computer made character models to do simple stunts. Cgi is now a being over used and it looks really fake. In the new x men movie cgi is everywhere and it is so fake looking. Before cgi was made, film making was at its peak with the scary models they used in aliens and terminator 2. If these films were not made in the 80s and made now instead they would have made the classic T-1000 into a fake cgi piece of shite or the aliens into empty shells of computer crap. Cgi should only belong in games.

 

[Snor]

they did a good job in LOTR though..

so it depends good cgi doesn't harm anyone

 

[BonsaiK]

Sometimes CGI doesn't look fake. Watch Children Of Men - the CGI in that is so brilliant and subtle that you wouldn't even know which bits are CGI and which bits aren't unless someone told you.

CGI doesn't suck, it's just the films you're watching that aren't any good at it.

 

[mikecoulter]

CGI only annoys me if I can tell it's done to a poor quality standard. Otherwise, it can look great.

 

[messy]

Well according to one of my friends who does media studies it was star wars which ruined films by paving the way for compture generated effects. Meaning that the story and charecters became less and less important. One film which i feel combines the three recently rather well was the latest star trek film, probably since you had really goo charecters to begin with. CGI has lead to more reliance on independent films and smaller budget ones to move things forward.

 

[Fingerprint]

If its done well (and nowadays it generally is) then it doesn't ruin anything. When done badly however it makes what could have been an excellent film into a mediocre one.

 

[Slycne]

Yes and no. There are obviously some shots that are simply impossible to reproduce practically, it's just not going to happen. A good effects team will find a happy medium between practical and special effects.

 

[Baby Tea]

I think there is a difference between 'well done CGI' and 'overdone CGI'.

Well done CGI can accent a film, and make normally impossible, or crazy difficult, stunts or effects possible, and even look great.

Overdone CGI just saturates a film with effects in the hopes that all the pretty, flashy, shiny, and explody things will distract the audience from the sub-par film beneath it (Think Micheal Bay).

I don't mind CGI, but it should be like the icing on a delicious cake: Making a good thing better. As soon as it's used as a crutch, or band-aid, then it's wasted and poorly implemented.

 

[neuromasser]

I loved Immortel ad Vitam when it came out, but now CGI looks outdated, so it just ruined the movie. If they used real people instead of CGI animations, it would be perfect.

 

[Ashbax]

Well according to one of my friends who does media studies it was star wars which ruined films by paving the way for compture generated effects. Meaning that the story and charecters became less and less important. One film which i feel combines the three recently rather well was the latest star trek film, probably since you had really goo charecters to begin with. CGI has lead to more reliance on independent films and smaller budget ones to move things forward.

Yes, star trek and king kong both had great CGI and it really did them proud, they did it very well. some movies are just ridiculous though...

 

[jamie3001]

In my opinion badly done CGI ruins the immersion into a movie.

 

[Disaster Button]

piece of poo

what are you, five?

Anyway I thought the cgi in the xmen movies was always done really well. But regardles I think if they were both top notch I'd prefer a realistic model over cgi but cgi is better in alot more situaitons and is just more practical most times, its not laziness, usually. Besides you can get some god awful models too...

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

No.

However I will admit that the use of CGI in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was horrible. CGI gophers anyone?

 

[Damien the Pigeon]

It bugs me when it's used in horror films. Because of cgi, horror films have stopped trying to actually be scary. They just try to have the creepiest cgi dead girl pop out at the freakiest times.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

I like CGI, the only issue I have is that it is so good that it allows for lazy film-making. A CGI heavy action film is so visually stunning that they can get away with shoddier writing...

 

[Wutaiflea]

Yes, too much CGI ruins films.

It's fine when it's used properly to produce an effect that's otherwise unachievable or to enhance something to have it looking exactly right, but as you say, some films just seem to be using CGI to make up for making a generally shit movie.

My husband had me watching Spiderman 3 a while ago, which I felt was a really good example of this. Aside from all the other things I hated about the film (Tobey Maguire primarily) it just seemed to be full of over the top special effects that actually made the action scenes hard to follow (although some of the Sandman stuff was good).

I've since seen it on Blu-ray, and with my new spiffy pair of glasses, and it still looks like a load of muddy wank.

 

[LewsTherin]

My nostalgia calls back to the days of giant animatronic dinosaurs, elephants, gophers, et cetera. CGI does allow scenes of much greater scale (Think LotR or 300), but when it just becomes a crutch as was previously stated, the film seems....cheap.

 

[theSovietConnection]

I unno, to me some of the best movie scenes are the ones without CGI. Here, look at this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82BjhIs9m8k

It's the chase scene from the original The Italian Job. In my opinion it's one of the best car chases ever because all of it is real, which unfortunately is becoming less and less common.

 

[fix-the-spade]

erm, the T-1000 was an almost entirely CGI character, anytime he's morphing it's CGI.

Anyway, I think film makes lean on it far too much these days. You only need to look at the ropy effects in Star War Ep I-III and the last two Matrix films (or worse, Die another Day) to see that even the best CGI is no substitute for proper balanced effects.

I think the effect is most pronounce in Sci-fi and blockbusters. Look at the ships and monsters in Aliens and they look awesome, but nowadays they would both be CG'd and neither would look half as good.
Still when the effects are done properly like Lord of the Rings they work very well, I just think film studios lean on them far oo much these days.