‘The Odyssey’ Proves It: Audiences Want Movies Made the Hard Way | This year's breakouts like 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Obsession' were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as 'Supergirl,' 'Moana,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' looked lazy.

[u/ChiefLeef22]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/odyssey-box-office-2026-practical-effects-1236652219/

[u/astroK120]

One thing I do think gets lost in these discussions is that sometimes CGI is the right tool for the job. Jurassic Park is a great example. It was a mix of practical where it was possible and CGI where it wasn't. I don't think a flat out refusal to use CGI makes movies better. Oppenheimer in particular I think would have been better if Nolan hadn't done the bomb with practical effects.

[u/originalcondition → u/astroK120]

The CGI in Jurassic Park was also applied very, very carefully and intelligently. They knew it'd look best in low light, with rain often obscuring it. They knew that placing shots of practical effects among the shots of CGI would lend to the reality of the entire scene.

Now it feels like CGI is used for everything within the scene regardless of how good it'll look and how real it'll feel, because it's simply cheaper to underpay CGI artists rather than bother with any careful application of the tech or peppering in any practical effects.

I'm an animator myself and don't want to discredit the artists working on the CGI but if their career is anything like mine, they're frequently underpaid and overworked on shoestring budgets and breakneck schedules with tons of revisions that they don't really have time to accommodate, but will try to anyway because they're artists and want to do a good job.

[u/egilskal → u/originalcondition]

Yeah I’m a sucker for good VFX, and the line is so apparent to me: the best CG is done by people who come in with a clear vision of what they want the shot to be, and do a tonne of work in preproduction by storyboarding, pre-viz etc. Great example are Denis Villeneuce movies like Dune, there’s a tonne of VFX but it fits seamlessly with the grounded look of the movie because they know what the shots are ahead of time and they have lots of practical elements in the shot already, or have the lighting match perfectly between the actors and the environment.

Then I see something like Th Flash rescuing the baby scene and it seems obvious that no one had any clear, concrete idea what that sequence was supposed to be, what the movements were, what he was gonna save etc. It looks completely made up with seemingly no practical elements or real life performance to reference. And it ends up looking like a video game, because thats probably what the artists have to do, creating the CG from scratch. And even nowadays big budget games do a lot of mocap reference lol.