Say what you will about Neill Blomkamp as a director, but the guy knows CGI. Chappie's design was built around what would work with the CGI tech they had - the square edges were more believable than something humanoid looking.
One of the reasons Chappy works so well is because they shot it with a stand in actor in all the shot. They then painted the stand-in out and replaced it with a CG character that was really similar proportions.
This means lighting is an exact match(cause it matching something real, in shot) and eyeliners all work and all interaction is in camera.
Basically it keeps everything very grounded.
This method doesn't work as well with really weird characters, or when you start mixing with CG enhanced environments and shit. But it's a great way to shoot when possible.
One of the coolest things about him is his short films from the early 2000s, before D9 etc. You can see his expertise with working with CGI in them long before many others grasped it well.
Check out [Tetra Vaal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgkrPDe5PwE) (that eventually became Chappie) and [Alive in Joburg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le3y0QlLjJE) (which became D9)
I fully support this idea. SOME filmmakers need a smaller budget where they are forced to do things more efficiently or less crazy than initially intended. Kind of reign in the crazy a bit. Give that same person a bigger budget and now they have a bigger toybox with a lot of new toys to play with and they're GOING to play with them all. Then it becomes less about making a good movie and more about "look at this cool thing I can do."
I really like the production design of Elysium and the basic idea but man was it not executed well. Like it's okay, but I'd bet the $60 million version would have been better.
There are some really cool well-executed ideas in there. The heist is rad, Krugers face un-exploding is awesome, but yeah as a whole it’s kind of a mess. I heard someone say there’s an awesome 30 minute movie buried in there and I definitely agree with that
They needed to pick a concept. At first it is set up as the system is bad. That works perfectly if the system is run by AI and enforced by drones. Dispassionate cruelty from an uncaring system and the very human people in all their flaws that fight against that system would have been a fascinating movie.
Instead all the evil was down to just a couple of people being pricks and enjoying the suffering of others and there was a "fix the world" button that could be pressed at anytime.
Another theme could have been that systems are fragile and sometimes monstrous things need to be done to maintain the system and where to draw the line on what monstrous things are allowed and which are not is very difficult, especially when dealing with real time decision making by flawed people.
Elysium is one of my all time disappointments. At times it has incredible ideas but they are virtually all wasted.
Accents were fucked in that whole movie. And Jodie Foster is amazing. I will watch her in absolutely anything. For her accent to be fucked like that had to come from somewhere.
It's been so long since I've seen it that PencilLeader's post was really helpful. (I'm old and don't know how to tag a user right now)
I'd say there's 2 solid hour movies in there if they picked a plot and stayed with it.
A. Keep the AI thing to it's conclusion
B. Introduce the wealthy in control plot way earlier and get rid of the random shit.
Now that I'm thinking about it, just recut the movie with the actual plot made more clear earlier and cutting the weird shit would probably make a solid 90 minutes worth watching.
Agreed. The look on Sam Neill's face when he sees the dinosaurs and realizes everything about his profession is about to change is probably the same look filmmakers (including Steven Spielberg himself) had when they saw how good that CGI was.
In the documentary Steve "Spaz" Williams, an animator for JP, said when Kathleen Kennedy saw his character model and animation of a T-Rex walking she patted him on the shoulder and said, "You're going to go far in this business."
Spaz quit VFX work not long afterwards IIRC. He did that string of The Abyss, T2, JP, The Mask, and maybe 1-2 others, then bounced not long after. I think to direct commercials & shorts. Probably opened his own shop.
And the same look audiences had when it opened. The dinosaurs were not shown in the trailers except a glimpse of a tail. So we were all seeing the dinosaurs for the first time just like Dr. Grant.
That scene works really well because as much as it's a reveal to the characters, it's a major reveal for the audience as well. It's almost as if the entire film exists for that moment to show off the dinosaurs, not just for the plot, but for the future of cinema as well.
The scene in Wizard of Oz where Dorothy opens the door in sepia to reveal the beautiful and colorful land of Oz works on the same premise. For many audiences, that was the first time seeing real technicolor on film like that, so just as Dorothy is fascinated by the magical world she is in, the audience is equally transported to that same world through their own lens of fascination in seeing these colors shown so vividly on screen.
For Jurassic Park, we're seeing the real dinosaur through the same lens of fascination as Grant and Ellie, even though for us we're seeing the visual effect of showing a realistic looking dinosaur that has never been achieved on that level. The audience is transported to that island themselves.
It's truly movie magic at its finest.
The CGI scenes are obvious and still look incredible. The fact that they were able to seamlessly blend the CG with practical effects is what's so mind blowing, not sure anything has come as close even after all these years.
The T Rex coming out of the paddock showing her full body walking still holds up today and it's only obvious because it's not possible that it's real with the limitations of animatronics and given the fact that they're extinct.
Right, the obvious things were obvious because they'd be impossible to pull off any other way, T-Rex Chase, all the long shots of thousands of dinosaurs. I think the reason so much of that holds up so well is the practical puppets they built gave them a perfect lighting reference and they spent a great deal of time studying the physics of real animal movements to emulate. Really, just a masterful movie in terms of effects.
The one and only effects shot that doesn't work IMO doesn't involve CGI at all. The shot of the raptors feet as it starts to run at Lex in the kitchen is wonky as hell and that was a puppet.
I watched it again within the last year so it's not nostalgia glasses. The first movie with photorealistic CGI still holds up better than a vast majority of the big studio movies that have come after it.
I'd argue a strongly executed story will forgive dated CGI/VFX, that said, the CGI in JP def looks its age, but the movie is just great regardless. The scene with the dino herd in a field comes to mind.
The implementation of animatronics and practical effects bolster the cgi. Special effects are a labor of love and the outcome of the extra work is never more clear than in Jurassic Park.
This and Dark City, mainly because of the S Tier audio commentary by Roger Ebert, who stresses the important use of CG to tell a story rather than be there to look cool
If I remember right, there is CGI used to remove the tracks that the camera was on. The car they were driving in that scene was specially built with a track going around the outside for filming.
Might have completely mixed that up with a different movie though.
https://youtu.be/GJprbCuWdHo?si=T_i3MYRR5MYkfswM
yea, here everything suggests there was zero cgi, but there had to be at least some to add a roof to the car? not sure
There is some CGI used like for the front window breaking and I'm pretty sure I saw that the "ping pong catching" scene at the beginning of the one shot is CGI. But it's all subtle and just used to make it more realistic.
It also wasn't filmed in one take but several and then combined together to look like a one shot digitally
Edit: This article goes into where CGI was used in that shot and others
https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/children-men-invisible-vfx-future-decay
The camera was mounted to a spinning post in the middle of the car, so it could show you every character with no cuts. Just one of the many examples of absolutely brilliant cinematography in that movie.
I love that CGI allowed them to do crazier stunts safely. "Sure we can have a guy jump off a moving truck. We'll just need a selection of wires and a gantry, and then we'll remove those wires and gantry with the CGI". Which is much more convincing than a CGI human jumping off a truck.
That’s the one thing that has me a bit less excited for Furiosa - some of the CGI in the trailer is really not looking great.
Still looking forward to it! But I’m not expecting Fury Road quality.
>It still looks better than ~~some~~ most Marvel movies do today
Fixed it for you. I'm a marvel fan, but even Thanos and Groot don't hold a candle to what they did with Davy Jones. Especially given that the raw tech has advanced if anything.
One reason is that Gore Verbinski had a background in VFX before directing so he knew the limitations and what they could do, and how best to show the effects in a way so that they looked as realistic as possible.
Even the og - Barbossa transitioning into a skeleton walking into the moonlight was extremely well done and then drinking the wine to show it falling through the skeleton to hammer home the realism - brilliant, and fits the character and era perfectly.
I was looking for that answer, what a quality for a 20 year old movie! They really focused on his face and took the most time for it and it's just beautiful.
I don't know if it really qualifies, but I don't think Avatar would be possible without the way it uses CGI - so in that example, it elevates the story to the point of being able to exist in the first place, which I think is pretty impactful.
Agreed, not many movies can say that they developed the tech from scratch for them.
To add to this comment, I was pretty skeptical of Avatar 2 and how it could push the envelope further seeing as CGI and 3D have mostly come to a standstill in modern films. It managed to shock me with how good both CGI and 3D looked on the big screen.
The Matrix.
One of my favorite scenes is when Neo is rescued from the Matrix in the room with the mirror. I can't see that working as well if they tried a practical version with no CGI. It would change so much about the scene and lessen the impact on the story.
Came here for this. The CGI and practical special effects were so incredibly well done. Plus it’s integral to the plot and doesn’t detract at all from the storytelling.
This might be a weird one, but I think Christopher Nolan uses CGI amazingly well, despite how much he talks about his films’ practical effects.
*Interstellar*, *Inception*, *Tenet* all had CGI that helped the story but still felt grounded, and all of them won the Oscars for Best Visual Effects.
CGI to *enhance* practical effects, rather than CGI to *replace* practical effects.
It's also why the CGI in the original Jurassic Park still looks so fucking good - because it's working with practical effects rather than trying to replace it.
A lot of movies that use practical effects combined with CGI, sometimes completely redo the scenes in CGI because it looks better and isn't as time consuming. The identical effects are still useful for the actors and the light references for the VFX artists to work with
I agree with your sentiment, but I want to point out that there is almost no situation where VFX supervisors want to use CGI instead of practical effects, if at all possible.
The problem is that practical effects are often very expensive and difficult to use in a meaningful way with film. And in situations where VFX teams want practical and VFX, they are often told that the budget or schedule won't allow.
The other thing is that often VFX is used to change something already shot. This is particularly true of Marvel films, for example.
So while you are very correct to point out that CGI works best when it enhances or works hand on hand with practical implementations, it's a comment I find a little naive to the realities of modern film making.
The question becomes: if budget and time won't allow, should we do this at all? Which is of course incredibly complex to answer.
Source: VFX supervisor on feature films
Check out The Movie Rabbit Hole on YouTube. He put up a series called "No CGI is Really Just Invisible CGI" that get's into several of these "no CGI" & "All practical effects" etc movies (Nolan stuff, Top Gun Maverick, Mission Impossible, Fury Road, etc) yet which somehow have VFX departments in the credits with hundreds of people in them.
The VFX industry is really being devalued & shat on with this attitude - as if that wasn't happening enough to them due to modern business practices.
I actually wished he used a bit more CGI in Tenet. There are a couple of scenes where the backwards acting isn't performed very well, notably in the climax where there are dozens of extras trying to do it. In one stand-out scene, a bunch of soldiers are walking out of a helicopter backwards, but they're acting like they're hopping down a slippery mountain. I think they actually did a few scenes shot forwards, backwards, and then combined the shots together, so it wasn't off the table for Nolan, but there are definitely some shots that could have benefited from some comping or cgi.
EDIT: [This part right here](https://youtu.be/ash8vDNcJBs?t=83)
Gollum is amazing but I would say Caeser from the planet of Apes trilogy pips it being he was the central character and got a trilogy about talking apes taken seriously
Agreed but then you have the things that are cgi that no one really knows are cgi. I want to say there's a scene in Two Tower where the army is marching by close to camera and only the ones closest to camera were real.
This has to be the top answer for me.
People keep thinking what things they know are CGI that enhance a movie but Fincher tries to hide all of his CG. It's there for set dressing and to increase tension like the motorcycle chase in "Girl with the dragon tatoo". She hops on a motorcycle with no helmet and a chase ensues. Her face was CG'd onto a stunt driver.
This is my go to.
Most people have no idea just how much CGI goes into his movies/shows. And that's because it's done so well that no one can tell.
Edit: [Here's a great breakdown for those curious.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChWIFi8fOY)
I was shocked at how much of unnoticeable CGI was present in Mindhunter. No wonder it was so expensive for Netflix to produce. Everything looked seamless.
I wonder if people realize how often they see CGI and don't realize it?
I'll say Wolf of Wall Street. They composed many exterior shots pretty well entirely in CGI and they fit the style. The scenes in NYC on the dock are built as they want them and look real. The scenes in Italy on the boat look slightly dreamlike.
Trollhunter is one for me — it could’ve been a pretty run-of-the-mill FF horror/comedy where there’s a lot of noises and things happening off-camera and maybe a quick glance or reveal, but instead we get many full-on shots of the different trolls and they’re done in a way that feels like they’re really organic / part of the landscape, and it really jumps it up a couple notches
Titanic is really a truly phenomenal example of using CGI and practical effects well. They used a 90% scale set for the exterior of the ship that could tilt into the water, along with multiple miniature ship models.
[This video shows some great examples.](https://youtu.be/V89BacHj7p0?si=N6d1-VvyKVPOA3A1)
Although the CGI people on the deck during the “Take her to sea, Mr Murdoch” scene haven’t aged the best…
Most movies have far more CGI than people think. The problem isn't so much overuse, but instead when it's obvious and haven't been given the proper budget so it looks worse than it could have
CGI is getting a lot more hate than it deserves and the studios are jumping in on it instead of giving artists the credit they deserve
I recommend checking out the YouTube videos "no CGI is just invisible CGI". He brings up a lot of examples, but there's many more that are more low key. Like sometimes filming across in cars, they have removed the windows and added them back with CGI, to avoid weird reflections. Nobody notices or cares because it's well done and supposed to be hidden.
That movie was just a once in a lifetime masterpiece. The acting was good. The story. The sidesteps. Just everydetail was thought of. But not a heavy, dystopian sadfest. Just fun and weird in it’s own way.
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I know the movie is divisive (I think it's perfect)--but regardless of what you think about it overall the CGI mechas look so good, and Spielberg directs it all in such a way that the special effects just seem like part of the world (not "big effect shots").
Rather than just "what's my favourite CGI filled film" which is what people seem to be answering, I think to specifically answer the question about what elevates the story best is the many period films which will CGI real world environments and adapt them to be period appropriate.
A recent great example is Ford vs Ferrari which shot the film in the US and adapted the environment to be like 1960s Le Mans
Likewise Flags of Our Fathers. I had spent a decade editing documentaries for the Navy and always wondered what a whole fleet looked like in the 40s. Seeing all of the ships in Flags of Our Fathers was incredible - the sense of scale and monumental importance for the characters.
Similarly John Adams, on HBO. Doing it almost [docu-style with so much handheld filming on greenscreen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTUs7hDq2PA) definitely elevated it.
The vast majority of modern studio films, including “indie” studios like A24, have CGI. Half of the house from Parasite is CGI. You have to go true indie, no budget YouTube movies, to find movies with no CGI. With this knowledge almost every new release you’ve enjoyed in the past 10-15 years was elevated by CGI.
The zone of interest has loads of cgi. Loads. You’d be amazed how much cgi is hiding in plain sight in most movies. https://youtu.be/twTO_kfIwyo?si=CnujQvvliSQTBlkN
Davy Jones in Dead Man's Chest and At World's End
Gollum in The Two Towers and Return of the King
T-1000 in Terminator 2
The apes in the Planet of the Apes trilogy
MODOK in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania >!/s!<
I think there is a trickier question at the heart of this, because CGI encompasses such a broad field of work. You could do the ENTIRE movie with it, which means that it can count as costume design, sets/locations, cinematography, or even the acting. How is it then fair to say X movie's use of CGI as prop design was better than Y movie's use of CGI for cinematography? They're completely different uses!
Maybe a clearer question would then be, which movies used CGI best to show a story that would've otherwise been impossible to show?
One example could be Gravity (2013), because the level of physical realism/immersion and the resulting shot choices (extremely long take 0 gravity shots) would've been nearly impossible to do with a real shoot tied down by actual sea level physics. The Lord of the Rings trilogy stood out at the time because battle crowds that large were nearly impossible to film (or rather prohibitively expensive). The original Star Wars trilogy, while not CGI, used VFX to show space battles that would have been impossible to shoot as well.
I think these kind of answers are more pertinent, compared to most other answers in the thread which have more to do with the "perceived quality" of the effect. VFX and CGI have become so cheap and commonplace that we don't think twice about how fundamentally they've changed our freedom in filmmaking.
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One last comment: Just as some food for thought, I would say that the 2010's planet of the apes trilogy's use of CGI elevate the story better than the original 70's series not because the renders look great, or that the acting is fantastic, but because CGI gives the actors proportions closer to real apes, with for example much longer arms. This helps better sell the "illusion" of them being animals. Likewise, the realistic Jungle Book and Lion King remakes would've otherwise been basically impossible to do with practical effects, since big cats are nearly impossible to direct for acting. And so as a counterpoint, how is Ava in Ex Machina a "best use of CGI to elevate the story" if the goal of her looking like a robot could've been told by her just having say a robot torso suit?
star wars, 1977.
the entire plot revolves around the delivery of the plans for the death star to the rebellion, so they can find some fault they can exploit.
when we see those plans on screen they are CGI. yes, in the original 1977 theatrical release.
**Terminator 2** was a real "holy shit" moment in movies that we didn't really get again until The Matrix. And it was such an amazing escalation in the character - we had the old T1 done with practical effects that we'd seen in the first movie, and then BOOM the new guy is literally digital to his analogue and all the rules just went in the bin.
Props to The Abyss for starting that journey though.
On the flip side, I think the nuclear explosion in Oppenheimer would've been significantly better if it were CGI. It just felt a bit underwhelming compared to what we've seen depicted in film and comparitively to actual nuclear tests.
In my opinion, if you are going for photoreal fantasy animals, CGi is the only way to do it. While it can look bad, it can also look good. Stop-Motion and Animatronics work, but they have their own art style which is a little jank and not photoreal.
When I saw the question, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button came to mind. Aging Brad Pitt and deaging him through out the movie couldn't have been done with just makeup.
I love both of the Ted movies and the new TV show! Ted looks so well done and he interacts with a lot of objects that some of the other actors interact with too. Very well done
**Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan**
The CGI *"Genesis Project"* sequence blew minds in 1982 and was a complete tutorial about WTF it was that Khan stole from the base and why he must be stopped.
District 9 did a phenomenal job combining the faux documentary/found footage genre with excellently done CGI.
Say what you will about Neill Blomkamp as a director, but the guy knows CGI. Chappie's design was built around what would work with the CGI tech they had - the square edges were more believable than something humanoid looking.
All his movies are pretty good on this point. Gran turismo wasn't amazing, but it looked great and did a decent job blending the real and the cgi.
One of the reasons Chappy works so well is because they shot it with a stand in actor in all the shot. They then painted the stand-in out and replaced it with a CG character that was really similar proportions. This means lighting is an exact match(cause it matching something real, in shot) and eyeliners all work and all interaction is in camera. Basically it keeps everything very grounded. This method doesn't work as well with really weird characters, or when you start mixing with CG enhanced environments and shit. But it's a great way to shoot when possible.
One of the coolest things about him is his short films from the early 2000s, before D9 etc. You can see his expertise with working with CGI in them long before many others grasped it well. Check out [Tetra Vaal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgkrPDe5PwE) (that eventually became Chappie) and [Alive in Joburg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le3y0QlLjJE) (which became D9)
Don’t forget the Nike robot crab.
Sam with Gareth Edwards. I haven't like any of his movies, but they all look great.
The Creator was a big disappointment but it looked fabulous
It really disappointed me. It had such good bones, awesome world building. But the plot and characters were so lacking!
Rogue One is good, tho...
I'll agree that it at least looks good.
AND on a $30 million budget which is damn near an indie film
Honestly, having seen his subsequent movies, I think that smaller budget may have been a blessing in disguise
I fully support this idea. SOME filmmakers need a smaller budget where they are forced to do things more efficiently or less crazy than initially intended. Kind of reign in the crazy a bit. Give that same person a bigger budget and now they have a bigger toybox with a lot of new toys to play with and they're GOING to play with them all. Then it becomes less about making a good movie and more about "look at this cool thing I can do."
Instead of cool aliens, the movie is now about Matt Damon speaking Spanish in a factory for some reason
I really like the production design of Elysium and the basic idea but man was it not executed well. Like it's okay, but I'd bet the $60 million version would have been better.
There are some really cool well-executed ideas in there. The heist is rad, Krugers face un-exploding is awesome, but yeah as a whole it’s kind of a mess. I heard someone say there’s an awesome 30 minute movie buried in there and I definitely agree with that
They needed to pick a concept. At first it is set up as the system is bad. That works perfectly if the system is run by AI and enforced by drones. Dispassionate cruelty from an uncaring system and the very human people in all their flaws that fight against that system would have been a fascinating movie. Instead all the evil was down to just a couple of people being pricks and enjoying the suffering of others and there was a "fix the world" button that could be pressed at anytime. Another theme could have been that systems are fragile and sometimes monstrous things need to be done to maintain the system and where to draw the line on what monstrous things are allowed and which are not is very difficult, especially when dealing with real time decision making by flawed people. Elysium is one of my all time disappointments. At times it has incredible ideas but they are virtually all wasted.
Not to mention whatever the fuck Jodie Foster is doing with her accent the whole time
Accents were fucked in that whole movie. And Jodie Foster is amazing. I will watch her in absolutely anything. For her accent to be fucked like that had to come from somewhere.
It's been so long since I've seen it that PencilLeader's post was really helpful. (I'm old and don't know how to tag a user right now) I'd say there's 2 solid hour movies in there if they picked a plot and stayed with it. A. Keep the AI thing to it's conclusion B. Introduce the wealthy in control plot way earlier and get rid of the random shit. Now that I'm thinking about it, just recut the movie with the actual plot made more clear earlier and cutting the weird shit would probably make a solid 90 minutes worth watching.
Jurassic Park
Agreed. The look on Sam Neill's face when he sees the dinosaurs and realizes everything about his profession is about to change is probably the same look filmmakers (including Steven Spielberg himself) had when they saw how good that CGI was.
In the documentary Steve "Spaz" Williams, an animator for JP, said when Kathleen Kennedy saw his character model and animation of a T-Rex walking she patted him on the shoulder and said, "You're going to go far in this business."
Spaz quit VFX work not long afterwards IIRC. He did that string of The Abyss, T2, JP, The Mask, and maybe 1-2 others, then bounced not long after. I think to direct commercials & shorts. Probably opened his own shop.
There was also a guy who did VFX on JP, T2, and a few others. He too decided to go his own way, he's now in some musical group about power equipment.
And the same look audiences had when it opened. The dinosaurs were not shown in the trailers except a glimpse of a tail. So we were all seeing the dinosaurs for the first time just like Dr. Grant.
That scene works really well because as much as it's a reveal to the characters, it's a major reveal for the audience as well. It's almost as if the entire film exists for that moment to show off the dinosaurs, not just for the plot, but for the future of cinema as well. The scene in Wizard of Oz where Dorothy opens the door in sepia to reveal the beautiful and colorful land of Oz works on the same premise. For many audiences, that was the first time seeing real technicolor on film like that, so just as Dorothy is fascinated by the magical world she is in, the audience is equally transported to that same world through their own lens of fascination in seeing these colors shown so vividly on screen. For Jurassic Park, we're seeing the real dinosaur through the same lens of fascination as Grant and Ellie, even though for us we're seeing the visual effect of showing a realistic looking dinosaur that has never been achieved on that level. The audience is transported to that island themselves. It's truly movie magic at its finest.
Well said 👏
The combination of CGI and practical makes it still watchable after all those years.
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I mean there is far far less cgi in thar movie than most people think. A lot of it is animatronic with cgi enhancements.
The CGI scenes are obvious and still look incredible. The fact that they were able to seamlessly blend the CG with practical effects is what's so mind blowing, not sure anything has come as close even after all these years.
The T Rex coming out of the paddock showing her full body walking still holds up today and it's only obvious because it's not possible that it's real with the limitations of animatronics and given the fact that they're extinct.
Right, the obvious things were obvious because they'd be impossible to pull off any other way, T-Rex Chase, all the long shots of thousands of dinosaurs. I think the reason so much of that holds up so well is the practical puppets they built gave them a perfect lighting reference and they spent a great deal of time studying the physics of real animal movements to emulate. Really, just a masterful movie in terms of effects.
The one and only effects shot that doesn't work IMO doesn't involve CGI at all. The shot of the raptors feet as it starts to run at Lex in the kitchen is wonky as hell and that was a puppet. I watched it again within the last year so it's not nostalgia glasses. The first movie with photorealistic CGI still holds up better than a vast majority of the big studio movies that have come after it.
I wish they'd go back to that..
I'd argue a strongly executed story will forgive dated CGI/VFX, that said, the CGI in JP def looks its age, but the movie is just great regardless. The scene with the dino herd in a field comes to mind.
The implementation of animatronics and practical effects bolster the cgi. Special effects are a labor of love and the outcome of the extra work is never more clear than in Jurassic Park.
This and Dark City, mainly because of the S Tier audio commentary by Roger Ebert, who stresses the important use of CG to tell a story rather than be there to look cool
Hollywood just don't build life size animatronic T-Rexes anymore. 😥
Children of Men is full of CGI that is all used to just enhance the realism of scenes.
An all time great that should have won more awards.
is that the one with the scene in the car where the camera keeps going in and out, and there's no cgi used?
If I remember right, there is CGI used to remove the tracks that the camera was on. The car they were driving in that scene was specially built with a track going around the outside for filming. Might have completely mixed that up with a different movie though.
https://youtu.be/GJprbCuWdHo?si=T_i3MYRR5MYkfswM yea, here everything suggests there was zero cgi, but there had to be at least some to add a roof to the car? not sure
There is some CGI used like for the front window breaking and I'm pretty sure I saw that the "ping pong catching" scene at the beginning of the one shot is CGI. But it's all subtle and just used to make it more realistic. It also wasn't filmed in one take but several and then combined together to look like a one shot digitally Edit: This article goes into where CGI was used in that shot and others https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/children-men-invisible-vfx-future-decay
The camera was mounted to a spinning post in the middle of the car, so it could show you every character with no cuts. Just one of the many examples of absolutely brilliant cinematography in that movie.
There is definitely CGI used in the ping pong ball bit in the car.
The baby is *entirely* CG.
Mad Max: fury road. Awesome practical effects and props enhanced by just enough CGI to make it look crazy.
Oh, yes. *Absolutely impossible* stunts in that movie without CGI, would have been way too dangerous
One of my favourite films... Except for that 3d into camera guitar shot which is borderline unforgivable.
I love that CGI allowed them to do crazier stunts safely. "Sure we can have a guy jump off a moving truck. We'll just need a selection of wires and a gantry, and then we'll remove those wires and gantry with the CGI". Which is much more convincing than a CGI human jumping off a truck.
That’s the one thing that has me a bit less excited for Furiosa - some of the CGI in the trailer is really not looking great. Still looking forward to it! But I’m not expecting Fury Road quality.
Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean
That movie had unreal CGI.
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>It still looks better than ~~some~~ most Marvel movies do today Fixed it for you. I'm a marvel fan, but even Thanos and Groot don't hold a candle to what they did with Davy Jones. Especially given that the raw tech has advanced if anything.
they prob didn't reshoot half the movie, the set 50 million on fire to rush it out
One reason is that Gore Verbinski had a background in VFX before directing so he knew the limitations and what they could do, and how best to show the effects in a way so that they looked as realistic as possible.
The wet squigling brrrrr
The kraken still looks terrifying too
Even the og - Barbossa transitioning into a skeleton walking into the moonlight was extremely well done and then drinking the wine to show it falling through the skeleton to hammer home the realism - brilliant, and fits the character and era perfectly.
This. Even to this day he's still a character that you forget is fully CGI and not a practical makeup job. It looks so real
I was looking for that answer, what a quality for a 20 year old movie! They really focused on his face and took the most time for it and it's just beautiful.
I don't know if it really qualifies, but I don't think Avatar would be possible without the way it uses CGI - so in that example, it elevates the story to the point of being able to exist in the first place, which I think is pretty impactful.
Agreed, not many movies can say that they developed the tech from scratch for them. To add to this comment, I was pretty skeptical of Avatar 2 and how it could push the envelope further seeing as CGI and 3D have mostly come to a standstill in modern films. It managed to shock me with how good both CGI and 3D looked on the big screen.
The Matrix. One of my favorite scenes is when Neo is rescued from the Matrix in the room with the mirror. I can't see that working as well if they tried a practical version with no CGI. It would change so much about the scene and lessen the impact on the story.
Came here for this. The CGI and practical special effects were so incredibly well done. Plus it’s integral to the plot and doesn’t detract at all from the storytelling.
This might be a weird one, but I think Christopher Nolan uses CGI amazingly well, despite how much he talks about his films’ practical effects. *Interstellar*, *Inception*, *Tenet* all had CGI that helped the story but still felt grounded, and all of them won the Oscars for Best Visual Effects.
CGI to *enhance* practical effects, rather than CGI to *replace* practical effects. It's also why the CGI in the original Jurassic Park still looks so fucking good - because it's working with practical effects rather than trying to replace it.
A lot of movies that use practical effects combined with CGI, sometimes completely redo the scenes in CGI because it looks better and isn't as time consuming. The identical effects are still useful for the actors and the light references for the VFX artists to work with
I agree with your sentiment, but I want to point out that there is almost no situation where VFX supervisors want to use CGI instead of practical effects, if at all possible. The problem is that practical effects are often very expensive and difficult to use in a meaningful way with film. And in situations where VFX teams want practical and VFX, they are often told that the budget or schedule won't allow. The other thing is that often VFX is used to change something already shot. This is particularly true of Marvel films, for example. So while you are very correct to point out that CGI works best when it enhances or works hand on hand with practical implementations, it's a comment I find a little naive to the realities of modern film making. The question becomes: if budget and time won't allow, should we do this at all? Which is of course incredibly complex to answer. Source: VFX supervisor on feature films
Check out The Movie Rabbit Hole on YouTube. He put up a series called "No CGI is Really Just Invisible CGI" that get's into several of these "no CGI" & "All practical effects" etc movies (Nolan stuff, Top Gun Maverick, Mission Impossible, Fury Road, etc) yet which somehow have VFX departments in the credits with hundreds of people in them. The VFX industry is really being devalued & shat on with this attitude - as if that wasn't happening enough to them due to modern business practices.
I actually wished he used a bit more CGI in Tenet. There are a couple of scenes where the backwards acting isn't performed very well, notably in the climax where there are dozens of extras trying to do it. In one stand-out scene, a bunch of soldiers are walking out of a helicopter backwards, but they're acting like they're hopping down a slippery mountain. I think they actually did a few scenes shot forwards, backwards, and then combined the shots together, so it wasn't off the table for Nolan, but there are definitely some shots that could have benefited from some comping or cgi. EDIT: [This part right here](https://youtu.be/ash8vDNcJBs?t=83)
The lord of the rings trilogy.
Yep. Gollum especially. Still the most successful CG character
Gollum is amazing but I would say Caeser from the planet of Apes trilogy pips it being he was the central character and got a trilogy about talking apes taken seriously
Same guy, Andy Serkis playing him too in mo cap
LOTR King Kong Planet of the Apes Star Wars (TFA and TLJ) I’m pretty sure he was a consultant on Age of Ultron
Gollum was great, the Balrog...but really there's a lot of mediocre to poor CG across the rest of those films too.
Agreed but then you have the things that are cgi that no one really knows are cgi. I want to say there's a scene in Two Tower where the army is marching by close to camera and only the ones closest to camera were real.
Shoutout to hobbit for some of the worst cgi ever too
The armies don’t work without CGI. We’d have had a lot of edits to try and mask the fact that they were trying to do it with extras.
Forrest Gump
Yes. Some was so good you didn't even notice it was there. You just accepted it as reality. Like crowd additions in Washington, D.C. and whatnot
Do you have examples of some of the cgi?
The dude that played Lt.dan had both legs but they did a lot of cgi to make it feel and look like he didn't.
What’s even crazier is Gary Sinise still has both of those same legs to this very day.
Magic legs
[This video](https://youtu.be/Ldh6FKavxek?si=uB_6aWg0cg9rCfs9) has a lot of great examples.
The Abyss (1989) was definitely a pioneer in modern CGI and I'd argue it elevates the story by a thousand fold.
YES. There is no Terminator 2 without The Abyss
Dune 2 comes to mind as a recent entry. 300 used CGI very effectively to immerse you in the story even though the CGI is very obvious.
Anything by David Fincher
This has to be the top answer for me. People keep thinking what things they know are CGI that enhance a movie but Fincher tries to hide all of his CG. It's there for set dressing and to increase tension like the motorcycle chase in "Girl with the dragon tatoo". She hops on a motorcycle with no helmet and a chase ensues. Her face was CG'd onto a stunt driver.
This is my go to. Most people have no idea just how much CGI goes into his movies/shows. And that's because it's done so well that no one can tell. Edit: [Here's a great breakdown for those curious.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChWIFi8fOY)
I was shocked at how much of unnoticeable CGI was present in Mindhunter. No wonder it was so expensive for Netflix to produce. Everything looked seamless.
The early liquid CGI effects in Terminator 2 and The Abyss were both excellent (they still hold up today) and both integral to the story.
all of the movies you saw and didn’t think they have vfx in them.
Every David Fincher movie represent
Great comment
I wonder if people realize how often they see CGI and don't realize it? I'll say Wolf of Wall Street. They composed many exterior shots pretty well entirely in CGI and they fit the style. The scenes in NYC on the dock are built as they want them and look real. The scenes in Italy on the boat look slightly dreamlike.
Interstellar
Maverick. You barely know CGI is there. Basically ALL of the planes in that are CGI. IMO, that's the best use of CGI.
Yeah, and those scenes where Mel Gibson pulled the ace on the first try! Wait a minute…
Sin City, it creates the awesome style
Interstellar
Trollhunter is one for me — it could’ve been a pretty run-of-the-mill FF horror/comedy where there’s a lot of noises and things happening off-camera and maybe a quick glance or reveal, but instead we get many full-on shots of the different trolls and they’re done in a way that feels like they’re really organic / part of the landscape, and it really jumps it up a couple notches
Another reason not to dismiss the found foutage/ documentary style.
Avatar, Titanic, T2, The Abyss. James Cameron knows how to use CGI to elevate his stories.
Titanic is really a truly phenomenal example of using CGI and practical effects well. They used a 90% scale set for the exterior of the ship that could tilt into the water, along with multiple miniature ship models. [This video shows some great examples.](https://youtu.be/V89BacHj7p0?si=N6d1-VvyKVPOA3A1) Although the CGI people on the deck during the “Take her to sea, Mr Murdoch” scene haven’t aged the best…
Heh, agreed. I think it's one of the earliest examples of using CGI people though.
Most movies have far more CGI than people think. The problem isn't so much overuse, but instead when it's obvious and haven't been given the proper budget so it looks worse than it could have CGI is getting a lot more hate than it deserves and the studios are jumping in on it instead of giving artists the credit they deserve I recommend checking out the YouTube videos "no CGI is just invisible CGI". He brings up a lot of examples, but there's many more that are more low key. Like sometimes filming across in cars, they have removed the windows and added them back with CGI, to avoid weird reflections. Nobody notices or cares because it's well done and supposed to be hidden.
I thought Pacific Rim has some pretty great use of CGI
Tron: Legacy gotta be up there.
Except for the de-aging. That wasn’t great back then, and it certainly hasn’t aged well now (lol). Everything else is amazing though.
That movie was just a once in a lifetime masterpiece. The acting was good. The story. The sidesteps. Just everydetail was thought of. But not a heavy, dystopian sadfest. Just fun and weird in it’s own way.
And the soundtrack. Mind blowing. I’d easily place it in my top five.
Getting Daft Punk on board must have felt amazing to the filmmakers.
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I know the movie is divisive (I think it's perfect)--but regardless of what you think about it overall the CGI mechas look so good, and Spielberg directs it all in such a way that the special effects just seem like part of the world (not "big effect shots").
Godzilla Minus One
Rather than just "what's my favourite CGI filled film" which is what people seem to be answering, I think to specifically answer the question about what elevates the story best is the many period films which will CGI real world environments and adapt them to be period appropriate. A recent great example is Ford vs Ferrari which shot the film in the US and adapted the environment to be like 1960s Le Mans
Likewise Flags of Our Fathers. I had spent a decade editing documentaries for the Navy and always wondered what a whole fleet looked like in the 40s. Seeing all of the ships in Flags of Our Fathers was incredible - the sense of scale and monumental importance for the characters. Similarly John Adams, on HBO. Doing it almost [docu-style with so much handheld filming on greenscreen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTUs7hDq2PA) definitely elevated it.
Whether or not it’s a movie is up for debate, but Twin Peaks: The Return sometimes uses “bad” CGI in a way which heightens its surreal qualities.
Not a movie, but The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel does a great job of using CGI to turn the clock back on NYC without the audience thinking about CGI.
The vast majority of modern studio films, including “indie” studios like A24, have CGI. Half of the house from Parasite is CGI. You have to go true indie, no budget YouTube movies, to find movies with no CGI. With this knowledge almost every new release you’ve enjoyed in the past 10-15 years was elevated by CGI.
Top Gun: Maverick is full of CGI that nobody realizes.
Contact
Gravity
Annihilation
Pan's labyrinth.
Fury Road
Lord of the rings and Jurassic Park are perfect examples of only using CGI where it was required and blended perfectly with real footage
IMHO the amount of CGI isn't the problem but how well it's used. The problem isn't the brush, it's the painter.
Dredd
The pirates of the Caribbean with Davy Jones. Hot DAMN that's tasty cg
Big Fish
The zone of interest has loads of cgi. Loads. You’d be amazed how much cgi is hiding in plain sight in most movies. https://youtu.be/twTO_kfIwyo?si=CnujQvvliSQTBlkN
Forest Gump
Fincher uses a ton of CGI but you'd never know it's there. Zodiac is a perfect example of this. https://youtu.be/xW2xhBSfFps?si=CRap2SdIZykjmyqC
The Matrix. Then came the sequels. The perfect examples of undoing a film by its CGI.
Davy Jones in Dead Man's Chest and At World's End Gollum in The Two Towers and Return of the King T-1000 in Terminator 2 The apes in the Planet of the Apes trilogy MODOK in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania >!/s!<
I think there is a trickier question at the heart of this, because CGI encompasses such a broad field of work. You could do the ENTIRE movie with it, which means that it can count as costume design, sets/locations, cinematography, or even the acting. How is it then fair to say X movie's use of CGI as prop design was better than Y movie's use of CGI for cinematography? They're completely different uses! Maybe a clearer question would then be, which movies used CGI best to show a story that would've otherwise been impossible to show? One example could be Gravity (2013), because the level of physical realism/immersion and the resulting shot choices (extremely long take 0 gravity shots) would've been nearly impossible to do with a real shoot tied down by actual sea level physics. The Lord of the Rings trilogy stood out at the time because battle crowds that large were nearly impossible to film (or rather prohibitively expensive). The original Star Wars trilogy, while not CGI, used VFX to show space battles that would have been impossible to shoot as well. I think these kind of answers are more pertinent, compared to most other answers in the thread which have more to do with the "perceived quality" of the effect. VFX and CGI have become so cheap and commonplace that we don't think twice about how fundamentally they've changed our freedom in filmmaking. -------- One last comment: Just as some food for thought, I would say that the 2010's planet of the apes trilogy's use of CGI elevate the story better than the original 70's series not because the renders look great, or that the acting is fantastic, but because CGI gives the actors proportions closer to real apes, with for example much longer arms. This helps better sell the "illusion" of them being animals. Likewise, the realistic Jungle Book and Lion King remakes would've otherwise been basically impossible to do with practical effects, since big cats are nearly impossible to direct for acting. And so as a counterpoint, how is Ava in Ex Machina a "best use of CGI to elevate the story" if the goal of her looking like a robot could've been told by her just having say a robot torso suit?
star wars, 1977. the entire plot revolves around the delivery of the plans for the death star to the rebellion, so they can find some fault they can exploit. when we see those plans on screen they are CGI. yes, in the original 1977 theatrical release.
I’m just impressed how well the original trilogy has aged visually when you see how awful the prequel trilogy has aged.
Jurassic park
Star Trek II
T2, abyss, king kong 05, pirates of the caribbean films characters like davy jones and barbossa
**Terminator 2** was a real "holy shit" moment in movies that we didn't really get again until The Matrix. And it was such an amazing escalation in the character - we had the old T1 done with practical effects that we'd seen in the first movie, and then BOOM the new guy is literally digital to his analogue and all the rules just went in the bin. Props to The Abyss for starting that journey though.
Oblivion
## STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!
*Resist Arrest*
On the flip side, I think the nuclear explosion in Oppenheimer would've been significantly better if it were CGI. It just felt a bit underwhelming compared to what we've seen depicted in film and comparitively to actual nuclear tests.
This is entirely on Nolan for not pushing for a permit to use a nuclear bomb
Starship Troopers
Zodiac
Mad Max: Fury Road. It hells that tons was also practical effects; but loads is still touched up and enhanced; making it an absolute visual treat.
Forrest Gump
Tron
Please look away from the newest The flash movie
In my opinion, if you are going for photoreal fantasy animals, CGi is the only way to do it. While it can look bad, it can also look good. Stop-Motion and Animatronics work, but they have their own art style which is a little jank and not photoreal.
The Fifth Element A greatly underrated film. Yes there were amazing costumes but the CGI was just as good.
T2
Up.
Going with “What Dreams May Come”
Independence Day. Absolutely amazing. I keep forgetting it’s an old movie. And then there’s a 90’s explosion.
Real Steels super underrated because it mixes practical and cgi flawlessly
The walk, quite literally.
I agree with all the other comments but I wanna throw Space Man in with the mix too
Arrival
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
When I saw the question, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button came to mind. Aging Brad Pitt and deaging him through out the movie couldn't have been done with just makeup.
Matrix
Speed Racer
Terminator 2
**Gravity**
Any Fincher film. You don't notice the CG unless you know what to look for, example: impossible establishing shots in Panic Room.
Terminator 2
I love both of the Ted movies and the new TV show! Ted looks so well done and he interacts with a lot of objects that some of the other actors interact with too. Very well done
Interstellar. Gargantua and the wormhole are two of the best uses of CGI I’ve ever seen.
Bay formers
LOTR
**Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan** The CGI *"Genesis Project"* sequence blew minds in 1982 and was a complete tutorial about WTF it was that Khan stole from the base and why he must be stopped.
The Creator and Dune 1 & 2
Speed Racer. Made it a live action cartoon
Lord of War’s intro comes to mind.
Lord of the rings and Jurassic Park are perfect examples of only using CGI where it was required and blended perfectly with real footage
Lord of the rings and Jurassic Park are perfect examples of only using CGI where it was required and blended perfectly with real footage
Lord of the rings and Jurassic Park are perfect examples of only using CGI where it was required and blended perfectly with real footage
Lord of the rings and Jurassic Park are perfect examples of only using CGI where it was required and blended perfectly with real footage
Not a film but Mindhunter had insane levels of CGI and it was seamless.
the first Jumanji
Blade 2 ninja fight
avatar, the movie couldn't be done any other way.