12 Terrible CGI Moments In High Budget Movies

3. Liquid Gold - The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy was rushed out the door and it's immensely obvious throughout, but no more than when it comes to their wildly inconsistent visual effects.

This is especially true in the awkward second movie, The Desolation of Smaug, which as the middle child of the franchise was clearly working under the tightest production timeline.

The climactic sequence in which Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) melts a statue of Thrór and is very nearly buried alive in a pool of molten gold should've been a visually stunning set-piece, but due to the unbelievably awful gold effects, it's anything but.

While fire has always been a tough element to render convincingly, many VFX houses mastered the fluidity of liquid years ago, and yet, a $200+ million Peter Jackson film ends up looking like amateur hour with its stunningly naff-looking liquid gold.

It's hard to imagine Jackson being satisfied with the end result, because while the original Rings trilogy hardly boasted note-perfect effects, they were at least more consistent than...this.