Jack Black was on Colbert the other day, and the clip from his latest flick had a gigantic bug chasing a car, and it seemed to be pretty much the same chase as in Matthew Broderick’s Godzilla, and the latest King Kong. Is there some sort of CGI template all three movies used?
You mean did they all use the same software and just substitute [object_class1=Godzilla3.mpg] with [=Kong1]? No. Top tier CGI, while possibly all using some similar basic polygon rendering software in the beginning are all customized and essentially nearly hand-crafted frame by frame for their beauty/money shots. We’ve just gotten numb to the similarities of certain CGI effects like that one (or two massive armies charging each other, or flipping, flying, exploding, smashing car crashes).
And I’d say that trope was started by (and is still the best example of) the T-Rex chasing the Jeep in the first Jurassic Park…
It’s not unheard of for movies to recycle scenes to save money. Star Trek: Generations re-used a scene with an exploding klingon bird of prey from Star Trek 3, I believe. Michael Bay re-used a scene in one of the Transformers films from his earlier movie, The Island, with new cgi added.
The scene: http://www.hilariousgifs.com/transformers-iii-recycled-scene-from-the-island/