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What Are Your Most Hated Uses of CGI in Movie History?

Posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta

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In this week’s episode of Totally Rad Show, Alex Albrecht went off on a mini-rant about the use of computer generated backgrounds in Angels & Demons (I’ve embedded a clip after the jump).

Due to the controversial nature of the book, the Vatican wouldn’t allow Ron Howard to shoot the film in many of the locations featured in the novel. Instead of constructing large sets based on the actual locations, some of the movie was shot on green screen stages. The computer constructed backgrounds left a lot to be desired. Would the film have been good if they had shot on location or on constructed practice sets? Probably not, but the backgrounds wouldn’t have distracted the audience from the story going on in the foreground.

Discuss: So I’m wondering, what are some of your most hated uses of CG in movie history? Good movies ruined by bad CG or just unnecessary CG that took you out of the story…

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Question of the Day, 

  • Lawdog
    Star Wars: A New Hope
  • ctrosejr
    I agree completely. Specifically, the appearance of Jaba the Hut.
  • starscream9289
    F*ck You.
  • Lawdog
    Han shot first. So F*ck you too.
  • CyT
    I assume you mean the special edition? If so I would argue that Empire and Jedi had much worse tamperings done to them (apart from the Greedo scene).
  • this movie rocked
    professor X at the end of X-men: Origins, terrible terrible CG.
  • C'on
    Wolverine had some of the WORST cgi I've seen in a while. Completely laughable. The scene where he is looking at his new claws in the mirror (at the house with the elerly couple) was ridiculous. I'm talking one shade above SCI-FI channel bad. So sad.
  • i agree. the rendering done when he turns to get back on the helicopter was so poorly done that i looked at my x-man fanboy roommate and said that it looked terrible. he didn't really see it, but he is a fanboy.
  • Peter
    Oh god yeah, the Prof X was awful, my theater erupted in laughter. And yes Wolverines claws were pretty lame looking throughout the movie, particularly when he looked at them in the mirror.
  • MuleTrain
    The CGI I dislike the most is animals (e.g. the wolves in The Day After and the gopher in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). And I mean real-world animals; I can let fantasy beasts slide. Seriously, it can't be that hard to get footage of a real animal, they're all over the place.
  • agreed: see Let the Right One In
  • Macca
    I agree - a good example for me is I am Legend. As terrible as the CG was for the infected in that movie, I found the CG lion and deer in the first few minutes to be much more jarring and took me out of the movie completely.
  • rockie
    arnies head in t4-audience went nuts, i puked
  • Rom
    Any CGI that involves zombies, gore, and/or violence images in horror movies. See: any recent George A. Romero zombie movie or Midnight Meat Train.
  • Birch
    Whoa, whoa, whoa...Midnight Meat Train? Maybe it's because I generally hate the horror.gore genre, but I thought it was one of the best looking and best shot films of its kind in a long time (despite the ending).

    I think the newest Indiana Jones movie had the worst (and needless) CG backgrounds. It's especially noticeable in the first 10 minutes and set me against the film from that point on.
  • Whoaaa Midnight Meat Train?! That movie remains to be one of my favorites and i thought the editing was spot on for a movie that was never in theaters.
  • lpfanaddy
    just about anything Stephen Sommers has touched since the first Mummy movie. or bad CGI that replaces practical make-up effects when practical effects would look more believable.
  • malars
    Even though it can't be considered a good movie, the Scorpion King scenes near the end The Mummy 2 completely took me out of the movie. When one of the main characters is completely CG and looks as bad as the Rock did in that film, they should be ashamed!
  • padrehypnos
    tron
  • I saw Angels & Demons and I never even knew that those backgrounds were done in CGI. Damn.

    How about Star Wars: Phantom Menace? God, that was awful... and I'm sick of CGI animals used in fantasy films. I'd rather see real animals...
  • I didn't really notice it either. In hindsight it seems obvious but I was more caught up in what was actually happening, at the time, to notice. Agree about the animals too.
  • Wol
    I dislike CGI in general. Watching King Kong was like watching a video game that I couldn't play.

    I was watching the Terminator 2 commentary track last night, and Cameron was talking about how "nowadays" (2003) he would have used CGI to create Arnold's terminator hand when he had cut off the skin to reveal it. Frankly, it looked beautiful as it was, having 6 puppeteers controlling a physical, existing object on camera. I think computer generating something that doesn't necessarily have to be sort of detracts from the experience.

    Admittedly, it's cheaper and easier though...
  • Loved, loved, loved Let The Right One In, but that cat scene was atrocious!
  • oats
    agreed
  • I just pretend it didn't happen. ;)
  • Mattimus
    I believe that Air Force One has one of the worst CG scenes in all of movie history with the plane crash at the end. I would of rather seen somebody filming themselves crashing a toy plane into the bathtub.

    It was just horrible. Horrible! Why Wolfgang Petersen? Why?!!
  • hallenbeck
    in the same respect, the plane crash scene in transporter 2. i guess it is transporter 2, but isn't this a movie about driving a sweet audi not implausibly surviving a nose dive in a private jet...

    save it for crash 3
  • hallenbeck
    i mean crank 3, of course
  • John
    Minivan driving towards NYC in The Family Man.
  • The CGI fish in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou took me completely out of the movie
  • the donkness
    ithink that was stop animation, not cgi
  • Franny Glass
    yes and on purpose.
  • jimmy85
    that was stop motion
  • rockie
    yup-stop motion
  • Then I stand corrected. Huh. I must have assumed they were CGI because of the bright colors. Most of the stop motion animation I am familiar with is pretty dark.
  • C'on
    I thought it added to the character of the film.
  • same here.
  • My mistake. i guess I've come to associate bright images with CGI and darker images with stop motion.
  • i thought that was the point of the 'stop motion fish'; to be quirky
  • I think that doesn't relly count considering the stop motion was a stylistic choice and wasn't something which was supposed to be realistic. Personally it added immensly to my enjoyment of the film. As far as I remember the style was meant to represent his childhood view/memories/wonder of his hero Cousteau.
  • lime
    That was claymation not cgi
  • adE
    thats stop-motion animation jackass! chosen as creative alternative

    get your facts right before dissing wes anderson..............that goes for all of ya!
  • Steve Zissou
    that was stop motion. one of my favorite parts. you're an idiot.
  • Madt Kinderkampf
    Ultra Violet! It's like halfway through the film they either ran out of money or realized just how crappy the film was and gave up. It made a laughable script and bad acting that much harder to bear.

    Wait. did you say bad CGI that ruined a good film?
    ...you did.
    Well nevermind then. My entry is Void.

    All the Star Wars films. (The Prequel trilogy and the Re-edits of the Good Trilogy)
    the Matrix 2 & 3 (Especially the Burly Man fight) [but again, not good films to start with]
    Basically any film since Jurassic Park
  • Ha! I love your last sentence and totally agree. Jurassic Park, may have been the only movie that blew my mind because of the cgi stuff. That shit was done in 93, and still holds up today, it was that good. but they did use claymation, cgi, and animatronics, which is why it succeeded so well.
  • Madt Kinderkampf
    I think when Jurassic park was as big a hit as it was everyone decided that special effects had to be less about pushing Realism and more about how impressive their technology was. The original Star Wars films looked real. in Jedi, Jabba the hut was a living Breathing thing that the actors talked to and interacted with. then with the re-edit, he became a cartoon. Bad Film Making George!
  • lux
    the T-Rex breaking out in the middle of the rain is just THE cgi.. i mean.. that thing.. is just.. real.
  • bud
    i'm so glad that someone said this. i was just a kid when jurassic park came out, but the CGI in that movie still impresses me more than anything since, even gollum in lotr. how is it that effects have backtracked since then? even in the jp sequels, the cg is subpar to the original.
  • 1. Hulk and his father fighting in Ang Lee's Hulk.
    2. The whole of X-men Origins:Wolverine
  • Amen to that!
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