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

[Dave Lipscomb]

Those few shots of that jerky motion are what freaks people out.

 

[Joe Reinwald]

Certainly not the worst by any means, but the most recent of eyebrow-raising scenes were any of the wolf scenes from Day After Tomorrow.

 

[Dan_V]

The worst I can recall is League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Not sure which was worse, the movie or the CGI. I also thought the animals in Jumanji were bad, but i thought it may be somewhat intentional as some of the other CGI effects are very good. Also, if you need convicing that lower budget CGI can be really bad, look at some of the CGI effects on television shows

 

[andySu]

It’s only a movie and CGI should be used sparingly less is more and more practical in camera shots should be used rather then relaying on this technology that still has a long way to go.

The best CGI shot is the one you didn’t notice. And I have seen some good ones and worse ones that are fit for an Atari video game.

 

[Jefferson Morris]

My pick for the most needless and unfortunate misuse of CGI goes to the otherwise good Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman film that Beat Takeshi did recently. For some reason he made the decision to animate sprays of blood with CG rather than do them practically. It almost worked...almost. But once I realized I was looking at CG blood, it took me out of the film every time there was a swordfight - the exact point where I should be enjoying myself the most. There was even a CG severed arm at one point that looked truly terrible.

GeorgeBanks wrote:You are precisely correct. The animation of the stampeding dinos themselves is perfectly good - they have weight, solidity, detailed texture, and interact believably with each other (though not with the principal actors). The fact that the scene stretches credulity beyond the breaking point (for some, anyhow) has led to its bad reputation among fanboys.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Garrett Lundy]

I'd rather watch 100 ED-209s than see one CGI elf. Sure Ed looked 'fake', but it was fake with substance. Nobody doubted there was ever a robot.... even if it was 11 inches tall.

Since there is no shortage of bad CGI monsters, I'll just say the Resident Evil licker.

But I will give my nomination for Why did they bother with CGI? award.
Final Destination 3.

Sure you could simply put a boroscope into an old ballbearing carnival attraction for maybe $100. Or you could spend $50,000 having six guys with a PC make a virtual boroscope going into a virtual carnival attraction that only looks half as good.

 

[Mike.P]

Beerfest.

CGI Beer.

Need I say more?

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Are you serious? They actually used CGI beer? Guessing for chugging scenes?

 

[Mike.P]

Exactly right.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Good CGI: Starship Troopers. 10 years later I still like the looks of those CG warrior bugs.

 

[camphrog]

Can someone explain to me why exactly the Kraken looked so bad in POTC 2: DMC? I can't quite place my finger on it, but is it the lighting? The shots? The water dripping off the tentacles?

I know in the scene when Jack gets eaten, the bottom teeth of the Kraken appear to go though the ship and it just looks horrible.

 

[Shawn_KE]

Agree, the part where Jack jumps in the mouth looks straight out of the early 80's.

Odd seeing how Davy Jones looked awesome.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

It wasn't so much bad CGI as it was bad compositing. They just didn't combine the elements very well and make the Kraken 'blend' into the scene.

 

[RyanTSI]

My first thought as someone else mentioned was Blade 2, the fight scene in front of the lights.

Also I was watching Indiana Jones and the temple of doom last night. The scene where they are riding the raft down the river is bad. So obviously shot in front of a blue screen

 

[Kevin Grey]

To be fair, I'm hard pressed to think of any examples from the time period where use of bluescreen wasn't 100% obvious.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Watched Catwoman this weekend for the first time and I would put the end scene when she's walking on the edge of a rooftop. The CGI animators put too much twitch in her waist, looked almost like rubber.

 

[krr]

I would post a link to an image, but alas, I have less than ten posts. Curse you, in-place-for-good-reason-regulations!

Unless I'm mistaken, it was shot bluescreen with an ascending camera. It's been a while since I've looked at the special features disc! But DIE HARD is only a couple of years after TEMPLE OF DOOM.

Generally I agree with you - especially with the 'character holding onto another character over a deep crevasse' bluescreen shots, which never, ever look convincing. Probably because of a desire to keep the background static (which usually is a dead giveaway) or completely in focus (which is even more of one).


Cheerio!

-k

edit: For the record, and since Mr. Banks led us off, I work in "the" industry as well. And nothing is more painful to me than poor CG / compositing. But the time and budgetary constraints are all too real, as is the commandment that it's a business. Ack.

 

[ShaneP]

One that I don't think has been mentioned yet, but always irritates me for a variety of reasons is Pearl Harbor. One scene that I can think of offhand is the cartoon like depiction of the bomb being released and followed down to hit the Arizona. Mangled depiction storyline aside, they could have but their money to better use by improving the background settings and use realistic camera angles rather than trying to get too cutesy. Just my two cents.

 

[AaronMan]

I'm also in the FX industry. When a lot of people think of the huge FX budgets, they sometimes just think of the computer equipment. That's only part of it. Actually, the price of hardware and software is going down. The artists working on it is a big part of the budget, and the other part, probably the biggest part, is time. Its been said a million times, but time is money! If someone is filmed on a green screen and has long flowing hair, I pity the person who has to take on the intricate rotoscoping and match-moving duties. Its thankless pain-staking work. All of the digital elements have to be rendered which can take forever. Then all the elements have to be composited. All of this is tedious and takes a lot of time. The artists have to be paid for all of this time. That is why it cost so much.

I would say most of the work people are citing on this thread is mostly due to bad compositing, rather than bad CGI. The dead giveaway for me is always the blurry edges on people, and inconsistant black levels. Yes, the stampede sequence in King Kong is horrid. But the actual modelling, texturing and animation of all the creatures was great. Whenever they were on screen by themselves, it was very believeable.

And about stop-motion and it looking "fakey". Its all about when you use it. The Imperial Walkers in Empire Strikes Back are still very convincing to me. Sure, I know its fake, because I know huge walking machines don't exist. But one thing that helps make them look real is because they took advantage of the limitations of the medium. The stiff animation was perfect because the walkers were slow and rigid. And they were "real" models. Tippett's blurred frames technique made it look even more real. I didn't like it when some of the ships were replaced by digital models in the "upgraded" version of Star Wars. The digital models were no where near as detailed as the old miniature models. Stop-motion works best when its used for robots or machines with lots of moving parts. It is mostly an ignored medium in live-action FX today, but in its day, it was great. And just like CGI, there were good and bad examples of it.

The reason Harryhausen is worshipped so much is because his work was state-of-the-art for decades. No one else has reigned supreme for that long. And also, many of the people in the FX industry today grew up watching his work. We know it looks fake by today's standards, but its because of the respect we have for the ground he broke that he is held in such high regard.

 

[Edwin-S]

I wonder why the stampede scene in KK is always used as an example of bad cgi? So it was over the top and unrealistic, so what? The whole film was unrealistic. If realism is a necessary criteria then the whole film was garbage. In fact, I thought the scene where Kong is holding onto Darrow and swinging her violently around was worse, by far, than the stampede. The way he was swinging her she would have broken her neck. Something also looked off with the way her body moved as he swung her. Once again I have to say so what? If I can somehow suspend disbelief in the existence of a massively oversized gorilla then I'm certainly not going to concern myself with the unlikelihood of Darrow surviving being violently swung around like a rag doll and being slammed into the ground as Kong runs. The whole thing looked fake but, considering the subject matter, the FX were generally well done for the entire film.

In fact, I would hazard to say that it isn't the effects work that was bad. It was Peter Jackson being incapable of reigning in his hubris that took a toll on the film. In KK he never seemed to know when enough was enough. The KK/T-Rex(?) fight is a good example. Jackson took that scene to the nth degree. It went on for so long and became so ridiculous that it became a parody of itself. Are the effects people to blame? Not in my book. Jackson told them what he wanted and they gave him what he wanted.

My example of really bad CGI is the Scorpion King in the second Mummy film starring Brendan Fraser.