Whats up with Special Effects

[Fearless Freep]

All special effects have run the gamut of "really good if you put the time, money and expertise into" to "aw, c'mon...I can see the strings on the model spaceship"  It's nothing really new.  Some CG effects look pretty silly, some are breathtaking, but that goes the same with matte paintings and animitronics and stop motion and hand puppets.

[Bernie]

Freep Johnson is right! (ref. Blazing Saddles).  

Unfortunately, I think the trend for the present is to have the CG houses do EVERYTHING, even effects that might be better handled with mattes, miniatures, models, etc.

[Feathertop]

Iron Man would be PERFECT for CGI (yes, I was a Marvel Comics geek in my early teens)! After all, since it's supposed to be a guy in a suit of armor the audience won't be expecting Shellhead to look like a naturally moving human being, so the usual objection to CGI won't hold water in an Iron Man movie.

[Nathan Shumate]

And somehow, no one' s ever been able to do better than that.  The technology peaked on its first feature-length outing.

[Brother Ragnarok]

The problem with the big robo-Rex was it spazzed out when it got wet, and all its shots were in the rain more or less.  Same problem they had with the Godzilla Cybot for Godzilla 1984.  When you see it in the window of the chopper as he first emerges from the ocean to destroy the bay area, the thing is damn near shaking itself to pieces.  Looks like Godzilla has Parkinson's Disease.

Brother R

[Jim Hepler]

Eh, Reloaded had some pretty bad CGI.  I agree though, if you don't have the time or money to do CGI well, just use traditional effects.  Low budget traditional effects are MUCH better then low budget CGI 99% of the time.  The only exception I've seen is Komodo, which is an awful movie, but the effects were done by dudes from ILM as a sort of favor.

[Evan3]

Now I wonder, but the one thing CGI always seems to do well is water. If you see Ice Age, Perfect Storm, that movie Dinosaur, and  I suspect Blue Crush as well, the water looks awesome, real, and scary.

In the perfect storm, the boat being tossed on the water was not scary but the waves itself were great.

However, I also tend to think fire looks awful. The only CG fire that comes to the top of my head is in The Lion King

Why cant all effects look like water instead of fire.