10 Worst Practical Effects In Movie History
When puppets go wrong.
The film and TV side of the internet loves to dunk on bad CGI. It happens so often and has gone on for so long, but has become particularly pronounced over the last several years, with reports of crunch at animation studios working for Marvel igniting calls for VFX artists to unionise.
But as much as everyone loves to take CGI to task for how easy it is to screw up if the people making it aren't treated well or given enough time, it's still important to remember that practical effects don't always get it right either.
Practical effects are a careful, delicate, time-consuming craft, that cannot be rushed or mishandled without breaking the whole thing. And even when you have legends like Phill Tippet or Rob Bottin on your team, the march of progress - such as the advent of HD TVs putting a magnifying glass to every tiny little mistake - can render a once convincing effect in a not-so-compelling light.
These practical effects, whether aged poorly or were bad on arrival, make even the wonkiest CGI look tame by comparison.
10. Terrible Live Action & Animation Hybrid - Cool World
There are many, many reasons why Who Framed Roger Rabbit looks as good as it does, but it all boils down to a lot of things going right exactly when they needed to. If the stars hadn't aligned for Roger Rabbit the way that they did (one of them being Bob Hoskins), we'd have gotten, well, something like Cool World.
Cool World goes for the same kind of animation and live-action hybrid Roger Rabbit does but without the same careful attention to detail. No bumping the lamp in this movie, instead, the audience is riddled with constant reminders that Brad Pitt is not looking at a real person.
When Roger Rabbit walks across a room, you can see his feet touching the ground as he moves. Every little detail in the geography of the scene has an impact on how he looks and behaves. Meanwhile, Holli Would looks like she's constantly hovering just above the ground. There's no dynamic between the animated characters and the live-action environments and people.
Cool World is what would've happened if Roger Rabbit didn't have the budget and ingenuity that it did, and was the fitting final nail in the coffin of Ralph Bakshi's time in Hollywood.