Best examples of CGI used well

CGI is kinda seen as something of a lazy mans tool. Spielberg and Lucas in particular got alot of shit for it in recent years.

What to you, are the best of examples of CGI used in a good content, the doesn't look obviously overdone or fake as shit.

Golem from Lord of The Rings was really good CGI, esp. considering 10+ years ago. (Same with the T-Rex from Jurassic and that was 20+!!!). I don't know if I would consider CGI lazy (ok maybe in a few examples) but it takes a lot of artist and rendering farm power to effectively use state of the art CGI, providing ways to do or show something outside of "Physical" limits.

Anything Jurassic Park. And The Matrix trilogy. Also when it's little subtle things like the magic carpet in Aladdin.

Two-Face's face in The Dark Knight. I like that, limited use of CGI.

Dawn of the Planet of The Apes

Check out Game of Thrones CGI videos I mean sometimes it's obvious like when they do an overhead shot of an entire city that doesn't exist, but there are so many more places where you would never notice it.

Weren't the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park mostly real models with some CGI to polish them up?

Anyway, my thoughts on CGI are as follows. If it's impossible to do with practical effects (like The Hulk) or a ridiculous waste of money to do with practical effects, or it's the kind of thing that'll get people killed if you try to do it with practical effects, then you use CGI. Generally speaking, CGI works best for stuff that can't reasonably done otherwise. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was (for the most part) a textbook example of CGI done well because it seemed to follow that premise. It was heavy on the CGI but they didn't get over-reliant on it when it wasn't necessary (for the most part). A bad example would be like, the recent The Thing movie. If awesome Thing effects were possible in freaking 1984, then you don't need heavy CGI for a modern prequel. And if you don't need it, you don't do it. Stick to practical effects.

One exception: the movie should look CONSISTENT. People generally only complain about bad CGI when it sticks out like a sore thumb and isn't consistent with the rest of the movie. Movies that are ENTIRELY CGI get more leeway. Even if the CGI sucks, it CONSISTENTLY sucks. Nothing sticks out and looks like it doesn't fit, so it's easier to just accept that that's how the movie looks and to then go along with that. The Star Wars prequels are a good example of that. It wasn't that the CGI was the problem. The problem was how inconsistent the movies looked. In one scene you'd have real actors on a physical set and they're in costume having a conversation. It looks shot on location, then the movie shifts to something that looks like a fucking videogame or a cartoon. It's not the CGI, it's the sense that something here doesn't belong. Hell, the Clone Wars cartoon looked more cartoony than the prequels ever did, and no one complains about that because it was consistently cartoony (the ENTIRE thing was a cartoon).

This right here. Never woulda thunk I would have feels for CGI apes.

Other standouts for me would be Lord of the Rings and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

Star Wars saga Period.

The dinos in Jurassic park were animatronic, not CGI =)

@korvus said:

The dinos in Jurassic park were animatronic, not CGI =)

I believe it used both.

@uninspiredcup: They did, I'm just saying that they were not primarily CGI...I don't think much CGI was used though...they moved pretty realistically, but of course the chase scenes had a touch of it...the animatronics weren't wind-up toys...you couldn't just wind them up and let them loose to run after a car =P

Recently that apes movie

The one with the planet?

mhm

The CGI in Zodiac is amazing and you would never guess that film used CGI. CGI like all other techniques is a tool and there exist bad and good uses of it.

@uninspiredcup said:

@korvus said:

The dinos in Jurassic park were animatronic, not CGI =)

I believe it used both.

yup. it was a mix depending on the shot, and how rapid the animal's movements were. close ups and slow moving t-rex shots were animatronic. full body, fast motion ( like the end scene ) were cgi.

Lord of the Rings. I still can't believe how good the movies look despite being made a decade ago.

@magicalclick: I really want to be mad at you for not knowing what a brachiosaurus or a velociraptor are XD

Two different examples

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - The movie couldn't exist in any reasonable form without the CGI technology we have today.

Children of Men - A movie where you can't even tell when CGI is being used, which is my favorite use of CGI.

Zodiac is the correct answer.

The Wolf of Wall Street/The Hobbit is not.

@Aljosa23: aljosa fucking gets it