Bad Practical FX vs. Awful CGI

[diamondwaspvenom]

Which do you honestly find more painful to look at? Poorly made practical FX (be they costumes, puppets, miniatures, etc.) or awful CGI (monsters, backgrounds, vehicles, etc.)?

[LilCerberus]

kinda depends on how well a scene is executed...
One thing that kills it for me, is if they take a pause to show the viewer just how hard the special effects team worked on a monster, such as in the remake of Clash Of The Titans. One the other hand, The Legend Of Boggey Creek had to go the "guy in a cheap ape suit" route, & to cover it up, never lets the viewer really see the monster, which benefits the movie in a way.

There's also the matter of whether or not the actors need to interact with the monster. I found some of them tolerable in Lord Of The Rings, but not as tense as the actors coming face to face withe the M.A.R.K. 13 from Hardware.

[SynapticBoomstick]

Lately bad CGI effects have crushed my suspension of disbelief by taking me fully out of the moment. It's a powerful tool and allows you to show audiences things that they might not otherwise ever see and, for the record, I love CGI work. However, it seems that it's become increasingly easier for directors to get lazy and dump everything on CGI work. The problem with CGI is the very fact that it can make things nobody has ever seen before. If you show your audience one or two big "Whoa, what the HELL?" moments that wouldn't be possible in the real world, they'll suspend disbelief and go with it if you do your work right. If you make your film a huge string of impossible moments where physics just doesn't exist in the world, people will be off the boat by the time Legolas Mario-hops his way up the crumbling stone blocks.

[Jim H]

Depends on how bad and WHY each is bad.  Like, I have seen practical monsters that can barely move (think some B monsters) and this totally ruins the atmosphere and the feel of what they're going for (think From Hell It Came).  However, a bad but very usable monster suit shot well can still work.  I've seen some quickly used weak CGI to get a point across that was effective.  It's when they show it in long shots and it's awful, coupled with bad physics - then it ends up doing the same as an immobile practical effect.

If I had to pick one though, I'd say bad CGI is worse.  At least you can tell it's actually there, not totally destroying immersion.

[Trevor]

Bad practical FX any day over terrible CGI: if I can see the strings or the 2 by 4 used to push the monster in front of the camera, I don't mind. Terrible CGI is just bad and most of the time, its' on the high budget films, not the low budget ones. 

[Chainsawmidget]

Bad practicle effects are better than bag CG any day, if for no other reason than that when dealing with bad pracitcle effects, there's actually something there that exists and people can react to it.