Remember Aki the computer rendered star from Final Fantasy (2001)…? Deserves a mention in the timeline I guess. Although these days the film looks more like a cut scene from a game than a movie.
Here is a more detailed timeline.
I don’t really agree with this. People can and do simply burn out on things. For example, I burned out on the glut of superhero movies back before the whole “Marvel Cinematic Universe” idea came about. I’m sure that there are many more people like me. Fads come, fads go.
The trend in CGI-heavy movies, especially the Superhero genre but it also appears in things like Transformers, giant monster movies like Kong Skull Island, and enviro-disaster movies like 2012 and San Andreas, which is destruction-porn.
That is, things being smashed into buildings and they get destroyed into smithereens, over and over and over. It’s concrete and steel being sprayed everywhere. It’s aggressive and wanton, and reminds me of why I hate sport, which is violence that seems tangible. After the horrible destruction that terrorists have wreaked on the world, seeing buildings being smashed just affects me the wrong way.
It’s a trend that will pass, I’m sure. It’s just a particular effect that has recently become especially convincing in the Visual Effects industry so has been overused. Once it settles down it will be used more judiciously. I hope.
To answer the OP, the real start of the big action movies with lots of explosions and effects was probably in the 1980s, following on the success of “Star Wars” and “Jaws”.
CGI really didn’t come into its own for explosions and effects until surprisingly late; it’s easier to model a spaceship in CGI than an explosion- look at “The Last Starfighter” for an example. CGI ships, but some kind of practical effect explosions. Or look at the early seasons of Babylon 5 (1993-ish) - fine looking spaceships, but atrocious explosions.
However, by the end of B5’s run in about 1998, explosions were looking pretty convincing, and were starting to be used in larger budget movies in place of actual pyrotechnics.
Now, they’re able to model a lot more stuff in CGI- huge numbers of troops on the battlefield (LOTR, I’m looking at you), and more interesting stuff like overlaying CGI destruction on top of actual live shots- like in “San Andreas”. Meanwhile, CGI has made its way to network TV in shows like “Grimm”, “Bones”, “NCIS”, etc… with quality that’s beyond what a major motion picture would have had a decade earlier.
Lucas has remastered and re-released Star Wars several times. Which cut did you just watch? 
Anyway, I would like to nitpick this one point, please. 
I am no film student, but I can think of a couple examples that contradict your point, above.
Forbidden planet (1956) I think that this film had a plot aimed at a more mature audience, proving that sci-fi wasn’t just for kids.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) shows what a decent budget (for the time) can do for a film.
Logan’s Run (1976) Won an award for special effects, although some of the effects, I admit, don’t hold up to modern eyes.
I’m going to go with Independence Day as the singular film that launched the over the top, massive scale, CGI-driven worldwide action/war/explosions style movies. There was nothing quite like it before, although there were plenty of movies that had some combination of those elements.
Yes, how could I forget the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
Let me try one last time. In Thelma and Louise Louise fires a gun and blows up a fuel tanker. Violent and pyrotechnic sure, but no CGI. Now,had she jumped 50 feet in the air, spun around six times, and fired bolts out of her wrists, it would qualify for what I mean.
I don’t know how violent. pyrotechnic, CGI film got interpreted to mean “any old action movie.” Spend a half hour watching TV sometime and you’ll see at least a couple previews of these types.
I think the growth of the international market for Hollywood blockbuster movies probably has a lot to do with it. If you don’t speak English, you can still watch a Transformers movie and not miss much of what’s going on.
Terminator 2, 2001 A Space Oddysey, Star Wars 4-6, Jurassic Park.
Every few years, they try to make a tentpole “to die for visuals” film. They’re good for selling TVs at the electronics store.
If you speak English, it’s probably better to just turn off the sound and try to admire the pretty pictures instead of trying to follow the plot.
It got interpreted that way because of the way you phrased your OP.
In your OP, you’re talking about the audience’s appetite for these films. But the appetite for “these films” - which is to say, effects heavy action films - predates the existence of CGI by several decades. The people who are going to see the new Star Wars films are going for exactly the same reasons people went to see the first Star Wars film - big action, cool stunts, lots of explosions. The fact that these effects are achieved using CGI instead of models and stop-motion is incidental to the desire of people to see these films. In this post, you joke about needing Susan Surandon jump fifty feet in the air and spin around six times in order to make Thelma and Louise fit your criteria for “violent CGI pyrotechnic.” But that’s not something that we just started doing when we got fast enough co-processors. They’d been doing that in movies for decades in Hong Kong, using 100% practical effects, and a general disdain for the physical health of stunt men. The prevalence of that sort of stunt work in American films can be traced almost directly back to the success of The Matrix, but the Wachowski’s game changer there wasn’t bringing in hiring a bunch of CG artists - it was in bringing in Yuen Woo-Ping for their stunt choreography.
Certain genres are going to fall out of favor, certainly. The general public is going to get over it’s fixation on superhero movies sooner or later, just like they got over their fixation on WWII films before, or Westerns before that. But CGI as a tool isn’t going anywhere, whether it’s used to create Jedi fighting over the planet of Coruscant, or Lancasters bombing Berlin, or the Lakota nation killing the fuck out of General Custer.
Which is why I specifically used the acronym CGI in the description. That’s how I phrased the OP and I was very deliberate.
Other people decided that omitting parts of my very clear description was perfectly OK, for some reason.
If you asked for examples of romantic boy-meets-girl films I wouldn’t give you a list of boy-meets-boy or boy-meets-dog ones. And I especially wouldn’t blame you for being unclear.
But do you mean CGI to mean “Any CGI at all during the scene” or “CGI used in a specific way.” If they remade Thelma and Louise shot for shot but recreated that explosion using computers instead of lighting some gasoline on fire, would you consider that a “violent CGI pyrotechnic film?”
If I said “Bpy Meets Girl” film, and there’s one scene where a guy says hello to a housekeeper on an elevator but the rest is a courtroom drama, would you need clarification?
In other words, forget it.
One film that nobody has mentioned that came out the same year as ID4 was Twister and I agree that these two films represented a real game-changer one-two punch in the mass destruction/disaster porn genre that was heavily indebted to CG. There were disaster films before (coughIrwinAllencough) and CG was about 7 years old by then so not really new-new, but these two films really embraced the whole Let’s-Mess-Shit-Up ethos with the help of digital technology that hadn’t been seen on that scale before.
You aren’t being nearly as logical as you think you are. People are reframing your original question because it is ambiguous and even self-contradictory with many different interpretations. That is your fault not theirs.
You are trying to ask about a certain movie style and a definition of what role CGI plays in it in one question which can’t be answered coherently because they are two very different and independent questions. If you don’t like the answers you are getting, learn to ask coherent questions.
I think the origin of this particular blockbuster style is even older than some people have claimed. Disaster movies were a huge deal in the 1970’s. The Towering Inferno was released in 1974 and it was a big-budget blockbuster at the time (it is about a skyscraper being destroyed by fire with people trapped inside) and uses many over the top effects including huge water tanks being destroyed and and some unlikely elevator shaft+fire stunts.
Except that “Boy meets Girl” is an established term that’s been in common parlance for decades. “Violent CGI pyrotechnic film” is a term you just invented, and it’s really, genuinely, I-am-not-fucking-with-you-here, not exactly clear what you mean by that.
I’m beginning to wonder if the OP is my dad, who decries pretty much every modern action movie as being “Too Matrix-y.”