# Best "minimal cgi" movie ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2017, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864 "2017-07-22T04:02:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/21 "2017-07-24T03:33:14Z")
Valkyrie had Tom Cruise’s fingers removed/shortened by CGI for a few brief shots. ---
**Author:** ![Teuton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teuton/32/3864_2.png) [@Teuton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teuton)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/22 "2017-07-24T11:07:50Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > It’s otherwise just character banter and horse riding. And so much 80s synth. I can’t watch it anymore. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/23 "2017-07-24T11:37:43Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > What does _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ count as? (It _had_ some impressive, if still time-limited CGI, but almost all of it was trimmed in the editing room.) I’ve seen the CGI for _Something Wicked This Way Comes_, and I approve of the director’s choice to cut it. It’s jarringly different from the look of the rest of the film, and just doesn’t work at all. A lot of early 1980s CGI had a “cartoony” look to it that made its use problematical. The effects in **The Last Starfighter** exemplify this. Although the people responsible turned out some test footage for this (and for Star Wars stuff, too – they were trying to get Lucas to go CGI long before he actually did) that looks absolutely gorgeous and real, for some reason the things in the film don’t look as good. Shorter rendering times, maybe. Even though it was years later, the effects in _The Hunt for Red October_ look the same way. They don’t look “complete”, and the lighting doesn’t match reality. Today, the stuff in THfRO looks laughably bad, but it was close to state on the art at the time. It was only a few years later that the (still somewhat flawed, but by no means cartoony) dinosaurs of _Jurassic Park_could blow people away with their appearance and movements. Speaking of which, _Jurassic Park_ actually fits the OP’s requiremnents pretty well. There are surprisingly few CGI shots in the film. A lot of dinosaurs were done completely without CGI (the triceratops and the Dilophosaurus); many of the effects shots with the Velociraptors were done with puppetry, and the T. Rex was done in part with a full-size mechanical model. As the Wikipedia article notes, rendering the dinosaurs took two to six hours _per frame_ (the long ones for the T. Rex in the rain). For those times, you economize as best you can. > **[Jurassic Park (film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(film))** > > Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen, and starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough. It is the first installment in the Jurassic Park franchise, and the first film in the original Jurassic Park trilogy, and is based on Michael Crichton's 1990 novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Crichton and David Koepp. The film is set on the fictional island of Isla Nub... ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/24 "2017-07-24T13:39:05Z")
> [@Teuton](#): > > And so much 80s synth. I can’t watch it anymore. Yeah, that is quite annoying. I wish they’d remaster\* it with an all-orchestral soundtrack, but apparently director Richard Donner thinks the music is great, so that is unlikely to happen. Mind you, he’s responsible for the “Can You Read My Mind” sequence in _Superman_. \*_A digital colour grade and some sky replacement would help it too. Sunsets and sunrises are so important to the plot, yet they clearly filmed day-for-night and had some dawns that lasted milliseconds, others half an hour._ ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/25 "2017-07-24T16:09:04Z")
If the OP is asking for movies that had short sequences that were pure CGI, standing out in style and tone from the rest of the film, there’s a gorgeous animated sequence in **Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1** , laying out the history of the 3 brothers. Granted, the rest of the movie is jam packed with CGI, but the animated sequence has a _different kind_ of CGI, so… ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/26 "2017-07-24T16:21:25Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > If the OP is asking for movies that had short sequences that were pure CGI, standing out in style and tone from the rest of the film, there’s a gorgeous animated sequence in **Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1** , laying out the history of the 3 brothers. That makes me think of the gratuitous CGI segment in _Bridge to Terabithia_ that made the deceptive trailers possible. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/27 "2017-07-24T17:02:25Z")
Modern movies, even rom-coms where the characters just walk around and talk to each other, often feature a tremendous amount of CGI effects to remove or add background features. And the reason nobody notices is that the whole point of these is that they not be noticed. So for example, they filmed the characters walking down the sidewalk. Is there a sign in the background? That sign could be completely digitally replaced with another sign. A telephone pole could be digitally erased. A car’s license plate number changed. A cloud painted out or painted in. And so on and so on. We notice some CGI effects. If there’s a monster or a spaceship or a dinosaur or implausible stunt, we know it’s an effect because there’s no way it could be real. But most effects don’t exist to represent something impossible, they are there to create something that looks plausible, and you don’t notice because there’s no reason to notice. And as was mentioned above, some things that seem like they’re CGI are actually practical effects that are so cleverly done that you just assume they’re computer trickery. To take Lord of the Rings, they sometimes used CGI to shrink the actors playing the hobbits, but they tried to avoid that as much as possible. If you see a tiny Elijah Wood next to a tall Ian McKellen it’s very often done with forced perspective, not computer animation or compositing. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/28 "2017-07-24T17:11:11Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > We notice some CGI effects. If there’s a monster or a spaceship or a dinosaur or implausible stunt, we know it’s an effect because there’s no way it could be real. But most effects don’t exist to represent something impossible, they are there to create something that looks plausible, and you don’t notice because there’s no reason to notice. I’ve just started watching American Gods. In episode 2, there is a scene where a character throws a vase at another character and it strikes the wall behind them and shatters. Could easily have been done with practical effects. But for some reason, they choose to do it with CGI. And it was obvious CGI, not especially well done. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864/29 "2017-07-24T17:16:34Z")
There’s very subtle and effective use of CGI in _Black Swan_. Look carefully at the drawings on the walls of the dancer’s apartment. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-minimal-cgi-movie/791864.md?page=1)