Best and Worst CGI ever in a movie?

Retr0gamer

You weren't by any chance one of the guys writing into digitiser saying the amiga wasn't dead because the effects in babylon 5 were done on amigas

In any case I'll change my statement to atari ST.

monkeyfudge

Retr0gamer wrote:

You weren't by any chance one of the guys writing into digitiser saying the amiga wasn't dead because the effects in babylon 5 were done on amigas

In any case I'll change my statement to atari ST.

Haha.. no. But I do remember those letters.

the Animation course in the college I went to still used Amigas for 3D animation as well... although it was a pretty crappy college. I had to use Cart Machines and Quarter Inch tape to edit audio.

sutty

Worst for me, was Dungeons & Dragons.

Batman Begins had some fantastic CG. It was just that alot of it you didn't notice as being CG. So I think that was good. Also The Hick Hikers Guide to the Galaxy had some great bits in it. Also LOTR.

But for ones that have not come out. I would say Serenity looks to have the best I have seen in a good while.

destroyhumans!!

revenge of the sith for best, totally

feckidyparp

I dont really care how it looks, the pure entertainment value of the cow from Kung Pow:Enter the fist is one of the finest CG movie moments in film history*
http://www.metacafe.com/item23440/top_videos/3/matrix_cow




*not really

-Al-

The Worst

Spiderman, running across the roof as peter parker *shudders*

Spiderman 2, isnt CGI meant to get better? - was very pissed that it won an oscar for fx, now before anyone moans, im not saying that all the cgi was bad, but the film is called spiderman, at least make him look good.

The Matrixeseses, didnt Joel Silver keep saying something along the lines of "we can seamlessley change between CGI and human actor" - ya sure ya can Joel, keep saying that if helps you sleep at night.

SW Episode 2, just bad, Lucas really went nuts on that one, it was more like a bet he had going with friends to see how much (bad) cgi he could stuff into a movie.


The Best

Jurassic Park, brilliant stuff, even today, it really shows that real models can still beat full on CGI, the ILM guys mixed clay models with computer models to create the dinos and I think I read it took somethign like 6 hours per frame to render a shot of the T-rex (even on ILMs super computers thats alot)

SW Episode 3, now I cant remember alot of it, only seen it in the cinema, but (and keeping in mind I hated the new SW for there overuse of the bad CGI) the opening shots of the fighters I thought was brilliant, I really thought they nailed it then.

Agree about batman begins, didnt realise the train running to wayne towers was CGI till I watched the DVD, thats when CGI is good, when you need to be told its CGI.

missingtime

The worst - Van Helsing and some of the comic book movies.Not Sin City of course. Pearl Harbour - crapola.

The best are the ones that you dont know envolve CGI. Was watching Johnathan Ross and for Pride and Prejudice or some movie like that they used CGI to create a stormy sky.

chern0byl

The best: Anything from Terminator 2

The best are the ones that you dont know envolve CGI

Not for me. Thats true for the most life like, but the best cgi is the best use of it using the techology of that time.

The Worst: Bond "surfing"

Tomohawk

"Ghostbusters" has the best CGI movie in the world ever!!!

LOTR or Starwars 1/2/3 have to be the worst...who wants to go to the movies and watch a software program :rolleyes:

Sangre

Best -War of the Worlds especially the start. Never once went 'wow that looks good'. Just accepted it as part of the story, quite flawless.

Worst - tidal wave scene in the Bond movie. Blew me out of the cinema sequence. Completely realised I was sitting in a cinema.

TerrorFirmer

Okay, this thread is getting a tad ridiculous in places. Most people are stating the worst cases in their respective opinion but some people seem to be just turning it into a generic thread by listing their least liked movies!

LOTR or Starwars 1/2/3 have to be the worst...who wants to go to the movies and watch a software program

I mean this for example is silly as the effects in both LoTR and Star Wars are among the best in the industry! Regardless of whether you liked the movies you can hardly argue the films have crap cgi.

edit: Hearing alot about this tidal wave scene. Don't remember it myself! Must check it out very soon...:D

missingtime

The sequence is in the most recent bond movie. The glacier is melting and a big chunk of it falls of and makes a huge wave but our Bond isnt phased and surfs his way to safety. It looks ridiculous.

D-Generate

It looks like in those old scenes with people in a car and the background moves behind them rather than them moving. I just remember not being able to keep a straight face during it. It is especially bad considering how they were applauded for the Invisible Car CGI by the press.

Romero

The worst and ruined the movie I was enjoying up until then was the Jumbo crashing into the Sea in Air Force One, took me right out of the movie story and I just thought what rubbish CGI they must have spend $2 on the effects!!!
Romero

sutty

I have to say my fav CG was in Serenity, some fantastic space shots in that.


The worst was Catwoman, good feck how they done it so badly

mathie

To add to whats been mentioned I thought the Chronicles of Riddick had some pretty jaw dropping effects.
M

Peteee

missingtime wrote:

Pearl Harbour - crapola.

Really? I think the effects in that movie a superb (Bar one or two shots)

They only had 6 actual planes to shoot the movie with.

The bond 'surfing' scene was atrocious.

Jurrasic Park is great, as is Minority Report (In fact, nearly all of Spielbergs flicks have excellent CGI, especially A.I.)

Placebo

worsat = blade 3.

ObeyGiant

Not the worst of all time, but Chronicles of Narnia certainly has the worst effects of any of this year's 'big' movies so far.

TerrorFirmer

ObeyGiant wrote:

Not the worst of all time, but Chronicles of Narnia certainly has the worst effects of any of this year's 'big' movies so far.

You really think? I mean there were some sections in which it was weak, but when I say weak, thats relatively speaking. I didn't think much of the movie altogether but I thought visually it was fantastic for the most part.

And even if you think so, surely you aren't saying the Brothers Grimm had better effects?

ObeyGiant

Well.. I wouldn't have counted the Brothers Grimm as a 'big' movie, but I certainly thought it had better effects - it knew the limits of what it could achieve and did as much as it could with practical effects. Compare this with Narnia who seemed to struggle with even presenting a passable greenscreen effect, and yet still thought it had the ability to pull off convincing CGI reindeers.

Very disappointing.

Karl Hungus

Peteee wrote:

The bond 'surfing' scene was atrocious.

No, bugger that, the Escape From LA surfing scenes was eye-cripplingly bad. :v:

Noopti

Gollum, see the Lion in Narnia? well from the trailers and so on looks class(same company as did LOTR)

Nah, you're mixing up Weta Workshop and Weta Digital. Workshop are all about physical effects(costumes, armour, weapons, minitures and props etc). Weta Digital are the CG guys.
With Narnia, Weta Workshop did all weapons and armour and the like. The digital stuff was done by KNB EFX. Weta Digital were far too busy with Kong to be able to work on Narnia at the same time.

As for the worst effects: Yeah, Blade II had some pretty bad effects in there.

Best: Lord of the Rings, specifically Gollum. Although I'm thinking Kong might take snatch crown when I see it!

Rozie

The CGI in the latest Doctor Who series alternates between extremely impressive for small budget, and "Look mum I made a spacestation on my computer!"

All the space station shots in the Bad Wolf two parter were terrible. The Daleks were done really well, as were all the interior shots on Platform One that had the CGI backgrounds back in Episode 2.

The main problem is that they seem to move at very low framerates which makes them look unrealistic. That's the number one thing that screams "CHEAP CGI!!!" in a movie. You need to try and get the framerate to match up with the framerate of the filming itself for it to work best. Any higher will look off, too, it will look as if it's somehow trying to be "fresher" than real life.

But that's not a movie so :P

Nimrod's Son

Spawn had pretty sucky CGI. I remember seeing it when it came out and thinking the CGI was below-par. Decent enough movie regardless.

ObeyGiant

Nimrod's Son wrote:

Spawn had pretty sucky CGI. I remember seeing it when it came out and thinking the CGI was below-par. Decent enough movie regardless.

For real. They seemed to spend all their CGI budget on Spawn's cloak. So when it came to doing a CGI devil, they could only afford a teenager in his bedroom with a copy of Deluxe Paint.

TerrorFirmer

Nimrod's Son wrote:

Spawn had pretty sucky CGI. I remember seeing it when it came out and thinking the CGI was below-par. Decent enough movie regardless.

Yeah. The wierd thing though is that is wasn't consistant with either bad or good effects. It had some fantastic effects shots, and then some absolutely dreadful ones.

Liked the movie though overall. Only the directors cut version though.

PullMyFinger!

King Kong looks a bit cartoony in some of the trailer clips Ive seen so far. Maybe it'll look better on the big screen.

Kingp35

PullMyFinger! wrote:

King Kong looks a bit cartoony in some of the trailer clips Ive seen so far. Maybe it'll look better on the big screen.

Believe me Kong is most definitely the best CG character to date. Looks brilliant

Atrocity

Bacchus wrote:

Worst: Has to be James Bond 20. In particular when he surfs on the bonnet of the car on a giant wave of water and ice. I laughed so hard when I saw that.

That was the funniest thing I ever saw in a movie, I'd buy the DVD just to see it again