CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Plastic surgery is a good metaphor for CGI (a.k.a. "computer-generated imagery"): it works best when you’re least aware of it, adding value without calling attention to its glaring, unnatural fakery. A little and you’re marveling at the natural, age-appropriate sexiness of Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, wondering “did she or didn’t she?” with regard to nips, tucks and nose jobs. Too much, and you’re recoiling in horror at that freakish Cat Lady lady, gasping in shock over missing noses and airbag lips, or wondering why Nicole Kidman keeps wearing that creepy Nicole Kidman mask.

Hollywood has developed an unhealthy addiction to both plastic surgery and CGI, preferring the obviously fake to the convincingly real, whether in the form of grotesquely disproportionate rock-hard breasticles or pixilated atrocities like Speed Racer, the cinematic equivalent of watching other people's birthday brats play video games at Chuck E. Cheese for an endless 135 minutes.

Did Jar-Jar Binks teach us nothing? Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer a little special in my special effects: cinematic images that make me go, “Oh my God, how’d they do that?” rather than, “Dude, that reminds me of this awesome World of Warcraft battle I just posted on YouTube!”

If you’re one of the CGI addicted who think all non-pixelated movie effects are inherently “cheesy,” consider the following clips an intervention as we here at the Screengrab present five examples of amazing movie moments that had (almost) nothing to do with computer-generated imagery.

Just about any Buster Keaton movie

See that car falling apart while Buster Keaton is driving it? See the front of that house falling and nearly crushing him? See that bridge collapsing with the train on it? All that shit actually happened in real life, not in post-production!

The Road Warrior

Why are high speed car chases with actual cars (and trucks and motorcycles and gyrocopters) better than computerized car action? Gee, I don’t know...maybe the same reason sex with an actual human being is better than internet porn?

The Thing (1982)

Sure, the shape-shifting alien action in John Carpenter’s The Thing may look as fake and unbelievable as CGI...but the viscous, tactile ooze has an icky, organic quality that's very hard to duplicate in the shiny world of greenscreen ones and zeroes.

Altered States

CGI scenes all tend to have a similar look, not unlike the legions of aging Hollywood starlets sporting “trout pout” and Spitting Image puppet faces after one too many visits to the neighborhood Botox dispensary. Directors and special effects coordinators forced to get a little more creative, however, may come up with distinctive, fucked-up and memorable images like those found in this one-of-a-kind Ken Russell phantasmagoria.

Star Wars

And speaking of tactile...one word: models. The star destroyer in the opening scene of Star Wars (along with all the nooks and crannies of all the ships in 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien) were and remain more iconic and dramatic than all the CGI pod-racers, Naboo royal cruisers or Trade Federation frigates the computers at Skywalker Ranch have ever rendered.

Don’t get me wrong. CGI has achieved some amazing things: the bullet-time sequences in The Matrix, Gollum and that buck naked Angelina Jolie in Beowulf. But enough is enough, people. It’s time for Hollywood to go cold turkey.

For the betterment of all humanity...CGI Must Die.

The Screengrab : Jar Jar Binks

CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why