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Worst use of CGI in a movie? (1 Viewer)

Rob_Walton

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There's little more jarring than seeing some ropey looking CGI to knock you out of the film you're watching. Works a charm every time, and tends to take quite a while to settle back in to whatever you were watching. So what are the worst offenders you can think of? There must be plenty of candidates, so lets hear the culprits' names.

Last night Along Came a Spider was player on Film4 so I gave it a look. The opening scenes show a sting opperation going wrong, with Morgan Freeman's female partner being killed in a car crash over a dam. Frankly the crash CGI was some of the dodgyest looking work I've seen in quite some time: dodgy enough to inspire this thread. Anyone else laugh at the unreality of that crash?
 

MikeH1

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One movie that has always stuck out is when Sanke Plissken is surfing on that big wave in Escape from LA. So fucking stupid I still think of it sometimes 10 years later.
 

Jerome Grate

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I was watching Blade II last night and the scene when he's fighting the two vampires trying to give him a message was pretty lame, and don't forget Matrix revolutions with Neo fighting hundred's of Agent Smiths that was pretty bad too.
 

Nick Martin

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Jumanji came to mind at first, but then I found out that the admittedly 'fake' looking animals and animation were intentionally designed that way, to reflect the original book illustrations.

For years, I thought they were terrible.
 

Jonathan Perregaux

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The Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns is the most wretched example I can think of. The original Spider-Man and his fake-looking antics doesn't hold up very well either.
 

GuruAskew

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The CGI monster in the end of "Resident Evil" is just really poor work. It's literally of the same approximate technical quality of something you would find in the original "Resident Evil" game and you can't tell me they were actually going for something that looked outdated and fake.

Probably the worst example of modern CGI is the added gore in the "Alien vs. Predator" Unrated cut. It's just laughable. It looks like someone spent 5 minutes using some 10-year-old software. The blood looks fake & plasticy and it's movements don't move properly in regards to the bleeding character in question, the worst example being when the annoying French chick character's chest bursts. She's writing all around and the blood stain essentially "floats" around her chest.

The ending of the original "Blade" also has some pretty horrendous CGI but I think you can attribute that to a combination of the time the film was made and the budget. CGI was a lot more expensive back in '98.
 

Mattias Stridsman

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There's a sequence in Triple X 1 or 2 where a car is driving along railroad tracks that's sooo bad. It really looked like a crappy intro to a video game. Whatever happened to physical effects? I guess a movie gets the effects it deserves...
 

Holadem

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The first good look at the beast in Botherhood of the Wolf was spoilt by the terrible CGI work. I've not seen the movie in a couple of years, but I remember thinking even TV shows like Hercules and Xena had better FX.

--
H
 

Scott Simonian

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Equally horrid. But if you WANT to see BAD...watch the alternate ending for Blade. Didnt think it could get worse...and it sure did. :D
 

Jacob McCraw

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I saw a trailer last night for a movie called "The Covenant" and there was a scene where a car gets hit by an 18 wheeler and disassembles itself then reassembles on the other side that looked terrible.
 

Ray H

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In X-Men, there's the shot of the X-Jet landing down at Liberty Island. Looks like crap. Then there's an even more awful shot of Wolvie swinging around one of the spikes on the Statue of Liberty's crown.

In Spider-Man, there's a terrible shot of the Green Goblin jumping on his glider at the World Unity Festival.

There's some pretty dodgy shots in the new versions of the original Star Wars trilogy that haven't aged well since '97.
 

Holadem

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Yeah that was pretty bad.

LOTR has a few clunkers as well, biggest offender being Legolas on the Cave Troll (FOTR).

--
H
 

Richard Kim

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There's another one, in the scene where the Fellowship leave Rivendell. There's a long shot of them in the mountains with some ruins in the backround that are obviously fake looking.

As for Spider-Man, the CG model of Spidey in his crude costume wall walking while going after his uncle's killer look crappy as well.
 

Robert Anthony

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I'm so glad someone got the Space Monkey from "Lost in Space" I burst out LAUGHING when I first saw that.

There's some REALLY bad CG-Work in "Anaconda" as well.

I remember some FX work in the "2 Fast, 2 Furious" trailer looking like a cut scene from Gran Turismo 3. And I'm not kidding. I hate people who compare CG to video games because the comparison is 99 percent of the time, intellectually false: Anyone who has played a videogame knows even the WORST FX are usually rendered better than the best gaming engine can pull off. Except for "2 Fast, 2 Furious." Wow was that bad.

And if I have to pick a Star Wars bit, it's Anakin surfing the space cow in Episode II.
 

Matt Czyz

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Animated people trying to maintain their balance on top of CG creatures almost never works, it seems:
- Anakin on the space cow
- Legolas on the cave troll
- Harry on yet another troll in HP & the Sorcerer's Stone
 

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