Best and Worst CGI ever in a movie?

Dr Cox's Ego

I was thinking there what the best and worst CGI was Ive seen in a movie. Bearing in mind I havent seen Revenge Of The Sith yet Id have to go with Minority Report as one off the top off my head that CGI that looked good.

I, Robot also was pretty good given that 28 of its 100 million dollar budget went to Will Smith. Worst Ive seen in a blockbuster film was probably Spiderman. It looked very cartoonish and amatuerish compared to its sequel.

ixoy

Gollum from 'Lord of the Rings' is an obvious, but worthy, example of great CGI. The films mostly stand up very well as a whole bar one or two large battle scenes, or cave trolls, where it looks somewhat ropey.

Recently, I thought 'Van Helsing' had appalling special effects for such a big budget flick. Woeful really.

Maxwell

Worst Ive seen is Mummy or Mummy Returns

I saw this on a new plasma/dlp Bose screen in the states and it was unbelievably bad - you could see the lines everywhere. Put me off Plasma's for a while after seeing that.

film_gonzo

I say a tv spot for 'Cursed' and the werewolf effects looked terrible. Rick Baker was doing far more realistic work with rubber two decades before it.

monkeyfudge

What about that Dire Striats video...? That was pretty unrealistic looking wasn't it?

Recently I was generally impressed with the work Weta did with the Lord of the Rings films. And the Day After Tomorrow had that great scene with the torandos ripping apart LA.

Some of the stuff in Revenge of the Sith was pretty horrible, such as Obi Wan's big lizard.

Oh, and let us not forget Jabba the Hut in Episode IV.

I recently saw Beastmaster 3 : The Eye of Braxis and that had a very dodgey CGI monster at the end, pretty much like some of the CGI they used to have in Hercules.

qz

The worst CGI in a movie, ever, just has to be when the shark eats Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea. It's just horrendously bad.

The best, well it sort of has to be Gollum doesn't it.

Pugsley

The worst ever, probably a toss between the fight scene infront of the wall of lights in Blade 2, or the surfing scene in one of the newer bond movies (World is Not Enough?).

Best, take your pick from Lord of the Rings

Makaveli

Was going to say that fight in Blade 2 aswell, pretty bad.

Mitch Connor

the fast forward, captain elastic scene - that was just funny..... the ninjas growing by around 2 foot at various points.

ambro25

Worst: animation (can I have this as a 'portion' of the CGI?) in Spiderman (the 'running on the roofs' bit).

Best: Gollum's good, yep, but there's been better, usually FX rather than character - so far. (meteo effects, such as tornadoes as mentionned earlier in the thread. Those in that late 90s tornado film with Bill Paxman & Holly Hunter, for example, were really good for their day).

nadir

the cgi in batman begins was great. they certainly had their antistropic filtering turned on

toiletduck

i didnt think much of some of the cgi in the harry potter movies when their playing quidditch

Gilgamesh

imho I think the best CGI is still Final fantasy, the spirits within, not saying the film was good but the CG was amazing, also including Lost in Space to good CGI,

to worst I would have to say.... errrr.... Antz, was pretty bad in comparison to a bugs life at the time. also the fight in Blade 2 as mentioned, and can't think of any others at the mo

Big Nelly

Van Helsing was terrible.....new Bond film was terrible as well......second worst Bond ever.......Alien Reincarnation(sp) or watever it was called....last one.....brutal!!!

Best: Gollum, see the Lion in Narnia? well from the trailers and so on looks class(same company as did LOTR).....some of the fight scene's in the Episode 1 and Episode 3 looked great.....not sure about those in Ep 2....have to watch again!!! haha!!!

Bacchus

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.
Star Wars Ep I has some god awful CGI in it too.
Matrix sequels have some dodgy over the top scenes that were completely unneccessary and looked ****.

Best: Obvious one here is LOTR but I think the effects in Spiderman 2 (Doc Ock rocks), Sky Captain (shot entirely in CGI and looks beautiful) and Sin City (purely because I didn't even notice it) were all top notch too.

Wacker

Remember the villian monster thing in Resident Evil? It looked laughably bad. Really, really terrible. I mean, unbelievably patheticly hopeless. Stupidly useless. Naueseatingly sub-standard. I hope you get the idea, because I could go on.

The Hulk wasn't up too much either. He should have been better as he was the star of the film!

For best, Gollum gets another vote. The scale of the achievement is shown by the fact that his acting is fantastic, especially in the multiple-personality arguement in the Two Towers.

nadir

for just pure CGI

wonderful days

definately wins imo

monkeyfudge

Bacchus wrote:

but I think the effects in Spiderman 2 (Doc Ock rocks),

I think alot of the really good close up shots of Doc Ock's tenticles were actually done using puppeteers. The CGI shots were used in the fight scenes and when he was climbing up buildings and they looked a little bit rubbery or something...

weemcd

sky captain wolrd of tomorow , worst.
Gandalf on top of the tower in the fellowship of the ring, when the camera then goes over the edge and down to the bottom of the tower, best.

Zounds

nadir wrote:

the cgi in batman begins was great. they certainly had their antistropic filtering turned on

um, there was almost no CGI in that movie...

Gollum would go in my best category and worst.....damn, i saw a movie recently that was atrocious but i can't think of the name..

mike65

The best CGI has'nt been spotted yet!

Mike.

Vokes

Well the shots of the monorail running through Gotham City (with the Wayne family) is definitely good CGI.

And some of the scenes involving the fear toxin were CGI too.

TerrorFirmer

mike65 wrote:

The best CGI has'nt been spotted yet!

Mike.

Looks great - Starship Troopers, Sin City, Star Wars EpIII, I Robot, LoTR

Looks crap - I'm confused on this one. Worst Cgi ever in a hollywood movie, or worst cgi plain and simple ever? I guess we are talking about Hollywood from the way you guys are talking. So - I'd go with the creature in Resident Evil, in any case. Not sure what else really.

Necronomicon

I really liked the CGI for Constantine.

Retr0gamer

I suppose it can't really be faulted because of the rock bottom budget but I've literally seen better 3D rendering on an Amiga than on the CGI spaceship in Leprachaun 4: In Space.

Karl Hungus

The best? I'd say in either Sin City or The Lord Of The Rings. In my eyes, great CGI doesn't jump up on the screen and go "Hey, look at me, look how expensive I am, yay!" it's there as a storytelling tool, and both films used it fantastically. We don't look at Gollum and go "Wow, that's a really great effect!" we see the character. That's great CGI working at it's best.

The worst CGI? Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Although that was probably the worst movie in existance, bar none.

Kazaanova

I've always loved the CG camera work in Fight Club. I never saw it put to such good use before. Fincher uses it a bit in some other films, but its awesome in Fight Club

I havent watched Jurassic Park in years, but I think the CGI in that was very good for 93/94...if it was CG and not anamotronics. Pretty much anything ILM does is amazing. The Hulk, the alien in Signs, and from what I've seen, the War of the Worlds. It must of been so difficult to do all those effects without blue screens.

I, Robot has some very solid effects, as does Spider-Man 2.

And of course Weta did a great job with Lord of the Rings, cant wait to see what they do with Kong.

mayordenis

escape from LA - terrible

de5p0i1er

ixoy wrote:

Gollum from 'Lord of the Rings' is an obvious, but worthy, example of great CGI. The films mostly stand up very well as a whole bar one or two large battle scenes, or cave trolls, where it looks somewhat ropey.

Recently, I thought 'Van Helsing' had appalling special effects for such a big budget flick. Woeful really.

You read my mind on both counts. Get outta my head.

film_gonzo

The worst thing about the Matrix sequels was that Joel Silver and the rest of the mooks that worked on the film kept goin on about how great the CGI was gonna be in those movies, how they'd be so realistic you wouldn't be able to spot them, for the months before it. And then the film comes out and look there's Keanu fighting a whole load of cartoon Agent Smiths. One amongst many ropey effects.

I think the CGI in 'Jurassic Park' is still better than some of the stuff that you see in movies nowadays.

As for the Hulk. I thought he was a good effects but my issues were that he was too big and the wrong shade of green (too bright). Also I felt there was no sense of weight, especially when he was jumping and running in the desert.

For digital effects you can't beat ILM. Althought Weta are really becoming strong contenders.

monkeyfudge

Retr0gamer wrote:

I suppose it can't really be faulted because of the rock bottom budget but I've literally seen better 3D rendering on an Amiga than on the CGI spaceship in Leprachaun 4: In Space.

Hey. The Amiga was great at 3D rendering. Lightwave 3D originated on the Amiga and it was used to create the effects in Babylon 5 and SeaQueast DSV.

And it was the latest version of Lightwave (admitedly no longer running on an Amiga) that was used for the effects in Sin City.

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?