Its hard to believe its been over twenty years since Jurassic Park hit. Thats not a wistful musing pretending the natural passage of time is somehow shocking, but a comment on the state of CGI in movies. The technology has improved in leaps and bounds, but the suspension of disbelief remains constantly questioned. While theres always going to be films with terrible CGI (although studios sometimes forget it, animating and rendering all those shots takes a lot of time and money), whats more perplexing is when a director forgets Jurassic Parks mantra; know your limitations. Spielbergs dino-fun-ride still stands up today because rather than having perfected computer-generated imagery, he knew when not to use it. The T-Rex wouldnt be intimidating if it was digital in every shot, so he used models as a supplement. Some modern filmmakers seem to think that we can now produce completely photo-realistic shots. While we are certainly capable of creating realistic-looking images, theres still a way to go before you can sit down and watch a film without being able to tell the difference between real and fake. We have an innate ability that tells us when something doesn't look quite right and in a generalised version of what is commonly known as the uncanny valley (where a CGI human looks so almost-real, yet utterly fake), as things improve we only noticed it more. It's unsettling rather than glaring, and in the long run that's worse. Even Spielberg himself messed up with the fourth Indiana Jones movie, giving us an endless stream of clearly computerised action. 3D has only made matters worse. For films shot with stereoscopy in mind (or set in a mostly computer-generated world), there is often a lack of focus on the 2D version (now back as the format the majority of releases are watched). A hangover from 3Ds multiple points of focus, it looks like nothing the naked eye would pick up and therefore comes off as fake. To prove the point, here are eight recent films that have undisputedly good effects, but push them too far.
