Is CGI Getting Worse?

1. Whoops, There Goes Gravity

Because a CG-heavy blockbuster can effectively do anything, it frequently will do anything, regardless of whether it should. We’re left with action scenes lacking any kind of relationship to real world biology or physics.

The examples are practically endless. There’s the notoriously cheesy ‘elves-are-lighter-than-air’ acrobatics in the Lord Of The Rings movies, or the goblin lair scenes in The Hobbit trilogy. In fact the Tolkien movies do this quite a lot, characters regularly performing hilariously literally impossible movements in spectacular action sequences.

How about Naomi Watts being flung about in King Kong’s massive paw as he fights three tyrannosaurs, or Black Widow clinging to the Hulk’s massive neck as he throws himself hundreds of feet and up a sheer rock face?

How about the tsunami-surfing scene in Die Another Day, a horrendous snafu rendered even worse because of the fantastic surfing scene earlier in the film which was shot without CGI? Or the car chase scene in Black Panther where the titular superhero weightlessly bounces from car to car as if he was a bird with hollow bones, and not a 200lb man in a suit of vibranium-laced armour?

Part of the issue is the poorly conceived sequences themselves: if you can’t find a way to make them look convincing, you should really be thinking again, not doubling down (that ‘fix it in post’ mentality again).

Partly it’s because the stories themselves aren’t taking these scenes seriously. Practically shot action movies make dramatic weight out of their bit set-pieces. They use lead-in scenes, reaction shots, dramatic music, the light and shade that talented filmmakers use to string along an audience’s emotions and leave them breathless.

CG action scenes aren’t staged by the crew, and frequently this shows, when they’re not presented to us with any drama. They’re part of larger, equally weightless and drama-free action scenes, the film cutting from one to another without pausing for breath - sometimes they even happen in the background of scenes, barely raising an eyebrow.

There are enough movie-makers out there who know how to blend practical effects and stunt work with CG that the ones that don’t stand out like sore thumbs. For every Christopher Nolan or Christopher McQuarrie there are half a dozen directors like Peter Jackson or George Lucas who use green screen to solve problems in post-production that could have been eliminated in pre-production.

Is CGI getting worse? It only seems as though it is… and sometimes that’s the most convincing thing about it.