Musings on positive and negative uses of CGI in Film

 I received a copy of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny for Christmas.   I have a compromised immune system and stay away from theaters.  Despite the mixed reviews and underperformance at the box office, I was excited to watch it.   I enjoyed the movie, and my expectations were exceeded, probably because they were very low due to all the mixed and poor reviews.  I liked it better than Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and although the director, James Mangold, did a good job with the look and flavor of the movie, something felt like it was missing.  I suspect it was the absence of the creative trio of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan.  I spent some time thinking about why this Dial of Destiny worked better for me than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  I think it was use of a great deal of practical in camera effects, and careful use of when CGI was used.   This led me to reflect on the use of CGI in film, both good and bad.   I think Dial of Destiny has a few examples of both, and they are useful in illustrating how CGI has affected film overall in the past 20-30 years.   Warning there are some minor spoilers ahead.

 

I am confident that there are many CGI shots in Dial of Density and other films that I am completely unaware of.    Adding backgrounds, removing elements, cleaning up shots, or adding buildings, vehicles, and even people is often done invisibly.     There were three or four shots in Dial of Destiny where I was acutely aware that I was watching CGI and it took me out of the film.  In the New York subway chase Indy jumps his horse from the subway tunnel to the platform to avoid a speeding train at the very last moment.   The shot didn’t look bad, but the timing was so close I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the stunt was not performed in camera, but CGI was used to create something that dangerous.  Similarly, during the tuk-tuk chase in Tangiers, Indy leaps from one tuk-tuk to another a second before the first is smashed to bits by an oncoming car.  It looked great, but again the timing was impossible.   Whenever there was a shot representing a death-defying stunt that would have resulted in death if it were a split-second later, I knew it wasn’t real and it took me out of the movie.  The desert chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark had people leaping to and from horses and trucks.  While this was all stunts and camera tricks, it held together better and seemed more believable.  What I was seeing was real, and was captured in camera.  I think CGI is easier perfectly valid and nearly impossible to detect but when used to represent something that cannot happen or is so unlikely it breaks believability.  The Jungle Chase in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is filled with CGI because the stunts, leaps, and monkeys would never happen as depicted in the real world.   It no longer has verisimilitude.

 

I thought of the Star Wars movies, which I am a lifelong fan of.    The original trilogy made no use of CGI, it wasn’t available until the re-release of the films in the 1990s.  The CGI sticks out in those films now, because it was not as sophisticated or polished as CGI now.  Lucas was pushing the envelope.   The prequel trilogy, which is often critiqued for using too much CGI holds up well and looks pretty good.   It starts to break down for me, as it did in Dial of Destiny in Yoda’s lightsaber duel in Attack of the Clones, and then much more egregiously in the lightsaber duels in Revenge of the Sith.  I like Revenge of the Sith, but find I am taken out of the movie with some of the leaps and twirls by Palpatine as he fights Mace Windu on Coruscant, and then later as Anakin and Obi-Wan fight on Mustafar.   I understand these are powerful Jedi in their prime using the force, which should allow them to do these things, but have not seen such impossible leaps in any of the other films, there are a handful of moments that are so fast that a human could not possibly execute them.  It was too much, and I would have preferred it to be left a bit simpler.   The drama of the saber duels in Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and even The Phantom Menace did not come from these impossible movements.

 

Finally, I thought about superhero movies.  I enjoyed many of the superhero movies of the past few decades.  If there was ever a place for over-the-top, fast, impossible split-second movements and stunts, this was it.   I think this is and was an appropriate place for this.   These movies were not all three- or four-star movies, but they were enjoyable and when a spectacular bit of CGI representing Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, or Wonder Woman went before my eyes, I was ok with that.  These were special, extraordinary characters that should be able to behave in this way.   These movies started to lose their luster and originality as time went by for another reason.   There was no consequence to these actions.  Characters thrashed one another, toppling buildings and crushing cars, but no one was ever hurt or in jeopardy.    Death and injury were at best transitory plot points to slow someone down for a moment or scene with no real importance.  If there is no consequence to these superhuman feats, then there is little drama.  The CGI looks pretty, but I am no longer invested or care.   When it starts up in one of these films, it is almost something to be endured to get to the next plot point.  It starts to feel like work.

 

Switching back to Star Wars, I enjoyed the first two sequel trilogy movies, and although The Rise of Skywalker looked fabulous, it suffered from some of these narrative problems too.  Palpatine is back?  How and why?  Was there no consequence from the end of Return of the Jedi if a major character could come back with no plausible explanation?  Chewbacca dies, but not really, they are just faking us out to get our attention for about 10 minutes.    Finally, the end film had what seemed to be two massive fleets that were constructed with little plausible explanation.   The CGI ships looked great, and the size of the fleet was impressive, but even though this was a Star Wars film it didn’t feel believable.  It exceeded all of the rules of scale and scope that the universe had created for itself.   CGI itself is not the offender, but rather how and when it is used.   The notes about resurrected characters, while not directly related to CGI are intended to illustrate that breaking believability and having no real-world consequence is where these films and CGI fail.

 

The dinosaurs in Jurassic World Dominion looked fantastic, but I rarely felt like the characters were in jeopardy, and by the end of the film I was nearly bored.  There was no consequence or drama.  It was just shocked expressions and split-second close calls.   This movie typified my complaints about how CGI is misused.

 

If I think back to older films, where the CGI is not as polished, sometimes it works better.  The stained-glass knight in Young Sherlock Holmes, the water creature in the Abyss, or the T-1000 in Terminator 2 all work better.  Not because the CGI is perfect, but because they fit, and although they represent impossible things, they still have verisimilitude.  They do not break the internal rules of the world created by the film and are not so fast and so split second that they could not be captured on film if the effect could be done practically.   They look as if they could exist in our world.