Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories?

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Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories?

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Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 2

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is virtually ubiquitous in cinematic productions

today. There is no question but that this technology can produce impressive results, though as

will be noted later it has also produced a number of embarrassing results. The purpose of this

paper is to evaluate arguments on both sides of the debate over whether CGI’s impact on

cinema is, overall, positive or negative. Before getting to that some history is in order.

A complicating factor, both in evaluating CGI, and in describing its history, is the fact

that there is not always a sharp line between genuine CGI and other techniques used in film.

Most obviously, not all special effects qualify as CGI. 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example,

which many people consider one of the finest films ever made, had no access to CGI. Yet its

special effects still look impressive today. Another crucial distinction is that between CGI

and animation. Animated films began to appear in the first decade of the 20th century, while it

took about fifty years for even the earliest and most primitive forms of CGI to become

possible. Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is commonly cited as the first film to utilize computer

animation. But it was arguably not until the 1980s that the use of CGI began to be perfected.

There are other distinctions that there is no space to go into here in detail, but should at least

be mentioned: such as the distinctions amongst—CGI spaceships, full human body realistic

CGI (some of which is in 3-D), motion capture CGI, and CGI face animation (History of

Computing Animation 2018). Finally, the various methods of producing special effects have

been combined in interesting ways. For example, the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar (2009)

combined traditional filming with computer-generated characters, including motion capture

CGI (Hellerman 2019).

The central question of the paper—'Is CGI overall good or bad for filmmaking?’—

must be distinguished from the issue of whether CGI films are themselves good or bad. It is

nearly uncontroversial that there are both extremely good and lamentably bad uses of CGI in

recent film history. Avatar must be judged as a success here, at least from a commercial point
Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 3

of view: it is the fifth largest grossing film of all time. Other widely agreed upon CGI

successes include Independence Day (1996), I, Robot (2004), and The Day After Tomorrow

(2004). The first of these utilised CGI to depict space travel, and encounters with aliens, in

one of the most impressive ways ever at the time. The second used CGI, among other ways,

to show what an army of robots might well look like. And the third of the film’s impressively

simulated how the beginnings of an ice-age might appear (CBS 2019).

Films that have used CGI to very poor effect, at least arguably, include The Matrix

Reloaded (2003), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), and Die Another Day

(2002). The consensus seems to be that these films’ use of CGI was quite bad, and perhaps

even made the movies worse than they would have been otherwise (Ja 2016). On the other

hand, it behoves us to note that all three of these films are sequels. And the production of

sequels has a well-known strategy that likely led to the poor CGI effects. Since sequels to

popular films are virtually guaranteed to make a certain amount of money, one that can be

reliably predicted, it is frequently believed that the use of extra expenses to improve sequels

is money wasted.

What, then, are the arguments on either side of the target question of the paper? One

argument is that the use of CGI perverts the very purpose of cinema, which is alleged to be

depictions of humanity. One commentator notes that Hollywood is increasingly using CGI,

and shows every indication that this tendency will continue or even go further in the future.

He then laments: “This … is typical Hollywood overkill. Imagine a painter who keeps

slathering on pigment. Why do we need so much color saturation? Or to put it another way:

How many more fireballs must our heroes outrun?” (White 2013). The problem with this

argument is that, to all appearances, not everyone agrees that the sole purpose of cinema is to

depict humanity, full stop. Furthermore, even waving this objection, it could be reasonably

contended that humanity is itself increasingly intertwined with technology. If this is correct,
Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 4

then the continued—or even an increased—use of CGI in cinema might better accomplish the

goal of describing humanity.

Other objections to the use of CGI can be heard by some Hollywood filmmakers

themselves. The director of the Star Wars franchise film, The Force Awakens (2015), for

example, J.J. Abrams, reported that one of his goal was to produce realistic-seeming scenes.

As one of Abrams’s production designers commented, “J.J.’s trying to make sure these

movies have a physicality to them. We truly are out in a desert. A real desert” (Curtis 2016).

The debate over the values of ‘physicality’ are not new. Steven Spielberg, in the production

of the original Jurassic Park (1993) film, actually created two teams to compete over

producing some of the film’s special effects. One team used “go-motion animation”, a

technique that has been around since the 1920s, and the other employed CGI. The victor

seemed clear. The leader of the go-motion team, special effects legend Phil Tippett,

commented, after reviewing the competing efforts on-screen, “I think I’m extinct” (Curtis

2016).

There is one perhaps surprising reason to prefer CGI, or at least to prefer a cinematic

future in which it is an option—CGI technology has a “democratising” effect on filmmaking.

This argument points out that not all filmmakers have budgets of tens or hundreds of millions

of dollars (or pounds). To the extent that these lower-budget filmmakers need to avail

themselves of special effects that can compete with the best that Hollywood produces, they

may have no choice but to use CGI. Gareth Edwards, who was responsible for the low-budget

but very well received British science fiction horror film Monsters (2010), has remarked that

“The great thing about computer graphics is that you can have very little money to make

something and you can make it look like ten times the budget that you have” (Katzban 2012).
Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 5

One mistaken preconception about CGI must be recognised in this debate. This is the

idea that our choice is simply between CGI-filled movies and those made using exclusively

old-fashioned means. The truth is that all or nearly all films today have at least some CGI

elements. It is not only “fantasy worlds” and “imaginary creatures” that CGI is used to create

in contemporary filmmaking, but more prosaic tasks such as “digitally extending fragments

of sets” (Maddox 2010). Oscar winning director George Miller, who recently helped to create

the Mad Max sequel Fury Road (2015), notes that “Every movie has CGI, even the small

ones. It’s just another tool of filmmaking” (Maddox 2010).

A final argument, which is directed against the value of CGI in filmmaking, is

redolent of the earlier point that there are so many “fireballs” that we want to watch our

heroes outrun. The argument centres on the seemingly very real danger that the profit-motive

in Hollywood will lead filmmakers to utilise CGI more-and-more over time, inexpensively

producing scenes whose sole virtue seems to be that people will pay to watch them. Some

have argued that the Transformers franchise is guilty of doing just this. This franchise

includes a half-dozen films, produced from 2007 to 2018. Despite featuring little more than

one drawn out action sequence after another, it would be difficult to deny that these films are

liked by the public. In other words, “As crude a method as this is, audiences have eaten it up.

To date, the ‘Transformers’ movies have grossed over a billion dollars worldwide” (Carter

2016).

The conclusion that these considerations collectively support seems to be this: CGI is

not going away, and it is increasingly used even in films that do not rely heavily on special

effects. So it is unrealistic to suppose that the technology should be abandoned completely; or

even that it should be limited to certain types of films. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a

definite danger that overreliance on CGI has a corrupting tendency on filmmakers, and

perhaps even audiences. One consideration that none of the articles mentioned here discusses
Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 6

is that attention spans are at an all time low, due to the ubiquity of smart-phones and people’s

inability to look away from them for more than a few seconds at a time. As a final note,

therefore: heavy reliance on CGI, at least in films such as the Transformers movies, threatens

to benefit from and simultaneously perpetuate one of the most lamentable of contemporary

developments in society—our collective inability to pay attention to anything not currently

being displayed on our smart-phone screens.

Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 7

References

Carter, M., 2016. The pros and cons of CGI. The Breeze, 27 April. [Online] Available at:

https://www.breezejmu.org/life/the-pros-and-cons-of-cgi/article_22ba0f84-0c82-

11e6-a062-5757d7963ad2.html [Accessed 19 August 2019]

CBS, 2019. 35 greatest CGI movie moments of all time. Creative Blog, 1 August. [Online]

Available at: https://www.creativebloq.com/3d-tips/cgi-movie-moments-1234014/2

[Accessed 19 August 2019]

Curtis, B., 2016. Hollywood’s turn against digital special effects. The New Yorker, 20

January.

Hellerman, J., 2019. A complete history of CGI in 3 minutes. No Film School. [Online]

Available at: https://nofilmschool.com/History-of-CGI [Accessed 19 August 2019]

History of Computer Animation, 2018. History of computer animation in the 1950s-2010s.

Computer Animation History. [Online] Available at:

https://computeranimationhistory-cgi.jimdo.com [Accessed 19 August 2019]

Ja, S., 2016. 12 worst examples of CGI in big budget movies. Screen Rant, 9 January.

[Online] Available at: https://screenrant.com/worst-cgi-fails-big-budget-

movies/?view=all [Accessed 19 August 2019]

Katzban, N., 2012. Special effects for everyone: the democratization of CGI technology.

MPAA.org, 22 August. [Online] Available at: https://www.mpaa.org/2012/08/special-

effects-for-everyone-the-democratization-of-cgi-technology/# [Accessed 19 August

2019]

Maddox, G., 2010. Is CGI compromising good filmmaking? The Age, 27 April. [Online]

Available at: https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/is-cgi-compromising-

Does CGI Negatively Impact Films’ Ability to Tell Stories? 8

good-filmmaking-20100422-tez8.html?_ga=2.129062734.391149458.1566220079-

1514704749.1566220079 [Accessed 19 August 2019]

White, A., 2013. Cinema is about humanity, not fireballs. The New York Times, 13 June.