In the original Terminator, that animatronic head in the "surgery" scene. In the very least they should've went with mostly shots of Arnold in makeup, intercut with shots of the dummy head. But they lingered on that fake head for much longer than was necessary. It was like they were saying "we built this fancy fake head, and dammit we're going to show it!"

Fantastic Four. Roger Corman's version worked fine without it.

i've said this before and i'll say it again, to quote a line from jurassic park: "they were so concerned over whether or not they could, they didnt stop to think if they SHOULD."

my biggest problem with CGI and GL's influence on it, is that they're always trying to outdo everything that;s been done in the past, without ever trying to PERFECT what they had in the past. they're moving on to new stuff without prfecting the older stuff. imo, there are only 2 big movie directors that know how to use CGI effectively: cameron & spielberg.

back when T2 came out, they really fucking perfected the T1000 before putting it to screen. same thing with the dinos in jurassic park. now they just make 1000 CG scenes without perfecting any of them.

Word.

I'd like to add Mr. Zemekis to that list. Your arguement is almost sound, the problem is that they have the deepest pockets and personal ties to F/X companies that will go the extra mile for them to make something look perfect/realistic. Where as, other films are being done by newer, smaller F/X companies that are playing catch up to the big dogs, and don't have the polish that ILM for one has perfected over the years.

As for knowing when and where to use it properly, you have a point. All three excel in that area.

CG wasn't used because they felt that the fights couldn't be done properly without it (if that were the case they would not have had Keanu Reeves mo-cap the entire fight sequence and just animated digi-Neo from scratch), it was done because the Bros. felt that the camera angles and camera movement they wanted to use would not be practicle filming the fight the old fashioned way. The end result is a mixed bag but that's what they wanted.

It's the difference between suffering a little more to get it done right, or just doing enough to get it done.

Transporter 2

I know very few of you (if any) saw A Sound of Thunder, but a lot of outdoor scenes were clearly (badly) CG'ed for absolutely no reason whatsoever!!!