CGI has been a greatly effective tool for filmmakers in the modern day. It allows for a greater capacity for scenes and scenarios to be depicted on the big screen that just wouldn’t be possible back in the day. Take the original “Jurassic Park” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” for example. These films were praised for their exceptional CGI work that made those films seem real. However, fast forward to today and it seems CGI has almost regressed. With every film being pumped out with the lowest quality CGI slop you’ve seen in years and special effect studios being worked to the bone, when is it too much?
There is a time and a place for everything and that applies to CGI as well. It can help to accompany scenes and portray things that are normally hard to portray, such as a dinosaur, a horde of zombies or perhaps something as simple as lighting effects. But it can’t be overused as well. Instead of making every single detail computer generated in films, studios should consider relying more on practical effects. CGI can be made to be hyper detailed and imaginative, but it can only go so far. In the end of the day, CGI is something that’s added on to an already filmed scene. However with practical effects, they become something tangible to the human eye. There’s depth to practical effects that truly cements it as something real within film that CGI can’t achieve to a similar degree.
Take the modern “Jurassic Park,” films for example. Sure they are extremely mediocre at best, but they absolutely nail the special effects. The reason why is that they don’t slap CGI on every single terrible green screened shot. Sure a good margin of the dinosaur scenes are CGI, however they make just as much effort to utilize a surprising amount of animatronic dinosaurs as well, especially for a modern day film, which creates a healthy balance of both. Filmmakers don’t need to stop using CGI, but they also need to realize that practical effects can be just as effective.
