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We are obviously a little biased because we love props! But it’s not a secret that the film industry has gradually shifted away from using practical sets in favour of computer-generated imagery.
There is a never-ending discussion about whether it’s a good or a bad thing. So let's dive into the topic!
How did it all start?
CGI has been present since the late 1950s, but it had major limitations in the first decades. It was only used as a last resource when everything else failed.
The real pioneer in using CGI technology was the first Jurassic Park movie in 1993. It was one of the first movies to use a combination of CGI and animatronics so effectively that the film still looks realistic today.
Originally Spielberg wanted to use only animatronic props, but the robotic dinosaurs couldn’t walk around for the wide shots. So eventually he decided to combine animatronics with CGI. The film has only four minutes of CGI in total, but it changed the way computer graphics were perceived by filmmakers.
After the success of Jurassic Park, CGI has become a standard to complement animatronics, until it started to take over in the late 90s. By the early 00s, Hollywood turned to CGI as the first resort when it came to special effects.
Why has the movie industry shifted in favour of CGI?
In short, with the advancement of technology, it has become cheaper and easier to use CGI than animatronics. CGI allows more control and is easier to modify and build.
Let’s see an example. We all remember the scene from the first Jurassic Park movie where the T-Rex attacks the vehicles in the pouring rain. The robotic dinosaur looked absolutely breathtaking in the film, but the crew had to face some very difficult moments during the shoots.
First of all, it took months to design and build the two props they used. These were huge, 9,000-pound hydraulic robots. It took a real effort to move and operate them.
There were also many technical difficulties arising during shoots. The latex skin of the Rex wasn’t waterproof. It absorbed a lot of water from the simulated rain, thus becoming heavy like a wet sponge. As a result, the hydraulic system stopped working reliably. The crew had to pause the shoots multiple times because the robot would start shaking uncontrollably. On one occasion a crew member even got stuck inside the T-Rex.
The advanced use of CGI technology has eliminated all of these issues. It simply makes production easier, more reliable and more predictable.
So why do people hate modern CGI?
To put it short, the main argument is that CGI has gone out of hand. As technology advanced throughout the years, it diverted from its original purpose of making scenes more realistic.
In an ideal world, CGI should be grounded so well with the reality that we wouldn’t even notice it. But this is most often not the case. Production studios are competing with each other on creating more and more spectacular action scenes with CGI instead of trying to fool us that what we are seeing is real.
This inevitably makes films less relatable. In other words, modern CGI actually distracts the story instead of pulling us into it.
Of course, there are some technological factors that often make CGI less realistic in modern movies:
1. High Resolution
Obviously moving to HD and 4K makes it much easier to see any flaws in computer imagery.
2. Saturated Colours
Another common thing that makes CGI look artificial is the use of stylised grades. Most action movies use an over-saturated colour scheme, which looks unrealistic already before CGI. The use of computer imagery just takes it to a new level. We can simply compare the aesthetics of the first Jurassic Park movie with the newest Jurassic World. The former uses natural hues and unsaturated tones, which makes it look very realistic. While the last Jurassic World movie’s saturated colours make it look like a Marvel fiction superhero movie rather than a classic sci-fi.
3. Lack of Natural Lights
When a movie uses an extensive amount of CGI, the majority of shoots are done in a studio, in front of a green screen. This artificial setting can become very obvious on screen, as the subtle reflections of natural lights are very difficult to recreate in a studio environment. Here’s a video that explains this issue, while comparing the visual effects of the best VFX winner ‘Dune’ with the Marvel Blockbuster ‘Black Widow’.
Spectacular vs emotionally relatable
Of course, Hollywood has not only received sharp criticism because of the way CGI looks. There is a more complex issue in filmmaking that many of us attribute to the excessive use of computer imagery.
The widespread use of CGI has simply made filmmakers lazy. As most things can be fixed post-production, this has led to a “let’s do something vaguely similar, then we will fix it post-production” attitude.
Hollywood has also been accused of shifting its focus in favour of the pixel-perfect view rather than the films’ ability to tell a story. Filmmakers tend to put too much emphasis on sweeping the audience off their feet rather than resonating with them on an emotional level.
The “live-action” adaptation of The Lion King is a perfect example of this. The reported budget of the 2019 remake was $260 million, which made it one of the most expensive movies ever made.
Yet, it has only a rating of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. (In comparison, the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed has 55%). Tomatoers widely criticise the movie for being rigid, artificial and emotionless despite the stunning effects under its belt.
While the CGI animals are hyper-realistic, they are unable to communicate the hurricane of emotions in the same way as the original 1994 cartoon (which has a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.5 on IMDb).
In comparison, the Lion King Broadway musical uses the opposite approach when it comes to realism vs storytelling. Yet it has been the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time at over $8 billion since opening in October 1997. It is the current Guinness World Record holder as the "Highest-grossing musical theatre franchise". It has also won 6 Tony awards, including one for “Best Musical”. All this without having any real animals in the show or trying to imitate them in a realistic manner.
Take a visit to Pride Rock with new photos of Broadway's @TheLionKing in honor of the long-running musical's 25th anniversary! https://t.co/7Om8T6vXFA
— broadway.com (@broadwaycom) October 26, 2022
We can see that these anthropic emotions are exactly what the live-action movie is lacking despite the stunning CGI work.
Of course, we also love The Lion King musical, because it presents the most magnificent giant puppets and stage props one can ever imagine. If you don’t believe it, just check out this video:
But unfortunately, Disney did not seem to learn its lesson from the unfavourable reception of its The Lion King “live-action” remake.
They’ve reached even deeper into the beehive with their most recent live-action remake: Pinocchio. It has only scored an eye-popping 27% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.1 on IMDb. The film has received strong criticism from critics and moviegoers alike; not only for using CGI to create almost every “real” character but also for its dull plot.
Of course, Disney is not the only big studio that has been accused of doing old classics dirty with “bad CGI remakes”. For example, everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock over the past several years remembers Universal Pictures’ highly controversial Cats adaptation from 2019.
The film is one of history’s worst-rated super production receiving a rating of 19% on Rotten Tomatoes and only 2.8 (!) on IMDb. (Wow!) What makes it even more bizarre, is that the movie has a star-studded cast including names such as Taylor Swift, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, James Corden, Jennifer Hudson and the list could go on…
Besides the flat storyline, the film was mainly slammed for its jarring visual aesthetics. The infamous character design that was labelled a “CGI catastrophe” turned the actors into nightmarish half-human, half-cat hybrids.
So what next?
To be really honest, we don’t know. We can see a strong tendency of critics and audiences falling out of love with the extensive use of CGI in movies. Will it lead to a new renaissance of the use of practical effects in films? It might. Hollywood will definitely not use them to the extent as they did back in the 90s, but we can see the signs of a slow awakening. More and more new productions are reaching back to the roots of combining CGI with practical effects.
The previously mentioned Dune is a good example of this. The 2021 film has thoroughly impressed both critics and moviegoers with its realistic scenes achieved by a combination of practical and CGI effects.
Dune has won multiple awards for its effects, which reinforces the theory that CGI works better when it tries to be realistic and is used in conjunction with practical effects.
But some of the real classics have also jumped on the retro bandwagon. Both directors of the new Star Wars sequels emphasised that they want to use less CGI and more practical effects and puppetry in their upcoming Star Wars movies, as they don’t want to make the same mistake as the prequels.
The Star Wars prequels received a huge backlash back in the early 00s for the amount of CGI used. Fans said that while the original trilogy’s puppets and animatronic props had an authentic vibe, the then-new prequels were obviously done in front of a green screen. Fans argued that this has caused a disconnect between the actors and their surroundings, making everything look lacksture and “sterilised”.
What is your take on this? If you ever find yourself diving into the world of movie props and have some questions, feel free to give us a shout. In the meantime, let’s sum up our article with the words of Rian Johnson, the director of Star Wars Episode VIII and IX:
I think people are coming back around to [practical effects]. It feels like there is sort of that gravity pulling us back toward it. I think that more and more people are hitting kind of a critical mass in terms of the CG-driven action scene lending itself to a very specific type of action scene, where physics go out the window and it becomes so big so quick.
Rian Johnson, the director of Star Wars Episode VIII and IX