5 Horrific CGI Blunders
You know what really grinds my gears? When live action movies date themselves, horribly, by using an abundance of computer generated imagery (CGI).
What I mean by “dating” is when live action films make obvious to the viewer the era in which they were released. When you go back and watch films like this, it’s as if they jump up and scream out to you what year they were made (I’m looking at you Mummy Returns!). I mean, sure, in a sense all films are dated. But the films which I intend to describe are ones which go out of their way to do so.
I like to call this the CGI Dating Effect – where, even as soon as a few years time, the advancements in CGI have already so surpassed the previous standard, that it looks laughably unrealistic and dated.
We notice the CGI Dating Effect most in films that overly rely on computer generated (CG) characters and environments, especially in live action films. The reason CGI Dating is most obvious in live action films is because synthetic images stand out to the viewer, especially when there is an abundance of them juxtaposed with real actors and settings.
CGI can create various shortcuts when filming a movie. For example, to create a monster movie like Super 8, it obviously needed to construct a terrifying monster. Since the filmmaker, J.J. Abrams, wanted to have a larger than life monster alien, it was easier to capture that effect using CGI than by using practical effects (using specially designed make-up, costumes and props).

But there’s two sides to that coin. Though CGI has improved immeasurably, we also live in an age so saturated with CGI that our mind’s eye has become much more accustomed to it. We have all become experienced viewers of digital images in the process. Because of this, we have been conditioned to distinguish these images when they appear and, also, to judge rather quickly how convincing they are.

Below are some movies which I think best describe CGI abuse in live action films and, by extension, the CGI Dating Effect. You may notice these films were all released within a few years of each other. Just consider this may not, in fact, be a coincidence, but rather indicative of a time when CGI abuse ran rampant in big budget Hollywood blockbusters.
1. The Mummy Returns (2002)
Remember that fight scene with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the Scorpion King? Now don’t get me wrong, the visual effects would look great for a video game today. But in a live action movie? It’s quite obviously not realistic. The camera even zooms in on this thing’s face while it makes various, yet really a quite confusing order of expressions. It’s as if they are showing off this “cool” effect they made, but it’s just laughable. Go ahead, have a laugh:
2. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
The follow up to 1999’s revolutionary film, The Matrix, at one time seemed to have so much promise. Given everything the Wachowski’s had given us with the first installment, we were all psyched to see what awesomeness would be in store this time around.
The next two films in the trilogy had made it nothing more than a biblical allegory, whereas the first film remained open to such a multitude of philosophical interpretations. The result was a subsequent dismantling of everything that made the first film great.
The first film was unique, not only in outlook, but in its innovate and imaginative fight scenes. This time around, the Wachowski’s opted for the popular, easier, CGI route. This scene in particular showcases that and also foreshadows the dumbing down of the whole mythology through this mind numbing, video game version of a fight scene. It starts out O.K., then turns into a 4-minute long CGI crap fest. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is where The Matrix jumped the shark:
3. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Three words: Jar-Jar Binks.

4. King Kong (2005)
I’ll be honest, the CGI for King Kong himself is actually quite good. Especially for 2005. But I’m not letting it off the hook, for one big reason: those unholy green screen scenes. There’s one in particular that took us right out of the movie and it’s quite obvious Adrien Brody and Jack Black are just running around, playing pretend in front of a blank background.
5. Catwoman (2004)
This might not even be fair because, well to be honest, this just might be the worst movie in existence. The CGI crap fest commences around 3 minutes in.
It could be argued that any CGI “dates” a film, as a keen enough eye can always pinpoint the real from the synthetic in a video. But if you were to ask established artists in the field of visual image capturing, you get varying opinions on the existence of CGI in film: Some would say there’s nothing wrong with using CGI whenever it’s needed, whereas others would argue that only by using practical effects or capturing visuals through the lense of a camera, can you truly achieve a sense of realism.
Perhaps no one said it better than director Christopher Nolan, in an interview with the Director’s Guild of America:
The thing with computer-generated imagery is that it’s an incredibly powerful tool for making better visual effects. But I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography. However sophisticated your computer-generated imagery is, if it’s been created from no physical elements and you haven’t shot anything, it’s going to feel like animation. There are usually two different goals in a visual effects movie. One is to fool the audience into seeing something seamless, and that’s how I try to use it. The other is to impress the audience with the amount of money spent on the spectacle of the visual effect, and that, I have no interest in.
You never know, years from now, we might all look back on these 5 films as necessary stepping stones to a world of evolved film-making techniques. A world where CGI is so seamless in every movie that we can hardly imagine a world without it. In the meantime, the existence of these films behooves us, as consumers, to question whether this is the type of artistic expression we want in our films. Has Hollywood abandoned practical effects in favor of CGI because CGI is better? Or is it just that it is easier; cheaper?