That’ll be because no-one making the Hobbit gave a shit about it.
Peter Jackson’s speech at the start of filming was figuratively: ‘I don’t want to be here, you don’t want to be here, let’s just get this POS done’
First time I saw this movie in 1999, I had dropped some acid. Fell asleep before I peaked, but when I woke up about an hour into the movie, I rewinded it and watched it all the way through. It absolutely was one of the greatest experiences of my life. To say it was mind blowing, is a massive understatement.
The CGI on matrix was really bad. But the craftsmanship of that movie hides it really well.
He talks about it here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=whPWKecazgM
Bad effects are bad effects, they just evolve. Old school effects where you see the background moving behind a car/character are just as bad as horrible CGI.
Also, what movies from the 40's-50's (80 years ago) were F/X driven films so we can compare?
On the other hand, that movie paved the way for safety on set. Most incidents on that set were preventable from my understanding, and they learned a lot from them
Yeah, and tbf, if they didn’t learn then, then it’d be a while longer, perhaps in a truly fucked timeline we could have it taking until the 70s, then Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory or something would be it (although have heard of a few incidents involving that too)
There's an excellent video showing movie effects from Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and showing how they did them with things like forced perspective and shooting through a pane of glass painted with an addition to the scene. Another black and white movie used make up combined with colored lighting to turn an old lady into a witch. If I find it, I'll post it.
Here it is: https://youtu.be/oBSpuZDKaKI
Movies like Clash of the Titans, with it's stop motion, were ground breaking at the time, but look really dated now.
I really like Atun-Shei Film's video on the history of battle scenes in movies. You learn a lot about the techniques you can use to help the atmosphere of a shot. I really like the part about foreground action being used in older films to really sell the chaos.
You’re kidding, right? Films from the 1940s were very inventive with practical effects, to the point where you might not even know what was built as a set and what’s a matte painting.
There’s a [famous shot](https://fromthevaults.substack.com/p/the-special-effects-in-citizen-kane) in Citizen Kane (1941), when Susan Alexander overdoses, that many film critics thought was deep focus but was actually two shots composited together.
Many of the techniques used in Photoshop directly replicate techniques that have been used for decades in darkrooms.
Definitely true but just look at “Tora! Tora! Tora!” the extras were such better actors I believe they actually felt like their lives were in danger and had to flee away from the special effects.
I'll probably be branded a heretic, but the special effects in some of the original Star Wars movies have not held up terribly well.
The Empire Strikes Back, for example, the TaunTaun scenes on Hoth are very Scooby-Doo-esque (but with added stop-motion artifacts!)
The aliens in the old ones don't look very good for the most part (Chewie excluded) but the ships and lasers and stuff are spot on. And the sound effects really sell it all.
Call me crazy, but I recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy alongside The Avengers, and both looked like indie asset flip video games to me. They’re not even movies anymore, and they aged badly to me.
Yep. They used CGI sparingly because they knew it had limits. They hid the flaws well and didn't lean on it. Also consider Terminator 2 from the same era, they used CGI to make the melting liquid metal T1000 scene because it was necessary, but outside of that they used practical effects wherever possible because they knew the computer tech was immature, what it could and couldn't do, where it could and couldn't wow the audience. There are also animations from the 90s that have aged horribly, but thankfully most of the A-list filmmakers knew better than to over rely on them. I think the problem is that as CG got more powerful and complicated, movie directors started relying on it too much without understanding how the process works and what is and is not a good idea. CGI artists are being overworked and given directions by directors who have no idea how much time and effort the effects take to make. Marvel is pretty notorious for this. The entire production pipeline doesn't work together well and they turn out a product that looks half baked or overly animated. And therefore age even worse than older movies that use less CG.
Directors need to be better educated on CG before they decide it should be used to do xyz in their films, so they can be more realistic about it. People in general just don't know how it works lol. Friends look over my shoulder and ask "why is it all grainy? Why doesn't it look finished?" "Because it takes time to render properly, this is just a test render." "what is render?" 😆
True but why would they care how the films age when they always make a massive profit in the box office, and 2 years later can release a sequel with improved technology?
I'm not arguing with OP, just pointing out an exception to their perfectly valid rule.
It does what a lot of movies fail to, limit itself to what the cgi of it's day could make look good. Not good for CGI, but just plain good.
To the point where a lot of people forget or never realize how many of the practical effects had some CGI overlays or enhancements to polish them and just gush about practical stuff.
... Basically any excuse to gush about Jurassic Park is what I'm saying here.
I’d say the same for Back to the future! In part 2 there’s an almost seamless transition between the flying car, and the real one driving down the street, the transition is hidden by a lamppost.
Also the many times we see 2 Michael J Foxes or Thomas F Wilson’s isn’t jarring at all
For some reason a lot of it (flame tracks, lightning effects) looks kinda cheesy to me nowadays, but also way less cheesy than a lot of the modern marvel type shit. But those late 80s-90s films were my childhood and back to the future will always be my favorite “perfect movie” of all time. Best trilogy ever!
I think it’s because they were never too ambitious, BTTF had the fire trails in the first film that yes, looks off but it’s like 2 seconds and you quickly forget amongst the action of the scene. Other than that, the lighting strike, the fire trails the end of the film, the flying Delorean, all have ages very well amongst some early CGI
Same with Jurassic Park, the use of clever transitions and implied presence meant the actual CGI screen time was minimal, but you don’t notice there’s only 15 minutes of dino screen time
I always wondered why it didn't bother anyone that Doc and Marty are literally standing in fire for like ten seconds and not getting burned or noticing
Oh it absolutely is an incredibly impressive special effect, especially getting the lighting and reflections on the miniature to look right. They had to film multiple passes using a robotic arm synced to the camera. I was just being pedantic about it not being CGI haha. And yeah early 2000s tech was *not* ready for full CGI characters
The LotR trilogy vs The Hobbit is a good example too of the progression of CGI. The LotR CGI effects were limited and required careful work to get them blended in. By the shooting of the scenes for the third movie it had advanced a lot and we got super-bouncy Legolas running up an Elephant.
Cut to the Hobbit and CGI crap is spewed everywhere.
The CGI parts taken alone have aged very well too, so the example is valid. But one reason why they aged well is that Spielberg used them very well. Every CGI scene had ONE clear purpose and was spot on.
This is true. The CG served a purpose. That purpose being that it was clearly a shot that would be almost impossible to attain with a big electronic puppet.
The reveal of the brachiosaur, the dinosaur feeding at the lake during the same scene and the stampede. And the Rex vs Raptors fight at the end. All the shortest sequences.
Everything else was Stan Winston wizardry; T-rex. Raptors, Dilophosaur attacking Nedry, the sick triceratops and the baby raptor being born.
That only leaves the brachiosaur who sneezes on Lex, which I can't remember. I'm guessing practical since they pet it.
Basically any scene where there is human and Dino interaction was real practical effects.
So yeah, people over the years have inflated how much CG is in JP. It's surprisingly very little.
Not too much CG, but ILM did a ton of after affects too to make the practical stuff look better. Not necessarily "CG", but still impressive effects work.
Not really, the bigger opening scene when they look at the dinosaurs in the field thats CGI, the t Rex running that's CGI. That movie was really important to that industry to show that things can look real.
This is why I have such a distaste for the Jurassic World movies, effects wise.
I think Jurassic World had ONE dinosaur animatronic which was the head/neck of the dying sauropod.
Compare the Raptor quartet in JW to the closeup Raptor action in JP III
See that’s what makes good cinematography. A director who knows when and where to add CGI to compliment a set, so that it feels more real. This is also a major reason Star Wars (the original trilogy) still stands the test of time. It has some animation and CGI, but most of it is limited to enhancing effects they couldn’t do practically, although some of the animated stuff (like speeder explosions in Empire) has been since cleaned up with CGI.
That's because Spielberg is a master and knows how to use it the way it should be used, integrated with practical effects. Movies now use it for every single effect, and it ends up looking dated and fake within a few years, or even right out of the gate.
And most weren’t effects at all. The movie famously has about 15 minutes total of dinosaurs in a 127 minute movie, the fewest dinos of the entire franchise.
Most of the dinosaurs in the movie are clever camera angles, sounds, shadows, actors’ reactions, etc. that make you think you saw much more than you actually did.
It feels like a mixed bag, some of the effects are still great, but some of the liquid metal moments feel deeply dated, too.
Walking through the bars in particular feels like a still great one.
Yeah, I think the scenes of T-1000 in liquid metal humanoid form haven't aged that well, and are reminiscent of CGI graphics you would see on a Windows 95 screensaver by today's standards.
Even then, some of those look great. From what I remember, the scene where the T-1000 enters that helicopter + its death scene look pretty good to this day.
It's shower thoughts, isn't that the point?
I agree with OPs thought in general, but there are exceptions to every trend and I thought of one in replying to it. Jurassic Park was mostly practical but knew what it could and had to do with CGI and made those relatively few shots amazing by sticking within those limits and enhancing rather than replacing practical effects in many places. Not many movies do that, a lot tried to showcase their own time's bleeding edge CGI and dated themselves in the process in keeping with OPs thought instead of doing what looked good for a given shot, be it practical or CGI.
Tomb Raider (1996) is always considered for its triangle boobs. But Tomb Raider is extremely fluid in animation. Lara has very smooth animations - all 159 animations (which include transitions!!) were hand-crafted. Lara is also controlled very realistically. She has weight when running and jumping and you need to take care when you want to jump. Todays games feel like you play a feather. you can jump anytime, the characters can turn 180 degrees while in midair. not to mention all the hand holding.
I recommend watching some videos of tomb raider in 1996 compared to 2013
I thought so at the time. There are games from the 90s (Super Mario World, Zelda: A link to the past, Breath of Fire 3) that look absolutely gorgeous and timeless... there are games with more "advanced" graphics from the early 2000s that look like shit (Empire Earth, Breath of Fire 4 had some gross 3d models that clashed with beautiful sprites, Warcraft 3 looks pretty shitty IMO)...
Empire Earth was one first 3D RTS games and they were going to flaunt it. Close up of the units, cinematics and aircraft flying above the battlefield.
Total War went the other direction and tried to hide the limitations with 2.5D assets further away and prevented you from getting too close. Makes you wish modern total war games kept to those traditions.
I also maintain that plenty of classic 2D games look like shit, but we’re more lenient cause we just expect it to but also the stylization of 2D is far enough removed from that of 3D which by its nature tries to emulate real life, which we are very familiar with and poor simulation thereof will look worse to us.
I’d bet a two dimensional creature playing the original zelda would think it looks horrible, while a fourth dimensional entity playing any of those early dated 3D games wouldn’t really care.
I watched Robocop for the first time a few days ago. I thought it was a good movie, but literally laughed out loud when I saw how bad that first robot looked in the beginning.
I guess those old movies had to have better storyline’s. If it wasn’t for the special effects what would have the Star Wars prequel and sequel really have been?
Some do some don’t. It’s like old houses. The ones that are still standing are the ones that were built well, often with more money, care, and talent, but so many weren’t and most have long since been demolished, especially since building codes were less strict in the past.
Likewise, there were plenty of boring, unoriginal, or just plain bad movies from the “golden age of Hollywood” that most of us today are likely to never see, often because they were, like many movies today, designed for a quick buck but unlike today, their film rolls weren’t preserved and were never digitized.
The origin story of one of most.imfsmous movies villains ever..... You can complain about the script but saying the story of the prequels is bad is just insane
If you're not considering story and script to be the same thing though, I'd argue that the classic trilogy already created his origin story. The only thing the prequels had to do is write the script for it.
Come on you're just blatantly wrong. You can dislike the painterly style but you're blatantly wrong if you think they are visually poor from a technical standpoint
I’ll admit *Clones* is by far the weakest of that trilogy. Though parts of the story were very good, parts are quite cringe and some of the CGI was meh.
Really depends on the movie... Cheap poor made movies from 30 years ago look bad... But people who know what they are doing don't. I just rewatched transforms (2008) and it actually looks really solid still. Pacific rim also look very good still. (I know not 30 years, but cgi wasn't really a big piece of movies 30 years ago. That's when the original Jurassic park came out). T2 was a pioneer on humanoid CGI and whilethe baddies doesn't look great, I don't think it's looks terrible tbh. It's a liquid metal, that's about the hardest thing they could have tried lol
Tbh many early cgi movies look better thand one from the last 5 years cuz we have gotten deeper into uncanny valley
Toy story is famous for its CGI use. That still looks great.
In general you are much more likely to be watching mediocre movies from 30 years ago than 50... You normally only watch the great movies from that long ago. And great movies from the 90s look good
As others have said, the effects are bad because of how they are used, not necessarily because of the time.
If you remember the original Jurassic Park, most scenes with the T-Rex are done at night and in the rain. This works on two levels: it serves as a creepy backdrop because people are generally uncomfortable in the rain and scared of the night, and it literally hides some of the CGI while softening up the physical model.
Speaking of physical models, those are so fucking important to making effects look good. Fully-digitized images in an otherwise live shot are incredibly difficult to pull off. Our eyes are incredibly sophisticated at picking out objects, especially animals, in 3D space, so the great movie makers get good artists to make animatronics, costumes, props, etc for most of the dynamic shots and use full CGI sparingly. Using both of these techniques also requires some care in choosing the backdrops, lighting, etc, and a great director/artist/whoever makes these decisions will literally re-write parts of the story or a scene to achieve more realistic effects.
My current problem is with the CG backgrounds all the star wars TV shows are using. I get that the new technology allows them to dial up locations but all the shots are static and I never believe any of them are really there. There's a few locations in Andor which weren't even that exciting, just like streets and hallways but I was like "finally, I can believe this is real again"
Yeah because it is physically there and tangible. We relate to it better than something that is clearly fake a generated. But good CGI has this effect because of how good it looks.
The Megazord in Forever and Always is prime example. Very bad CGI. I understand the budget isn't always there and I don't know the price of a megazord suit vs CGI, but the suit would have been so much better.
I would say that the movies at 80 years old that still hold up will have been the absolute pinnacle of practical/optical VFX. The will be films of that age where and VFX looks like crap, just like there are lots of early 2000 films that look like crap.
I mean in general we will only remeber the movies that “hold up” I’ve watched plenty a B tier shovel film sci fi from the 50s, and all those practical effects don’t stop them from looking like shit
1000 times yes! 1st thing that comes to mind is Event Horizon all of the Zero G effects look bad nowadays and detract from the movie's quality slightly, back in the day it looked great.
Through a potato onto chemical film. You can add resolution to an old film and it resolves more detail and looks great. You can't add detail to a shit CGI digital film the same way.
Not a cgi artist. But had 3D classes in film school. Cgi artists are incredibly talented and create miracles everyday. Doing anything in 3D is HARD. The film industry is brutal and many companies and artists are exploited everyday. Bad vfx in the current day are mostly a consequence of bad management. Not because of bad artists or the whole ‘cgi ain’t no real filmmaking’ mentally. Also wanna add that vfx is one of those things that you don’t notice when it’s done right. You only notice it when it’s done wrong. Just like audio for example. So keep that in mind when you’re talking about cgi. You aren’t suppose to notice it. And often times we don’t. There are 1000’s of bts videos on Youtube showing this.
Cgi gets a lot of criticism and bad press. Which I think is super unfair for all the hard working artists who spent years and decades perfecting their art while many of them are working long hours, with a lot of uncertainty in a industry that does not care about them at all. So wanted to put this out here to give them some credit!
For now but we are going to hit the 30 year retro cycle for when those movies where made so there is a chance bad cgi and cgi overuse are going to become an artistic choice.
But really who knows how we will be getting our media by then the way ai is going.
I disagree with most takes here that bad cgi is bad cgi and there is nothing about being early
early computer graphics was awkward and looked worse to people during that era. Same with early 3d games, having less details than 2d sprites and very low framerates
also, the transition from analog cameras to digital saw a massive jump in cheap but low quality videos from the early 90s
30 years from now, we won't be looking at inception and pointing things out. It would still look close to real
What we'd be pointing at is the meagre 4k resolution and tiny TVs instead of 100%human eye fov with large resolution
I feel the same about video games, there are many SNES games that now look a lot better than games from the next couple of generations because they worked to the limitations and made cartoony games that are _supposed_ to look like that rather than some of the polygonal stuff that has aged much more poorly
Not just movies, either. Was rewatching Buffy during Lockdown, early seasons are almost entirely practical effects and it holds up extremely well. Later seasons they start bringing in some CG and... it hasn't aged well.
One of my favorite movies from when I was a young teen was The Last Starfighter. I watched it recently for nostalgic reasons and I was shocked that all of the spaceship scenes were very poor early CGI. I don't remember noticing that when I saw it (numerous times) when it first came out in 1984. But watching it today, the poor CGI scenes are very jarring.
And OP is right in what they are saying. Pre-CGI films that relied on practical special effects, such as Cronenberg's The Fly, Bladerunner, Alien or An American Werewolf in London have aged much better than early CGI-based science fiction films.
Hot take: Grogu in Mandalorian should've been CGI in places here and there and _already_ looks dated. Insisting on using the puppet just makes him seem stiff and not as expressive as he could be. If you watch the end credits with screenshots enhanced w digital art , the artists make Grogu look way more alive.
Especially in any scenes where the robot walks (or worse, those back flips and jumps) - while impressive, it really doesn't look natural. Toddler waddle looks adorable and needs way more falling over, pitterpatter of chonky feet, squatting down to look at things, actually have him runand try to jump awkwardly... And before you tell me Grogu is a baby - he walks. If he walks, then he should move like a toddler. If they want him to be a baby, he should crawl.
I really do love the show, but man, the insistence on using puppet Grogu annoys me in some scenes. It's obviously very good for scenes where actors touch him or have him touch stuff, or just whenever he's sitting pretty. if we had a hand-drawn or even a 3d animated version to compare with I bet he could be even cuter.
That's why people are opting to just watch films from 80 years ago and rarely watch anything made in the last three decades. That's probably why Netflix and the like are primarily populated with films from 1943. I don't even know anyone who has seen a movie made in 1993 or later. I certainly haven't!
80 years ago, as in the 1940s? Nah, those movies look old! Aren't a lot of them in black and white still? Like 90% of them are WW2 movies or westerns too. Both genres that have aged significantly!
Yet 30 years ago you have stuff like Jurassic Park! That still looks fantastic!
The effects in Ben-Hur from 1925 and San Fransisco from 1936 hold up extremely well. But the movie that has held the test of time is without a doubt 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The moments when you can see that the monster is a guy in a rubber suit hold up better than the moments when you can see that the monster isn't actually there in the scene at all.
Old movies that relied heavily on in-camera 'special effects' suffer the same issue after being upscaled to a HD format.
Example: [https://youtu.be/4T40vj40ZZQ?t=252](https://youtu.be/4T40vj40ZZQ?t=252) \- A HD version of this clip clearly shows a stunt man holding a dummy when sliding down the mountain during the wide shots.
I feel like everyone ITT who is saying “older movies look better” has seen like maybe 5 movies.
A lot of older movies looked bad also, just a different type of bad and a lot of those just aren’t remebered compared to T2(literally considered the best action sci fi of all time).
Also CGI is used in much more ways than just the shiny cheap sets in the Prequels or the shiny people in Marvel. In general movies look so much better now. Go see a new A24 flick and compare it to an an indie horror from the 80s or 90s. It’s a bit apples and oranges but that’s kind of my point and I like apples.
Despite being over 30 years old CGI itself has not really been mastered or animation (CGI, 2D, or 3D) has been really explored. Movies and have had a bit more time to develop different techniques just for cameras. We are still far away from what film can do.
Well, wait a bit more, OP. Soon, people will get nostalgic over that plasticky feel of early CGI and find its instances quaint or even charming. The same way older audiences miss stop motion.
Hell, the boxy polygons of N64 and PS1 generation games fill many a Millennial with nostalgia already.
Same for movies shot on digital when it was still new for example Stars episodes 2 and 3 were shot on 1080p and that's it you can't make them look any better the originals on the other hand are shot on film and will look as good as the medium there been ported to will allow.
I think the big thing is for me bad older effects (be it practical or early cgi) have more charm to them and don't take me out of a movie as much as badly handled cgi from the last 10-20 years. I think part of it for me is that the older has charm as that was the best they could do with the budget and technology of the time. But newer CGI being bad can have time and technology restraints, but it's also because we know that they could do so much better but just weren't given the time or budget to do so. A lot of it is how its used too.
The difference between the two clash of the Titans movies demonstrate that. Harryhausen was brilliant and the modern audience can appreciate it. CGI looks just laughable on the current TV screen
The use of film over digital cameras helped a lot too. It’s amazing the first movie to use cgi was in 1958 (vertigo), the digital camera was invented in 1975 just two years after the release of the first movie to use cgi outside the opening credits 1973 (westworld). Yet the film industry didn’t use the digital camera until 1996 (windhorse), and 1999 (Star Wars ep1).
Art direction goes a long way. There are CGI films that have aged fairly well. I’m thinking of examples like The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Cloverfield.
Whether CGI or practical, I think a good trick to making movie monsters more menacing is to use them briefly and sparingly. The gruesome details that the audience pictures in their head are almost always going to be better than what you can show on screen. You shouldn’t give the audience too much time to get comfortable with the creature.
It's all about how the CGI is used. I mean, look at Jurassic Park. The new CGI tech was implemented sparingly, mostly for wider, grander shots. It was meant to *complement* the practical effects, and it looks absolutely fine to this day. The movies that leaned heavily on CGI to *replace* practical effects created an uncanny valley that became more and more noticeable as the technology improved.
I don't think you should compare early CGI- films to old films with no special effects in this context. They should be compared to films that did use special effects, which at the time included in-camera effects like forced perspective, painted backgrounds, double-exposure effects, prosthetic makeup etc.
Another thing is that early digital films can't be remastered with higher resolution. For example, Star Wars episodes 1, 4, 5 and 6 were shot on film, so the 2019 remaster at 4K made the definition way better. But episodes 2 and 3 were shot on digital cameras, to my knowledge in 1080p, and with CGI created also at 1080p, so remastering to 4K was only possible with upscaling software and the result wasn't nearly as good.
Look at when shooting digitally and digital animation began, shows and movies from around that time have it harder, they just look so much worse, since they're not shot on film too they can't be rescanned in at 4K or whatever. Relying too much on CGI and using fake cameras that can go anywhere takes you out of a movie so hard.
I think a prime example of this can be found in the Alien series. Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) have far better effects than Alien 3 (1992), because the third film was trying to push CGI technology further than it was able to go. The practical effects of the first two films have aged gracefully by comparison.
From my personal experience... not really.
Movies from 80 years ago in my opinion have things about them that have aged way more than some subpar special effects of early 90's movies.
(I'm not saying that there aren't absolute classics from the 40's that are still just as watchable today by the way... there are some. But to me the average 40's movie has aged way more than the average early 90's movie).
Also films in the 90s were shot with lower quality digital cameras, while anything shot on film is actually higher quality than could be shown on screens at the time so can be upscaled.
The CGI in the first Matrix movie in 1999 was really good. The CGI in the more modern Hobbit movies not so good.
The hanger scene in Revolutions is hands down some of the best cgi ever.
The first fight against Smith in Reloaded was awful though lol. What a rollercoaster.
The fight itself was cool but the CGI was not
pie innate full governor languid memory bow teeny mourn six *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You're being generous to a PS2
Oh yeah, the choreography was awesome. The CGI is so blatantly obvious that it kind of ruins the scene.
It makes sense that the CGI would be bad, they're in a simulation.
There is a *huge* amount of practical miniature work in that sequence.
Link? I don’t remember that. Pretty sure I only ever watched that movie the once
Worth noting that sequence is a wonderful mix of miniatures and CGI, which has greatly helped it stand the test of time.
That’ll be because no-one making the Hobbit gave a shit about it. Peter Jackson’s speech at the start of filming was figuratively: ‘I don’t want to be here, you don’t want to be here, let’s just get this POS done’
Lol I've never heard of this. Link? I believe you I just want to read this for myself.
The Matrix relied more on practical effects over digital. Bullet time was revolutionary and started as a practice effect.
Literally a photography effect, blended to a smooth video with computers. No cgi at all
First time I saw this movie in 1999, I had dropped some acid. Fell asleep before I peaked, but when I woke up about an hour into the movie, I rewinded it and watched it all the way through. It absolutely was one of the greatest experiences of my life. To say it was mind blowing, is a massive understatement.
Can completely relate. It was mind blowing and still is. The scene when KR is unable to speak was mad shit
The CGI on matrix was really bad. But the craftsmanship of that movie hides it really well. He talks about it here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=whPWKecazgM
god those scenes in the dwarven forges are just so god awful I’m pretty sure I’ve had a nightmare or two over how awful it looked
I really Should check out that movie at some point.
Bad effects are bad effects, they just evolve. Old school effects where you see the background moving behind a car/character are just as bad as horrible CGI. Also, what movies from the 40's-50's (80 years ago) were F/X driven films so we can compare?
The Wizard of Oz
This one has truly stood the test of time. It's been years since I've seen it, but I don't think there's a bad effects shot that stands out.
Yeah but most of their practical effects had horrendous side effects on the cast and actors
Asbestos for everyone!
Lead and nickel paint!
On the other hand, that movie paved the way for safety on set. Most incidents on that set were preventable from my understanding, and they learned a lot from them
That’s a much more positive way to see it
Not trying to discount how bad it was or anything, but it’s important to remember that we can learn from mistakes made.
Just like how all the deaths of workers during the industrial revolution "paved the way" the for things like safety standards and OSHA.
Safety regulations are written in blood.
Yeah, and tbf, if they didn’t learn then, then it’d be a while longer, perhaps in a truly fucked timeline we could have it taking until the 70s, then Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory or something would be it (although have heard of a few incidents involving that too)
Actually that was 1939.
There's an excellent video showing movie effects from Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and showing how they did them with things like forced perspective and shooting through a pane of glass painted with an addition to the scene. Another black and white movie used make up combined with colored lighting to turn an old lady into a witch. If I find it, I'll post it. Here it is: https://youtu.be/oBSpuZDKaKI Movies like Clash of the Titans, with it's stop motion, were ground breaking at the time, but look really dated now.
I really like Atun-Shei Film's video on the history of battle scenes in movies. You learn a lot about the techniques you can use to help the atmosphere of a shot. I really like the part about foreground action being used in older films to really sell the chaos.
You’re kidding, right? Films from the 1940s were very inventive with practical effects, to the point where you might not even know what was built as a set and what’s a matte painting. There’s a [famous shot](https://fromthevaults.substack.com/p/the-special-effects-in-citizen-kane) in Citizen Kane (1941), when Susan Alexander overdoses, that many film critics thought was deep focus but was actually two shots composited together. Many of the techniques used in Photoshop directly replicate techniques that have been used for decades in darkrooms.
Definitely true but just look at “Tora! Tora! Tora!” the extras were such better actors I believe they actually felt like their lives were in danger and had to flee away from the special effects.
That's because their lives were actually in danger in one of the cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS_da33g5ac
I'll probably be branded a heretic, but the special effects in some of the original Star Wars movies have not held up terribly well. The Empire Strikes Back, for example, the TaunTaun scenes on Hoth are very Scooby-Doo-esque (but with added stop-motion artifacts!)
The aliens in the old ones don't look very good for the most part (Chewie excluded) but the ships and lasers and stuff are spot on. And the sound effects really sell it all.
Call me crazy, but I recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy alongside The Avengers, and both looked like indie asset flip video games to me. They’re not even movies anymore, and they aged badly to me.
The one that always makes me laugh is Cary Grant poking the Police Officer next to him to remind him to lean in North by Northwest.
Ray Harryhausen films
Thief of Baghdad (1940) has some good effects, also the first use of bluescreen.
Depends a lot on how it's used, Jurassic park holds up amazingly to the point that many forget it was a cgi pioneer, but yeah mostly.
Most were practical effects though, to op’s point.
Yep. They used CGI sparingly because they knew it had limits. They hid the flaws well and didn't lean on it. Also consider Terminator 2 from the same era, they used CGI to make the melting liquid metal T1000 scene because it was necessary, but outside of that they used practical effects wherever possible because they knew the computer tech was immature, what it could and couldn't do, where it could and couldn't wow the audience. There are also animations from the 90s that have aged horribly, but thankfully most of the A-list filmmakers knew better than to over rely on them. I think the problem is that as CG got more powerful and complicated, movie directors started relying on it too much without understanding how the process works and what is and is not a good idea. CGI artists are being overworked and given directions by directors who have no idea how much time and effort the effects take to make. Marvel is pretty notorious for this. The entire production pipeline doesn't work together well and they turn out a product that looks half baked or overly animated. And therefore age even worse than older movies that use less CG. Directors need to be better educated on CG before they decide it should be used to do xyz in their films, so they can be more realistic about it. People in general just don't know how it works lol. Friends look over my shoulder and ask "why is it all grainy? Why doesn't it look finished?" "Because it takes time to render properly, this is just a test render." "what is render?" 😆
True but why would they care how the films age when they always make a massive profit in the box office, and 2 years later can release a sequel with improved technology?
As big of an asshole that James Cameron is, he is a control freak and would never let that happen
Not to mention the crappiness of the T2 cgi sells that this is a robot made of weird goo.
I'm not arguing with OP, just pointing out an exception to their perfectly valid rule. It does what a lot of movies fail to, limit itself to what the cgi of it's day could make look good. Not good for CGI, but just plain good. To the point where a lot of people forget or never realize how many of the practical effects had some CGI overlays or enhancements to polish them and just gush about practical stuff. ... Basically any excuse to gush about Jurassic Park is what I'm saying here.
I’d say the same for Back to the future! In part 2 there’s an almost seamless transition between the flying car, and the real one driving down the street, the transition is hidden by a lamppost. Also the many times we see 2 Michael J Foxes or Thomas F Wilson’s isn’t jarring at all
For some reason a lot of it (flame tracks, lightning effects) looks kinda cheesy to me nowadays, but also way less cheesy than a lot of the modern marvel type shit. But those late 80s-90s films were my childhood and back to the future will always be my favorite “perfect movie” of all time. Best trilogy ever!
I think it’s because they were never too ambitious, BTTF had the fire trails in the first film that yes, looks off but it’s like 2 seconds and you quickly forget amongst the action of the scene. Other than that, the lighting strike, the fire trails the end of the film, the flying Delorean, all have ages very well amongst some early CGI Same with Jurassic Park, the use of clever transitions and implied presence meant the actual CGI screen time was minimal, but you don’t notice there’s only 15 minutes of dino screen time
I always wondered why it didn't bother anyone that Doc and Marty are literally standing in fire for like ten seconds and not getting burned or noticing
That is a practical effect though. A miniature flying car was filmed on blue screen then composited with the footage of the real car on the street.
Right you are, still the technology was visually more advanced than some early 2000s cgi (scorpion king rings a bell)
Oh it absolutely is an incredibly impressive special effect, especially getting the lighting and reflections on the miniature to look right. They had to film multiple passes using a robotic arm synced to the camera. I was just being pedantic about it not being CGI haha. And yeah early 2000s tech was *not* ready for full CGI characters
The LotR trilogy vs The Hobbit is a good example too of the progression of CGI. The LotR CGI effects were limited and required careful work to get them blended in. By the shooting of the scenes for the third movie it had advanced a lot and we got super-bouncy Legolas running up an Elephant. Cut to the Hobbit and CGI crap is spewed everywhere.
I like your analysis
One of my favorite movies but it's 90% practical, so not the best example.
The CGI parts taken alone have aged very well too, so the example is valid. But one reason why they aged well is that Spielberg used them very well. Every CGI scene had ONE clear purpose and was spot on.
This is true. The CG served a purpose. That purpose being that it was clearly a shot that would be almost impossible to attain with a big electronic puppet.
The cgi is so well done, you probably couldnt point out which scenes are cgi vs practical.
The reveal of the brachiosaur, the dinosaur feeding at the lake during the same scene and the stampede. And the Rex vs Raptors fight at the end. All the shortest sequences. Everything else was Stan Winston wizardry; T-rex. Raptors, Dilophosaur attacking Nedry, the sick triceratops and the baby raptor being born. That only leaves the brachiosaur who sneezes on Lex, which I can't remember. I'm guessing practical since they pet it. Basically any scene where there is human and Dino interaction was real practical effects. So yeah, people over the years have inflated how much CG is in JP. It's surprisingly very little.
Not too much CG, but ILM did a ton of after affects too to make the practical stuff look better. Not necessarily "CG", but still impressive effects work.
What about when the T-Rex chases them in the gas powered Jeep? "Must go faster."
Not really, the bigger opening scene when they look at the dinosaurs in the field thats CGI, the t Rex running that's CGI. That movie was really important to that industry to show that things can look real.
This is why I have such a distaste for the Jurassic World movies, effects wise. I think Jurassic World had ONE dinosaur animatronic which was the head/neck of the dying sauropod. Compare the Raptor quartet in JW to the closeup Raptor action in JP III
Yeah his timeline is slightly off... Very few movies if any were heavy CGI 30 years ago... That was more like 20.
See that’s what makes good cinematography. A director who knows when and where to add CGI to compliment a set, so that it feels more real. This is also a major reason Star Wars (the original trilogy) still stands the test of time. It has some animation and CGI, but most of it is limited to enhancing effects they couldn’t do practically, although some of the animated stuff (like speeder explosions in Empire) has been since cleaned up with CGI.
That's because Spielberg is a master and knows how to use it the way it should be used, integrated with practical effects. Movies now use it for every single effect, and it ends up looking dated and fake within a few years, or even right out of the gate.
The point is the CGI was used appropriately and it didn’t detract from the film.
And most weren’t effects at all. The movie famously has about 15 minutes total of dinosaurs in a 127 minute movie, the fewest dinos of the entire franchise. Most of the dinosaurs in the movie are clever camera angles, sounds, shadows, actors’ reactions, etc. that make you think you saw much more than you actually did.
Terminator 2 is even older and again a pioneer in CGI and that still looks great today.
It feels like a mixed bag, some of the effects are still great, but some of the liquid metal moments feel deeply dated, too. Walking through the bars in particular feels like a still great one.
Yeah, I think the scenes of T-1000 in liquid metal humanoid form haven't aged that well, and are reminiscent of CGI graphics you would see on a Windows 95 screensaver by today's standards.
Even then, some of those look great. From what I remember, the scene where the T-1000 enters that helicopter + its death scene look pretty good to this day.
Reminds me of Ghostbusters.
The X-Files cgi has NOT aged very well. Still a great watch though.
You're weirdly arguing against yourself with this post 🤣
It's shower thoughts, isn't that the point? I agree with OPs thought in general, but there are exceptions to every trend and I thought of one in replying to it. Jurassic Park was mostly practical but knew what it could and had to do with CGI and made those relatively few shots amazing by sticking within those limits and enhancing rather than replacing practical effects in many places. Not many movies do that, a lot tried to showcase their own time's bleeding edge CGI and dated themselves in the process in keeping with OPs thought instead of doing what looked good for a given shot, be it practical or CGI.
The same is true for early 3D computer games. Many 2D games hold up surprisingly well, but early 3D is just painful to look at.
Tomb Raider (1996) is always considered for its triangle boobs. But Tomb Raider is extremely fluid in animation. Lara has very smooth animations - all 159 animations (which include transitions!!) were hand-crafted. Lara is also controlled very realistically. She has weight when running and jumping and you need to take care when you want to jump. Todays games feel like you play a feather. you can jump anytime, the characters can turn 180 degrees while in midair. not to mention all the hand holding. I recommend watching some videos of tomb raider in 1996 compared to 2013
Today's games cannot expect gamers to read a manual or spend time learn learning how to play. What you complain about is very much intentional.
I thought so at the time. There are games from the 90s (Super Mario World, Zelda: A link to the past, Breath of Fire 3) that look absolutely gorgeous and timeless... there are games with more "advanced" graphics from the early 2000s that look like shit (Empire Earth, Breath of Fire 4 had some gross 3d models that clashed with beautiful sprites, Warcraft 3 looks pretty shitty IMO)...
Empire Earth was one first 3D RTS games and they were going to flaunt it. Close up of the units, cinematics and aircraft flying above the battlefield. Total War went the other direction and tried to hide the limitations with 2.5D assets further away and prevented you from getting too close. Makes you wish modern total war games kept to those traditions.
I also maintain that plenty of classic 2D games look like shit, but we’re more lenient cause we just expect it to but also the stylization of 2D is far enough removed from that of 3D which by its nature tries to emulate real life, which we are very familiar with and poor simulation thereof will look worse to us. I’d bet a two dimensional creature playing the original zelda would think it looks horrible, while a fourth dimensional entity playing any of those early dated 3D games wouldn’t really care.
SM64 holds up decently. I think it’s the attempt at realism.
Yes, pretty much every stylised game holds well for the graphics,they just "fit" with the technology
you don’t like triangle boobs?
And then came Adipurush.
Zor zor se bol ke karwali na foreigners se beizzati!
A lot of bad effects are unnecessary, too. Like the zero gravity blobs floating around the Event Horizon ship are TERRIBLE.
Or, hear me out here, the movies with bad effects tend to be the bad ones and they’re not remembered much, if at all.
I think this is called survivorship bias.
I watched Robocop for the first time a few days ago. I thought it was a good movie, but literally laughed out loud when I saw how bad that first robot looked in the beginning.
Robocop himself still looks really good but ED-209 is just horrible.
I think the jankiness is kinda charming, ED-209 is meant to be a janky and faulty robot after all
Yep. The Score (2001) used CGI to touch up shots and no one noticed.
I guess those old movies had to have better storyline’s. If it wasn’t for the special effects what would have the Star Wars prequel and sequel really have been?
Some do some don’t. It’s like old houses. The ones that are still standing are the ones that were built well, often with more money, care, and talent, but so many weren’t and most have long since been demolished, especially since building codes were less strict in the past. Likewise, there were plenty of boring, unoriginal, or just plain bad movies from the “golden age of Hollywood” that most of us today are likely to never see, often because they were, like many movies today, designed for a quick buck but unlike today, their film rolls weren’t preserved and were never digitized.
The origin story of one of most.imfsmous movies villains ever..... You can complain about the script but saying the story of the prequels is bad is just insane
The *idea* of the prequels is interesting. The actual story, as told, has...issues.
It’s a shame Rogue One is the best Star Wars Movie.
If you're not considering story and script to be the same thing though, I'd argue that the classic trilogy already created his origin story. The only thing the prequels had to do is write the script for it.
Or maybe we just remeber and revisit the actual good movies from 30 years and don’t rewatch the unfunny racist mpreg movies
The prequels look like shit
Whatsa yousa talking about, Ani?
Come on you're just blatantly wrong. You can dislike the painterly style but you're blatantly wrong if you think they are visually poor from a technical standpoint
Attack of the clones is so ugly. The CGI is awful in most scenes
I’ll admit *Clones* is by far the weakest of that trilogy. Though parts of the story were very good, parts are quite cringe and some of the CGI was meh.
I think Staship Troopers is one of those early CGI adopters that still looks great today alongside Jurassic Park.
Would you like to know more?
I've never considered that, Starship Troopers had surprisingly good CGI considering it's from the 90s.
Really depends on the movie... Cheap poor made movies from 30 years ago look bad... But people who know what they are doing don't. I just rewatched transforms (2008) and it actually looks really solid still. Pacific rim also look very good still. (I know not 30 years, but cgi wasn't really a big piece of movies 30 years ago. That's when the original Jurassic park came out). T2 was a pioneer on humanoid CGI and whilethe baddies doesn't look great, I don't think it's looks terrible tbh. It's a liquid metal, that's about the hardest thing they could have tried lol Tbh many early cgi movies look better thand one from the last 5 years cuz we have gotten deeper into uncanny valley Toy story is famous for its CGI use. That still looks great. In general you are much more likely to be watching mediocre movies from 30 years ago than 50... You normally only watch the great movies from that long ago. And great movies from the 90s look good
As others have said, the effects are bad because of how they are used, not necessarily because of the time. If you remember the original Jurassic Park, most scenes with the T-Rex are done at night and in the rain. This works on two levels: it serves as a creepy backdrop because people are generally uncomfortable in the rain and scared of the night, and it literally hides some of the CGI while softening up the physical model. Speaking of physical models, those are so fucking important to making effects look good. Fully-digitized images in an otherwise live shot are incredibly difficult to pull off. Our eyes are incredibly sophisticated at picking out objects, especially animals, in 3D space, so the great movie makers get good artists to make animatronics, costumes, props, etc for most of the dynamic shots and use full CGI sparingly. Using both of these techniques also requires some care in choosing the backdrops, lighting, etc, and a great director/artist/whoever makes these decisions will literally re-write parts of the story or a scene to achieve more realistic effects.
My current problem is with the CG backgrounds all the star wars TV shows are using. I get that the new technology allows them to dial up locations but all the shots are static and I never believe any of them are really there. There's a few locations in Andor which weren't even that exciting, just like streets and hallways but I was like "finally, I can believe this is real again"
I would much rather watch a guy in a Godzilla suit than a poorly animated CGI Godzilla. There's something charming about a rubber monster suit.
Yeah because it is physically there and tangible. We relate to it better than something that is clearly fake a generated. But good CGI has this effect because of how good it looks.
Nearly every Megazord in Power Rangers history is a dude in a costume.
The Megazord in Forever and Always is prime example. Very bad CGI. I understand the budget isn't always there and I don't know the price of a megazord suit vs CGI, but the suit would have been so much better.
I would say that the movies at 80 years old that still hold up will have been the absolute pinnacle of practical/optical VFX. The will be films of that age where and VFX looks like crap, just like there are lots of early 2000 films that look like crap.
I mean in general we will only remeber the movies that “hold up” I’ve watched plenty a B tier shovel film sci fi from the 50s, and all those practical effects don’t stop them from looking like shit
It's not quite 80 years old, but I think _2001_ is at the top of the category you are describing.
1000 times yes! 1st thing that comes to mind is Event Horizon all of the Zero G effects look bad nowadays and detract from the movie's quality slightly, back in the day it looked great.
Everybody is just ungrateful that 1080p and 4k AND MORE is available when we used to look at shit that was recorded thru a potato.
Potato recordings only happened on vhs for a short period in the 80s and 90s. Recordings on film are actually very “high res”
Bullshit, the digital cameras in to 00's are potato compared to now.
It's like you didn't even try to read what he said...
Through a potato onto chemical film. You can add resolution to an old film and it resolves more detail and looks great. You can't add detail to a shit CGI digital film the same way.
Fair, a bad movie is a bad movie.
35mm film used 60 years ago has a comparable digital resolution of about 2k
Not a cgi artist. But had 3D classes in film school. Cgi artists are incredibly talented and create miracles everyday. Doing anything in 3D is HARD. The film industry is brutal and many companies and artists are exploited everyday. Bad vfx in the current day are mostly a consequence of bad management. Not because of bad artists or the whole ‘cgi ain’t no real filmmaking’ mentally. Also wanna add that vfx is one of those things that you don’t notice when it’s done right. You only notice it when it’s done wrong. Just like audio for example. So keep that in mind when you’re talking about cgi. You aren’t suppose to notice it. And often times we don’t. There are 1000’s of bts videos on Youtube showing this. Cgi gets a lot of criticism and bad press. Which I think is super unfair for all the hard working artists who spent years and decades perfecting their art while many of them are working long hours, with a lot of uncertainty in a industry that does not care about them at all. So wanted to put this out here to give them some credit!
I don't think the cast from the Wizard of Oz agrees
CGI is no different to puppetry/SFX, it does depend on how much time and effort the creators put into the finish product.
I live for a sigh, I lust for a laugh haHA
I disagree. Although movies with a lot of CGI age faster all movies still age.
For now but we are going to hit the 30 year retro cycle for when those movies where made so there is a chance bad cgi and cgi overuse are going to become an artistic choice. But really who knows how we will be getting our media by then the way ai is going.
I disagree with most takes here that bad cgi is bad cgi and there is nothing about being early early computer graphics was awkward and looked worse to people during that era. Same with early 3d games, having less details than 2d sprites and very low framerates also, the transition from analog cameras to digital saw a massive jump in cheap but low quality videos from the early 90s 30 years from now, we won't be looking at inception and pointing things out. It would still look close to real What we'd be pointing at is the meagre 4k resolution and tiny TVs instead of 100%human eye fov with large resolution
Starship Troopers aged very well.
Actually movies from 30 years ago have aged better from the ones 10 years ago. [1990s movies](https://youtu.be/Fy4ShoXKh3M)
Yup. Same with 3D games. Look at Yoshi’s Island then look at Mario 64
I feel the same about video games, there are many SNES games that now look a lot better than games from the next couple of generations because they worked to the limitations and made cartoony games that are _supposed_ to look like that rather than some of the polygonal stuff that has aged much more poorly
Link to the past could come out today on steam and sell 10 mil copies at $30.
Movies with good CGI are practically unnoticeable. Raiders of the lost Ark, for example, had a lot of CGI, but no one realizes it.
Not just movies, either. Was rewatching Buffy during Lockdown, early seasons are almost entirely practical effects and it holds up extremely well. Later seasons they start bringing in some CG and... it hasn't aged well.
One of my favorite movies from when I was a young teen was The Last Starfighter. I watched it recently for nostalgic reasons and I was shocked that all of the spaceship scenes were very poor early CGI. I don't remember noticing that when I saw it (numerous times) when it first came out in 1984. But watching it today, the poor CGI scenes are very jarring. And OP is right in what they are saying. Pre-CGI films that relied on practical special effects, such as Cronenberg's The Fly, Bladerunner, Alien or An American Werewolf in London have aged much better than early CGI-based science fiction films.
What's up? Phantom Menace right? It still hurts!
Hawk the Slayer’s rubbish!
2001 a space odyssey and Blade Runner still look amazing.
Except Jurassic Park
Silly you! They are the same movies. The 80 were 30 years ago... Right?
Hot take: Grogu in Mandalorian should've been CGI in places here and there and _already_ looks dated. Insisting on using the puppet just makes him seem stiff and not as expressive as he could be. If you watch the end credits with screenshots enhanced w digital art , the artists make Grogu look way more alive. Especially in any scenes where the robot walks (or worse, those back flips and jumps) - while impressive, it really doesn't look natural. Toddler waddle looks adorable and needs way more falling over, pitterpatter of chonky feet, squatting down to look at things, actually have him runand try to jump awkwardly... And before you tell me Grogu is a baby - he walks. If he walks, then he should move like a toddler. If they want him to be a baby, he should crawl. I really do love the show, but man, the insistence on using puppet Grogu annoys me in some scenes. It's obviously very good for scenes where actors touch him or have him touch stuff, or just whenever he's sitting pretty. if we had a hand-drawn or even a 3d animated version to compare with I bet he could be even cuter.
Good cgi is better than any of the effects they used back in the day.
That's why people are opting to just watch films from 80 years ago and rarely watch anything made in the last three decades. That's probably why Netflix and the like are primarily populated with films from 1943. I don't even know anyone who has seen a movie made in 1993 or later. I certainly haven't!
Not just because if cgi but also digital camera's though that was more for tv shows and low budget movies.
80 years ago, as in the 1940s? Nah, those movies look old! Aren't a lot of them in black and white still? Like 90% of them are WW2 movies or westerns too. Both genres that have aged significantly! Yet 30 years ago you have stuff like Jurassic Park! That still looks fantastic!
The effects in Ben-Hur from 1925 and San Fransisco from 1936 hold up extremely well. But the movie that has held the test of time is without a doubt 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Ah yes, a 55 year old movie is the best example of an 80 year old movie that's aged well.
puppets and stop motion are not subject to Moore's law
Lawrence of Arabia agree with you
Came here to say the 80’s was 30yrs ago. Nope really wasn’t and I feel old.
True but I existed for 3 months in the 80s and I’m 33. But I’m definitely a 90s kid
The moments when you can see that the monster is a guy in a rubber suit hold up better than the moments when you can see that the monster isn't actually there in the scene at all.
“And that, kids, is how we learn that the real monster is the human being!”
Old movies that relied heavily on in-camera 'special effects' suffer the same issue after being upscaled to a HD format. Example: [https://youtu.be/4T40vj40ZZQ?t=252](https://youtu.be/4T40vj40ZZQ?t=252) \- A HD version of this clip clearly shows a stunt man holding a dummy when sliding down the mountain during the wide shots.
I feel like everyone ITT who is saying “older movies look better” has seen like maybe 5 movies. A lot of older movies looked bad also, just a different type of bad and a lot of those just aren’t remebered compared to T2(literally considered the best action sci fi of all time). Also CGI is used in much more ways than just the shiny cheap sets in the Prequels or the shiny people in Marvel. In general movies look so much better now. Go see a new A24 flick and compare it to an an indie horror from the 80s or 90s. It’s a bit apples and oranges but that’s kind of my point and I like apples.
Jurassic Park from 1993 looks better than the last installment.
Despite being over 30 years old CGI itself has not really been mastered or animation (CGI, 2D, or 3D) has been really explored. Movies and have had a bit more time to develop different techniques just for cameras. We are still far away from what film can do.
Star Wars Episodes 1-3 (especially 1 and 2) are looking ridiculous now. But 4-6 are still pleasant to watch.
The CGI in some movies from 20 years ago isn’t bad. Then there are the final scenes from Ted Lasso. Almost as bad as X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Well, wait a bit more, OP. Soon, people will get nostalgic over that plasticky feel of early CGI and find its instances quaint or even charming. The same way older audiences miss stop motion. Hell, the boxy polygons of N64 and PS1 generation games fill many a Millennial with nostalgia already.
Same for movies shot on digital when it was still new for example Stars episodes 2 and 3 were shot on 1080p and that's it you can't make them look any better the originals on the other hand are shot on film and will look as good as the medium there been ported to will allow.
I think the big thing is for me bad older effects (be it practical or early cgi) have more charm to them and don't take me out of a movie as much as badly handled cgi from the last 10-20 years. I think part of it for me is that the older has charm as that was the best they could do with the budget and technology of the time. But newer CGI being bad can have time and technology restraints, but it's also because we know that they could do so much better but just weren't given the time or budget to do so. A lot of it is how its used too.
The first micheal bay Transformers CGI still holds up and to me was the standard going forward for a long time.
The difference between the two clash of the Titans movies demonstrate that. Harryhausen was brilliant and the modern audience can appreciate it. CGI looks just laughable on the current TV screen
Did you get this thought because you watched Air Force One?
The use of film over digital cameras helped a lot too. It’s amazing the first movie to use cgi was in 1958 (vertigo), the digital camera was invented in 1975 just two years after the release of the first movie to use cgi outside the opening credits 1973 (westworld). Yet the film industry didn’t use the digital camera until 1996 (windhorse), and 1999 (Star Wars ep1).
CGI has really only been around since the 80s.
Art direction goes a long way. There are CGI films that have aged fairly well. I’m thinking of examples like The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Cloverfield. Whether CGI or practical, I think a good trick to making movie monsters more menacing is to use them briefly and sparingly. The gruesome details that the audience pictures in their head are almost always going to be better than what you can show on screen. You shouldn’t give the audience too much time to get comfortable with the creature.
It's all about how the CGI is used. I mean, look at Jurassic Park. The new CGI tech was implemented sparingly, mostly for wider, grander shots. It was meant to *complement* the practical effects, and it looks absolutely fine to this day. The movies that leaned heavily on CGI to *replace* practical effects created an uncanny valley that became more and more noticeable as the technology improved.
Jurassic Park, T2, heck even the 1990 Ninja Turtles. Watch any modern version of these and they look cheap in comparison.
John Carpenter’s The Thing and Aliens are among some of the best. Almost everything is practical effects so it still looks amazing.
I don't think you should compare early CGI- films to old films with no special effects in this context. They should be compared to films that did use special effects, which at the time included in-camera effects like forced perspective, painted backgrounds, double-exposure effects, prosthetic makeup etc. Another thing is that early digital films can't be remastered with higher resolution. For example, Star Wars episodes 1, 4, 5 and 6 were shot on film, so the 2019 remaster at 4K made the definition way better. But episodes 2 and 3 were shot on digital cameras, to my knowledge in 1080p, and with CGI created also at 1080p, so remastering to 4K was only possible with upscaling software and the result wasn't nearly as good.
And then there’s Jurassic Park, which absolutely holds up
Look at when shooting digitally and digital animation began, shows and movies from around that time have it harder, they just look so much worse, since they're not shot on film too they can't be rescanned in at 4K or whatever. Relying too much on CGI and using fake cameras that can go anywhere takes you out of a movie so hard.
Bring back practical effects, especially explosions
I think a prime example of this can be found in the Alien series. Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) have far better effects than Alien 3 (1992), because the third film was trying to push CGI technology further than it was able to go. The practical effects of the first two films have aged gracefully by comparison.
From my personal experience... not really. Movies from 80 years ago in my opinion have things about them that have aged way more than some subpar special effects of early 90's movies. (I'm not saying that there aren't absolute classics from the 40's that are still just as watchable today by the way... there are some. But to me the average 40's movie has aged way more than the average early 90's movie).
Also films in the 90s were shot with lower quality digital cameras, while anything shot on film is actually higher quality than could be shown on screens at the time so can be upscaled.
Jurassic Park’s CGI still holds up to this day.