Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

I was thinking of this as I’m watching the Thing prequel, would you rather sit through really shoddy practical effects or horrible CGI?
I’ve seen this movie a bunch of times now. It’s not great, Hell its not even good, but I love the Carpenter Thing and do appreciate how the prequel leads directly into it. This time however the cgi just took me outta the movie.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

I’ll take practical effects over CGI any day. Even when practical effects are bad I still appreciate them for what they’re trying to accomplish. There’s still the effort to it.

Bad CGI just feels cheap and lazy. There have been times when I see a bad CGI effect and wondered, if they can’t make it look real, why even bother with that particular shot?

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Bad practical.

I'd take even average practical over great CGI in a lot of cases too.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Bad practical. The thing is even if practical effects are bad I can still appreciate the effort of the filmmakers attempts in most cases. CG is cool too, but is so often over-relied on. Plus when CG is bad it tends to be more noticeably bad and doesn’t have the same charm to it as a bad practical effect.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Bad practical effects are bad practical effects are bad practical effects.

Bad CGI is bad on day one. ​​​​​​ Bad CGI years down the road is terrible. Bad CGI a decade on his god awful.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/dvdtalk...2076d7a345.jpg

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Practical effects all day, everyday.

All the recent blockbusters always have the “final boss fight” action scene that is a CGI mess. My favorite example to give is “Batman v Superman” final fight.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Bad practical effects can have some charm.
Bad or poorly dated CGI is atrocious.

Corvin posted a prime example, but even a more recent one that's supposed to be subtle...
https://i.imgur.com/YPAiISw.jpeg

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

I saw The Thing from Another World the other day. I love Carpenter's The Thing. They both use practical effects but 50's movies tend to show their age.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

I get more enjoyment out of man in suit Godzilla than any CG Godzilla. :shrug:

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Practical effects any day.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Even good CGI looks dated incredibly quickly. Give me the real stuff all day long.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

We watched part of a zero-budget disaster movie called The 500 MPH Storm, and the CGI effect of large objects being carried away by the wind was truly awful. I much prefer flying saucers suspended on strings. At least physical objects always look right. They might look like a $20 model, but they do have physical presence.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Personally I enjoy practical effects better for the simple fact that I feel that actors are actually interacting with something. There's just a different feel when actors don't see the world around them. That's not to say that cgi can't be any good, even if it's dated. A good film should be a good film regardless of the approach it takes.

I also imagine that most of us grew up on films that relied on practical effects so it could be a generational thing. Young people who grew up on cgi probably have no issue with it and probably think a guy in a rubber mask is completely stupid.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

I enjoy the original Thing From Another World a lot.
If the stupid prequel would have just dialed back the cgi, it would have been more tolerable.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Better question would be hand-drawn animation or cgi animation though I think cgi would win hands down on this forum.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Do you mean flat animation vs 3D rendering? South Park is CGI.

I have no preference between cel animation and CGI animation. Any effect that was achieved with hand-painted cels can be matched by CGI artists with about 95% less labor. I love Akira and Yellow Submarine, but instead of needing whole buildings full of animators, one person made Sita Sings the Blues on her home computer. It looks great.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

You got me curious to check it out, thanks to JustWatch, I found it on Hoopla.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Yeah, there is, to me, another uncanny valley with CGI.

A lot of CGI just doesn't seem to take up any physical space. I think it comes down to the quality the CGI itself, and also the way it has to be filmed. Look at Jar-Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace (and the Star Wars prequels in general) and, to a lesser extent, Gollum in Lord of the Rings. They frequently come off like cartoon characters, which, I suppose they ultimately are. And no matter how hard they try, they just can't get them to consistently move or behave like actual physical entities.

Going back to Star Wars, you could always tell that Chewbacca was an actual physical being that moved and interacted like he was actually there on the set with the actors. Because he was a guy in a suit. Jar Jar and Gollum just don't have that same quality; they feel rubbery, and, even though they were played by actors on the set, they just don't have the same kind of physical presence.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/dvdtalk...c62780749.jpeg
'nuff said.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

But on topic with the thread, would an upper lip prosthetic to hide the moustache have been much better?

A shitty effect is a shitty effect. I agree with the consensus that a bad practical effect has more charm, though off the top of my head, The Room’s shitty green screen work adds a layer to its unintentional appeal.

If we were looking at good cgi vs good practical effects, I think it gets a bit trickier. So many movies and shows use cgi to portray locations that would otherwise be impractical or impossible to show and most of us never notice.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

yeah, good point. In this case, I think shaving for the Superman role then a practical faux-stache for the Mission Impossible role would have made the most sense, but I realize studio politics and contracts is what made that situation what it was.

Interesting. I also think a movie like Manborg (which combines a ton of micro budget green screen with its practicals) also kind of fits what you're saying.

True. It's fair to draw a distinction between locations/atmosphere and effects like gore or things that need more... weight... to them.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

https://screenrant.com/thing-movie-p...i-replacement/
https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3...ed-thing-2011/

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Bad Practical Effects.

It always boggles my mind how films with large budgets have Bad CGI.

It's as if basic Cinematography & Light Study went out the window completely.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

Good CGI is good. In he director's commentary on The Social Network, Fincher talks about just how much CGI went into that movie. It's in almost every scene. I don't see it, and that's what he wanted.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

This this this. I loathe CGI, but even more I hate it's stupid cousin digital color grading. Movies just aren't lit correctly anymore. Horror movies must be so washed out they may as well be in black & white. Superhero movies must use that pukey teal & orange & have grays instead of blacks. Any scene at the beach must use a yellow grading that looks like a happy face took a piss. Romantic comedies, those can use natural colors & lighting for some reason. I watched Apocalypse Now in 4K recently & thought man, I wish movies still looked like THIS.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

This is more of an example of good practical effects vs. bad CGI (which I think everyone and their dog prefers good practical effects), but I think of the "visible breath" technique in The Exorcist, and Stir of Echoes. The Exorcist used a refrigerated set, Stir of Echoes just CGI'd it in. But there's a 26 year difference in the films, and it's just mind-boggling that a 1973 effect looks more realistic than a 1999 effect. Movie magic is supposed to get better as technology improves, CGI has arguably made it worse.

I also remember showing a young friend of mine Jackie Chan's Police Story, and she just completely lost it that it was obviously Jackie himself hanging off the back of that bus. Even though we see that scene today and that bus is clearly not going fast, it's so much more impressive that he was doing it for real, rather than seeing all these superhero movies with 200mph stunts that are clearly being done in a studio with green screen. There's just no sense of danger when you know it isn't being done for real.

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

See also Sicario:

Re: Bad Practical Effects or Bad CGI?
 

It's hard to say and usually depends on the context and age of the film. Clash of the Titans (1981) was thrilling in 1981 and you can really appreciate the craftsmanship and effort that went into the painstaking stop-motion animation and the melding with the live action. The remake had smoother, more realistic CGI effects but also seemed completely soulless.

I think when CGI effects tamper with the laws of physics it just rings false and takes an audience out of the action. The Fast and the Furious series always had this problem where the motion of the vehicles just doesn't ring true, especially for a film that takes place in our "reality" as opposed to a cartoon or science fiction world.

To me, the practical effects of car chases like The Road Warrior, Raiders of the Lost Ark and even the original Gone in Sixty Seconds are much more effective. On the other hand when the CGI is done well it can be very effective too.