Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
When CGI goes bad
by Warren
Computer generated effects, which burst onto the scene about 20 years ago, have gone from taking our breath away in films like the Abyss, Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park to exhausting our eyeballs and generally getting on our nerves in today’s current crop of would-be blockbusters. Twitchguru has a breakdown of some of the worst CGI offenders of the past few years. My take is that effects are in a film to service the story, and used properly, can make a good film better (witness the Lord of the Rings and…well….the Lord of the Rings.) But a lot of directors, George Lucas included, can’t keep their hands out of the candy jar and pile on the effects like there’s no tomorrow, simply because they can. When a die-hard geek and effects junkie like myself is getting sick of the excess, Hollywood is in big trouble.