10 Times Movies Should've Used CGI

The newer Mission: Impossible movies are, for the most part, a Hollywood ideal - a kinetic fusion of jaw-dropping practical stunt work and cutting-edge VFX deployed where necessary.

Yet as brilliant as 2018's sixth film, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, might be, there's also one set-piece where all the time, money, and effort spent doing it practically ultimately feels quite redundant.

For all of the movie's many spectacular, practically executed stunts, the mid-film sequence where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) performs a perilous HALO jump out of a plane in the middle of a lightning storm basically undermines itself as a "real" stunt.

In reality, Cruise performed the jump from 25,000 feet an apparent 106 times in order to get three usable takes, and as insanely committed as this undeniably is, the end result is so fake and digital-looking that it basically feels for nought.

This is because while Cruise did indeed jump for real, the scene has a ton of digital "enhancements" - the sky, lightning, and city below him were all created in post, for the most part ensuring that this looks indistinguishable from something created in a comfortable, controlled set.

Cruise clearly relishes challenges like this, and fair play to him, but why work so hard if it's only going to be painted over with a ton of plastic-looking CGI anyway? Why not just do the whole thing in a warehouse with a green screen wind tunnel?