10 Movie Scenes That Should've Used CGI
2. The Trinity Test - Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan's epic biopic Oppenheimer is centered entirely around the pivotal Trinity nuclear weapon test, and per his career-long commitment to doing things the hard way, he decided to shoot the massive explosion entirely practically, prompting some to joke that he was going to film a real nuclear detonation.
The final sequence was achieved by creating a smaller practical explosion and using forced perspective tricks to make the fireball appear larger than it actually was, and while it's a dazzling scene, it does also end up feeling a tad underbaked.
It ultimately just feels like Nolan zoomed in on a pretty big explosion, but the uncanny eeriness of a real nuclear detonation just isn't there. Had Nolan used CGI to enhance the scale and ferocity of the Trinity test, it likely would've had a far more visceral impact upon the average viewer.
Though Nolan's deference towards getting as much as possible captured in-camera is laudable, in this case it also ended up undermining his work, as a mixture of practical and digital techniques was clearly the right way to go.