Counterpoint, Godzilla Minus One was very well received and it's 100% CGI. People aren't against CGI, they are against shoddy work, which includes bad CGI.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Exactly. A great movie with a lot of CGI is still a great movie and a shit movie made entirely without CGI is still a shit movie.
A great movie with a lot of CGI is also great when you barely notice the CGI.
More like 60/40 CGI. There were still a lot of practical things in that movie.
Yeah, like actors. It's definitely not as CGI as Shrek or Toy Story. I find it honestly really weird to call a live action movie "100% CGI" when there clearly are human actors on screen.
One of the shoddy things that audiences really don't like (even if they struggle to put a name to it) is flat, boring lighting that's super nice for post. All of these movies don't have that.
100% CGI
Godzilla isn't real? 😰
Neither are any of the people in the movie.
Other way, Godzilla is real, but they CGIed the people for safety, because being around Godzilla is pretty dangerous.
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Of course Godzilla is, it just wasn't available for filming because it had to pillage some east Pacific cities.
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Yeah. Most of the public simply doesn't care. They just want a good movie\story.
Hail Mary had a ton of CGI too. You can't tell because enough is real that the actor behaves like it is, the camera moves as if it is, and the artists know what real looks like.
A major reason the first Transformers looks and feels as good as it does, even so long after it came out, is that the director has an incredible ability to imagine where something will be after the CGI pass. He could shoot entire action scenes with the camera behaving as if it was reacting to what actors did, not an empty street.
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Project Hail Mary and not CG-stuffed? WHAT??? So they actually flew to the sun and found an actual rock alien in a huge space ship to film with? Because no, Rocky isn't an actual puppet in every single scene. It's mostly CG and so is the bubble around the guy. I despise this type of sensationalism so much because it spits and pisses on the work of dozens, if not hundreds of VFX artists doing heavy lifting to make movie magic happen. I haven't watched Odyssey but I've seen all his other movies and Nolan himself said he's heavily reliant on VFX in his acceptance speech at the VES awards 2011. This is a bunch of BS.
Rocky... Isn't real? 🥺
Yeah Project Hail Mary was a good film but its bursting at the seems with computer generated graphics. The ship interiors, space, the planet, Rocky, Rocky's ship, hell the fruit bowl is probably cg.
They had the full interior and most of the exterior as sets, but half the time walls and ceilings are removed to give space for the camera, lights, puppeteers, etc. It is full of CGI, but it all blends together seamlessly.
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Yes and no. Correlation is not causation. Movies cost so much that consumers have to be picky. As a cost/benefit are you more likely to get your money's worth from the Odyssey or Moana 2? If Moana 2 had more practical effects would it be a better movie?
A theater trip for a family of 4 can be ~$100. It is for my family where we live. That's 1/3 the cost of a 55 inch TV, or a 65 inch TV at Black Friday, plus a big box of microwave popcorn.
If you want people to see the poorly written, phone-it-in, low effort remakes these studios are intent on putting out, you have to price it accordingly, or everyone walking out of the theater says the same thing: "Wow. That wasn't worth it."
People are still very willing to see well crafted, thought out, intentional pieces from direrectors or studios they trust to do a good job. It's worth it.
They really took the wrong message.
What movie goers want to see is Matt Damon get lost and then find a way back.
In fact. Let's just do this for real. Drop Matt Damon off in the remote wilderness with a backpack of supplies and a video camera. If he finds is way back to civilization, we can cut a movie from the footage he records.
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Hi, cinema nerd here. Both are hard work, and both are still art. What I think it really comes down to is the art style, and the actors' response and training.
CG-effects tend to force actors to imagine two very different things when they interact, leading them to ignore or otherwise misinterpret things the audience will see. While for some, depending on their training, this can be fairly natural (stage players have to interact with imaginary scenery all the time), film actors tend to expect costars and sets they can see and touch, and this does affect the way they act in small ways.
What CG really helps with is it alleviates the burden on suited actors. Wearing a big bulky monster costume is a thing of the past for many lucky stunt actors, now that complex and difficult scenes that might require multiple takes can be done by a dude in a leotard and stilts instead of 80 lbs of yak hair.
I will say, I am absolutely thrilled to see movies like the Mandalorian and Project Hail Mary making puppetry mainstream again. I love love love puppets.
I love love love puppets.
On a completely unrelated side note. If you enjoy TT RPGS. There is a game called Sock Puppets. You have to create your sock puppet and then act out an episode of a failing kids tv show. 10/10 game.
"No CGI" is primarily dishonest marketing hype that actively minimizes the work of talented artists. Yes, they had a puppeteer steering a plastic ball around for Project Hail Mary, but they also replaced 100% of the practical ball with CG. Especially at a time when people are so opposed to AI because it devalues human art, I think it's important to be aware of the other ways we devalue art that have nothing to do with AI.
This fantastic YouTube series done by a career FX artist does an excellent job of dispelling the marketing hype and recalibrating the conversation around CGI in movies.
The bean counters don’t seem to comprehend that the effort and work that goes into practical effects is part of the draw for people. Sure they go for the movie itself, but if it’s nothing but green screen the whole time, nothing feels truly at stake or at risk. You can’t convey the same intensity in CGI battles as you can in practical stunt work battles.
It’s similar to how I hate my job as a programmer now that we’re all forced to use AI. “But your job is easier now” - in ways maybe, but part of why I liked my job was because I had to solve problems myself hands-on. I didn’t need a robot trying to solve all of the problems. When you remove those stakes and the learning through building, you remove the essence of what made it appealing for people.
This describes why I love Lord of the Rings but hate The Hobbit.
Except, you know, LotR was had biggest CG battles in movie history up until that point and still ranks pretty high today. They definitely didn't take the easy route by actually filming a lot of scenes outside while innovating on the CG front dramatically to make huge battles possible the likes of which were deemed nearly impossible at the time, though. There were some large innovations in the Hobbit movies too but they didn't land. And yeah, too much green screens. They should've done it the hard way while still using just as much CG.
LOTR has tons of green screen and CGI. The Hobbit didn't have the prep time that LOTR did, which meant they were figuring out what things looked like after shooting instead of before.
Basically every great effect film had tons of pre-production. You can't figure it out in post and have it land.
You can’t convey the same intensity in CGI battles as you can in practical stunt work battles.
For this, I would contrast the space battles in older Star Trek series vs new ones. Back in the days when ships had to be physically modeled, space battles, except for the real series-defining ones, would have just a few space ships. You would probably know each ship by name and have seen some of its crew. They meant something. They seemed real. When you see a ship get destroyed, you're just watching characters you saw earlier in the episode die. It makes the stakes feel real, as if these are real space ships crewed by actual people. But compare that to the battles seen in a show like Discovery. They'll have massive space battles with giant armadas of nameless ships, none of which the audience cares at all about.
I think there was a time when CGI was new and novel, and the ability to depict massive battles without hiring and costuming thousands of extras was truly revolutionary. But the novelty has worn off. Big still has its place, but battles shouldn't be big just for the sake of being big.
This is just ridiculous. Movie goers don’t give a shit how hard it is to make a movie.
Agree even the puppets that are made for practical filming often get fully replaced with CGI anyway. Its just people like to hear practical even if it is not true.
The inputs affect the outputs.
Practical effects generally need to be planned before filming and that planning seems to both force restraint on the director and planning of the shot, which forces the director to decide on the visuals early in the process.
Practical effects also generally helps the actors give better performances since there are more visual cues informing emotional states.
There is also an uncanny valley that CGI can still fall in.
I agree that audiences likely don't care about the difficulty of the shot, but it seems to affect how audiences receive the output.
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Backrooms deserves a nod on this point too, at very least. It's got truly brilliant set design and execution, among many other really strong points.
That's a conclusion you could draw but it's hardly proof! The other cited were a film-length conclusion to a tv series, an unnecessary live action remake of an animated movie, and another superhero movie. Another conclusion one could draw is that people don't want derivative crap and don't care how it's made or what the budget is if it's a good film. Or you could conclude it's a success of viral marketing, or...
Yeah, I would rather say audiences are a little tired of the usual franchise stuff and unnecessary remakes.
It probably has more to do with the director and people wanting to see good movies in general.
Watch this guy. Every modern movie you think was done practically probably has hundreds or thousands of CGI shots. Including moments where not a single practical thing is on screen. https://youtu.be/AFLcP-t0-kI
Of course, as your video points out: the general public can't tell it's cgi.
Just waiting for the behind the scenes material on The Odyssey showing how they recreated the real longship entirely in CGI because it didn’t look right on the waves, and also added CGI dolphins while they were at it.
Also, I'm pretty sure the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea were turned grayish-brown with a computer.
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This entire thread can be summed up with:
Art is art regardless of medium
This is also a good reason why I say late 80s/early 90s was peak cinema. Unique stories, practical effects and memorable music. I mean take 1993 alone: Jurassic Park, Schindlers List, The Fugative just to name a few.
That is a lot. And they're still good for new viewers 30+ years later.
Well he could have made it a lot easier and cheaper by not doing it in 70mm imax, which adds absolutely fuck all for 99% of the audience. (Most people will see half he screen cause it is not even possible to watch it like he intends it). And I really doubt people go see the movie because of it, it's a bonus if they can. He can do whatever the fuck he wants ofcourse but I find it a bit too much work for neglectable results.
The imax thing is more a “symptom” of Nolan’s dedication to his craft, which shows up in many other ways in his movies. A tiny fraction care he filmed it that way, but many more care about his general level of attention to quality.
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