After watching this movie, I truly found myself at a loss to explain how it could possibly cost $130m when the CGI is so consistently terrible. Poor Ryan Reynolds doesn't really seem to have much luck with comic-book adaptations bar the opening scene of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Blade Trinity, Green Lantern and... the rest of Origins) and despite the best efforts of Jeff Bridges, this blatant mash-up of Men In Black and Ghostbusters will go down as one of 2013's biggest bombs. Today's blockbusters are becoming overloaded with CGI at at alarming rate, but could the mammoth budget not stretch to create something, you know... convincing? Whatever that blob thing is that runs up the side of buildings in the second act is supposed to be, it looks like a cut-scene from a Playstation 2-era videogame. And don't even get me started on whoever approved that Kevin Bacon Monster for use in a finished movie. The cavalcade of 'Deados' required for the movie would have better lent itself to practical effects, instead of modern Hollywood's lazy approach of throwing so much CGI at the screen that none of it sticks. Men in Black was released in 1997 and it still has more convincing visual effects! Shoddy CGI can be overlooked on occasion if it's only for a brief moment and movie is any good, but R.I.P.D suffers from a massive overuse of computer effects which are passable at best and horrendous at worst. My apologies to the good people and Rhythm and Hues and Image Engine; I'm sure you worked very hard on the movie. But the CGI sucks. Runner-Up: Jack the Giant Slayer Let me get this out of the way first of all; I must admit I quite enjoyed this movie. Despite seemingly jumping on the latest Hollywood fad for revisionist fairy tales, it has a couple of fun sequences, a great cast (Ewan MacGregor completely steals any scene he's in) and is a reasonably entertaining family adventure. However, for a movie that has 'giant' in the title as well as all over the marketing materials , the CGI creations could have been realized a lot better, especially with a reputed budget of $185m. Throwing any notion of photo-realistic effects out of the window, the giants themselves look like massive cartoon characters, whether that was the intention or not. At least they make plenty of fart jokes. Wait, that's not a good thing, is it? It may seem like nitpicking to talk about suspension of disbelief for a movie that involves magic beans and giants, but with a director that knows how to work with CGI and a ridiculously high budget, the antagonists could have been a lot more convincing instead of distracting. Especially when you consider that no less that seven effects houses were involved in the production.
I don't do social media, so like or follow me in person but please maintain a safe distance or the authorities will be notified. Don't snap me though, I'll probably break. I was once labelled a misogynist on this very site in a twenty paragraph-long rant for daring to speak ill of the Twilight franchise. I stand by what I said, it's crap.
