10 Times Movies Should've Used CGI
5. In Time
Andrew Niccol's promising-yet-disappointing sci-fi film In Time boasts some solid world-building for its modest $40 million budget, but this apparently didn't extend to a convincing model car prop.
Mid-way through the movie when protagonists Will (Justin Timberlake) and Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried) are run off the road, we cut to an outrageously bad shot of a scale-model car flying off said road and flipping down an embankment, before cutting back to a full-size car landing on its wheels.
Everything about this is so wrong - the perspective fails to disguise the scale of what's very obviously a miniature car toy, the weight of the car flying through the air is completely off (which could've been remedied by shooting in slow motion), and the fact that neither Will nor Sylvia are ejected from the car is ridiculous.
Evidently the production was a little over-confident in their ability to execute this shot practically, because while flipping cars digitally isn't totally easy to get right, a slightly blurry CGI car would've incited a lot less laughter than this daft matchbox car stunt.