CGI in Movies/TV Discussion

[Huntn]

Ant Man (2015)- Enjoyable and inventive, with excellent supporting CGI to show things and people getting real small and real big in relationship to their surroundings.

Features impressive rejuvenation of Michael Douglass, he looks real!

​

How Exactly Did Ant-Man Make Michael Douglas Look So Young?
http://www.vulture.com/2015/07/how-did-ant-man-make-young-michael-douglas.html

 

[Huntn]

Speaking of de-aged actors check out:

How These Ten Actors Were De-aged
​

My impression is that it is a toss up between Michael Douglass in Ant Man and Kurt Russel in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. They also de-aged Michelle Phiffer in Ant Man and the Wasp.

 

[Huntn]

I am interested in seeing Bohemian Rhapsody, and I was curious if they would fill up a stadium with 70k people. No they built the stage on a deserted airport, took 2000 extras and CGI’d in the stadium and the other 68000 people. Similiar things were done convincingly in the Lord of the Rings battle sequences and I would venture this is now the norm anytime large numbers of people are needed.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life...-created-queens-epic-live-aid-set/1845037002/

Inception was top notch. One of my favorite films.

Christopher Nolan is famous for demanding practical effects in his VFX whenever possible, even if CGI would be a lot easier, safer, and cheaper. He does this because he is adamant that the results are better. So saying that this movie is CGI predominate is quite a bit of a poke at the director.

Yes there are a few Paris CGI scenes, and all of the crumbling city in limbo was CGI. But most of the movie was practical VFX. For example the snowy mountain fortress was a miniature, the zero-g hallway fight was a series of several sets (the most complicated being a 100 foot long hotel hallway encased in a gigantic rotating cylinder), and the train plowing down the middle of a city street was just a dressed up Peterbilt 375 semi-truck.

Nolan believes that practical effects are better not just for the final visual result, but for the actors as well. For example in most films or TV shows where there is a space ship with a window, behind the window is a green screen and whatever needs to be shown in the window is inserted there after filming with CGI. The actors see a green screen and have to pretend it's a planet, an alien, warp space going by, or whatever. By contrast in Interstellar, the view of space and planets is a projection so that it's actually there while being filmed, and the actors can see the space phenomena. It helps their imagination, it helps them to feign or feel a reaction, and they can all properly look at and point to the phenomena with the same correct perspective.

This is in stark contrast to a movie like The Hobbit, which had so much green screen that it almost made Ian McKellan quit acting.

Also, that tesseract scene toward the end of Interstellar...no green screen was used! I've read about how it was done, and I still don't understand how they did it. But it was a real set combined with practical VFX and some sort of special filming technique where they film "slits" or "slots" and then layer them together.

I never said it was predominantly CGI but substantial CGI was used, some of it so subtle it might not be noticed. If I’m not mistaken, the snowey fortress was a full size set. I agree that frequently a combination of CGI mixed with real effects is desirable.

 

[AngerDanger]

Gotta admit, @Huntn, it's nice to see such balanced praise and discussion of CGI. I feel it often gets denigrated for a number of reasons—which isn't to say there aren't plenty of examples of bad CGI—that have more to do with perception than genuine lack of artistic merit:

• Good CGI goes unnoticed – A lot of fantastic work goes into creating visuals that most viewers assume are practical effects. Rig removal (removing wires and support structures for giant moving props) and compositing (combining real or CG elements with other real or CG elements (e.g. the crowd duplication mentioned above)) are ubiquitous and equally unnoticed when done right.
• It's soulless – People harp on CGI and digital art in general for being "made by computers" and lacking a human element. If the same absurd critique were made of fine artists, we'd hear complaints that too many painters use soulless oil instead of creating humans with real flesh and blood! Plus, CGI is as much "made by computers" as paintings are made by oil or books are made by trees.
• It's easier to reproduce – If you see a fine artist create a beautiful gesture drawing with one fluid stroke, the process they used is much less immediately apparent than if you saw a CG artist, say, add a bevel modifier to a 3D model. I think it's the fact that we could follow whatever steps CG artists take and end up reproducing the same work that makes so many people unfairly against it.
• The best effects are still practical – The most realistic humans in film are played by—go figure—real humans. It might seem odd to consider actors as practical effects, but they're on the less-impressive but still-incredibly-difficult-to-replace side of the FX spectrum. The same goes for props; the best clothes, weapons, locations, etc. tend to be practical as well. Practical effects often have the advantage of being the actual thing they seek to emulate.
• It's a last resort – CGI is often used to visually depict something that filmmakers aren't sure how to show in any other way. In these cases, even the best practical effects would fail and probably look like a horrible stop motion mess.
• It's gorgeous – Attempts to emulate real-world objects aside, computers tend to create the reciprocal of biological creations; it's far easier to create an array of mathematically perfect lines on a computer, but one blurry smudge might need to be a large raster file. You can, by following relatively simple algorithms, create beautiful procedurally generated and surreal visuals—depictions of mathematics that previously only existed in concept, not in image. Because of this, as others have mentioned in this thread, I think the allure of padding out a weak narrative with beautiful visuals is too strong for many filmmakers.

 

[Huntn]

Gotta admit, @Huntn, it's nice to see such balanced praise and discussion of CGI. I feel it often gets denigrated for a number of reasons—which isn't to say there aren't plenty of examples of bad CGI—that have more to do with perception than genuine lack of artistic merit:

• Good CGI goes unnoticed – A lot of fantastic work goes into creating visuals that most viewers assume are practical effects. Rig removal (removing wires and support structures for giant moving props) and compositing (combining real or CG elements with other real or CG elements (e.g. the crowd duplication mentioned above)) are ubiquitous and equally unnoticed when done right.
• It's soulless – People harp on CGI and digital art in general for being "made by computers" and lacking a human element. If the same absurd critique were made of fine artists, we'd hear complaints that too many painters use soulless oil instead of creating humans with real flesh and blood! Plus, CGI is as much "made by computers" as paintings are made by oil or books are made by trees.
• It's easier to reproduce – If you see a fine artist create a beautiful gesture drawing with one fluid stroke, the process they used is much less immediately apparent than if you saw a CG artist, say, add a bevel modifier to a 3D model. I think it's the fact that we could follow whatever steps CG artists take and end up reproducing the same work that makes so many people unfairly against it.
• The best effects are still practical – The most realistic humans in film are played by—go figure—real humans. It might seem odd to consider actors as practical effects, but they're on the less-impressive but still-incredibly-difficult-to-replace side of the FX spectrum. The same goes for props; the best clothes, weapons, locations, etc. tend to be practical as well. Practical effects often have the advantage of being the actual thing they seek to emulate.
• It's a last resort – CGI is often used to visually depict something that filmmakers aren't sure how to show in any other way. In these cases, even the best practical effects would fail and probably look like a horrible stop motion mess.
• It's gorgeous – Attempts to emulate real-world objects aside, computers tend to create the reciprocal of biological creations; it's far easier to create an array of mathematically perfect lines on a computer, but one blurry smudge might need to be a large raster file. You can, by following relatively simple algorithms, create beautiful procedurally generated and surreal visuals—depictions of mathematics that previously only existed in concept, not in image. Because of this, as others have mentioned in this thread, I think the allure of padding out a weak narrative with beautiful visuals is too strong for many filmmakers.

Great post! I agree completely. Of interest when CGI first appeared noticibly in movies, I frequently hated it, titles like Sin City, The Crow, even 300. Not implying these are bad movies because of CGI, but as a rule, I do not like stylized backgrounds. When the backgrounds were stylized and I knew the movie was filmed in a warehouse, I disliked them.

However that all changed with Avatar, a complete photorealistic, artificial world, filmed in a warehouse. From start to finish, that movie is mind blowing, establishing new standards in techniques and methodology of meshing live action with animation/CGI. When the CGI gets so good that the only reason you know it is CGI is because you know dinosaurs don’t exist (for example), then CGI has really arrived. And as mentioned by both us, the most impressive is when the viewer does not notice, it blends in seemingly and all appears real. This is pretty much a norm when it comes to background scenery in movies, you don’t associate with a CGI.

I was really impressed by Titanic, the blend of CGI with live action, in addition to an amazing ship set that some of it tilted.

 

[rhett7660]

As long as the CGI doesn't take away from the story, I am all for it. Some of it is better than others, no doubt.

 

[Huntn]

As long as the CGI doesn't take away from the story, I am all for it. Some of it is better than others, no doubt.

..or take the place of the story.

 

[jdechko]

Agreed that the best CGI is the stuff you don't notice.

Also we are still in the Uncanny Valley era of human CGI. Some of the effects in Harry Potter (a quiddch scene in one of the moves) just look bad.

Star Wars is on both sides. Some of it looks great, especially the non-human CGI. But in Rogue One, the CGI effects of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher were good in the reflections, but bad once they turned around.

 

[rhett7660]

..or take the place of the story.

Exactly... You can usually tell when the CGI gets in the way or is used as the story versus part of the story. Hopefully that makes sense.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

As long as the CGI doesn't take away from the story, I am all for it. Some of it is better than others, no doubt.

..or take the place of the story.

Agree with both of you, and also with @AngerDanger, who wrote a balanced and thoughtful post.

And agree that Titanic used CGI very well - though they also had an enormous model of the ship built.

Another movie that used CGI impressively - in a way which enhanced and did not distract from - the story - was Gladiator.

 

[AngerDanger]

I was originally going to post something about Monsters (2010), an opportunistically shot thriller with VFX created by the director, Gareth Edwards (who also directed @Huntn's favorite Star Wars sequel ), on his home computer using off-the-shelf software, but then I remembered something else that was really cool.

Chris Nolan's Interstellar (2014) heavily employed CGI as many space travel films do, but these visuals were accurate—so accurate that, well, I'll copy/paste something from IMDb trivia:

"To create the wormhole and black hole, Dr. Kip Thorne collaborated with Visual Effects Supervisor Paul J. Franklin and his team at Double Negative. Thorne provided pages of deeply sourced theoretical equations to the team, which then created new CGI software programs based on these equations to create accurate computer simulations of these phenomena. Some individual frames took up to one hundred hours to render, and ultimately the whole CGI program reached to eight hundred terabytes of data. The resulting visual effects provided Thorne with new insight into the effects of gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes, and led to him writing two scientific papers–one for the astrophysics community, and one for the computer graphics community."
​

That last sentence is what really gets to me. The creation of a commercially and critically successful film lead to breakthroughs in science and art. It's such a rare tetrafecta and reminds me of creations by Renaissance auteurs who were able to find commercial employment, broad appeal, and artistic novelty while pushing the boundaries of scientific invention (I'm looking at you, da Vinci).

In a manner analogous to fiction's exploration and revelation of the human condition, digital effects are now allowing primates to learn more about the universe they inhabit. It's probably one of my favorite facts in the world and makes Interstellar a worthy addition to the list…

Ahem. Anyway, my name isn't SentimentalDanger or HoldingBackTearsDanger.

… I was really impressed by Titanic, the blend of CGI with live action, in addition to an amazing ship set that some of it tilted…

… And agree that Titanic used CGI very well - though they also had an enormous model of the ship built…

Wow, I must confess that I didn't know Titanic used CGI. A quick Bing search shows one instance with Jack and Diane on a moving color matte, a real camera pull-back, CGI elements (water, smoke, birds, and a flag (a miniature flag wouldn't move correctly for a full sized ship)), and the gorgeous miniature ship shot with the same camera pull-back (I'm guessing they had to do a little calculus to figure out the related rate of the movement between differing focal lengths). Very ****ing cool.

 

[Huntn]

Agree with both of you, and also with @AngerDanger, who wrote a balanced and thoughtful post.

And agree that Titanic used CGI very well - though they also had an enormous model of the ship built.

Another movie that used CGI impressively - in a way which enhanced and did not distract from - the story - was Gladiator.

I walked out of Gladiator saying Best Picture. Yup, nailed it.

 

[Huntn]

I was originally going to post something about Monsters (2010), an opportunistically shot thriller with VFX created by the director, Gareth Edwards (who also directed @Huntn's favorite Star Wars sequel ), on his home computer using off-the-shelf software, but then I remembered something else that was really cool.

Chris Nolan's Interstellar (2014) heavily employed CGI as many space travel films do, but these visuals were accurate—so accurate that, well, I'll copy/paste something from IMDb trivia:

"To create the wormhole and black hole, Dr. Kip Thorne collaborated with Visual Effects Supervisor Paul J. Franklin and his team at Double Negative. Thorne provided pages of deeply sourced theoretical equations to the team, which then created new CGI software programs based on these equations to create accurate computer simulations of these phenomena. Some individual frames took up to one hundred hours to render, and ultimately the whole CGI program reached to eight hundred terabytes of data. The resulting visual effects provided Thorne with new insight into the effects of gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes, and led to him writing two scientific papers–one for the astrophysics community, and one for the computer graphics community."
​

That last sentence is what really gets to me. The creation of a commercially and critically successful film lead to breakthroughs in science and art. It's such a rare tetrafecta and reminds me of creations by Renaissance auteurs who were able to find commercial employment, broad appeal, and artistic novelty while pushing the boundaries of scientific invention (I'm looking at you, da Vinci).

In a manner analogous to fiction's exploration and revelation of the human condition, digital effects are now allowing primates to learn more about the universe they inhabit. It's probably one of my favorite facts in the world and makes Interstellar a worthy addition to the list…

Ahem. Anyway, my name isn't SentimentalDanger or HoldingBackTearsDanger.





Wow, I must confess that I didn't know Titanic used CGI. A quick Bing search shows one instance with Jack and Diane on a moving color matte, a real camera pull-back, CGI elements (water, smoke, birds, and a flag (a miniature flag wouldn't move correctly for a full sized ship)), and the gorgeous miniature ship shot with the same camera pull-back (I'm guessing they had to do a little calculus to figure out the related rate of the movement between differing focal lengths). Very ****ing cool.

Interstellar was very satisfying for me in its effects. The only issue I had was a time paradox, where Cooper sends himself a message from the future about where to find the secret NASA launch facility, which is how he gets involved in the plan to save the human race. It’s one of this things where you don’t want to try to think it through.

 

[AngerDanger]

In addition to staying true to a film created decades earlier without inheriting its pacing issues, Blade Runner 2049 also features some amazing CGI, particularly when bringing Sean Young's ageless Rachel back to screen. I never would've guessed how extensively a CG model was used, but after watching a VFX breakdown, my mind's blown. Below are some GIF'd excerpts from that video:

It was especially cool to learn that even the flashbacks to scenes from the original Blade Runner were all recreated with CG:

As you'd expect, motion-capture was used to ensure natural, fluid movement:

EDIT: Some of the embedded GIFs aren't properly loading. If you wanna see them, hit the REPLY button on this post, and the text box at the bottom will get filled with the working GIFs.

 

[twietee]

I think Disney’s Oliver & Co.(1988) made use of some CGI, if i’m not mistaken.

Basil The Great Mouse Detecive (1986) as well. The final encounter within Big Ben's clockwork was using CGI -or more precise: used CGI to know how to draw the moving clockwork parts.

 

[velocityg4]

I always felt Terminator 2 made excellent use of CGI to enhance the movie. Without it you'd never be able to reproduce just how capable and powerful an adversary the T-1000 is. It also holds up well. Nothing seems out of place. At the time such effects were quite amazing. Unlike many other attempts at CGI at the time it appears realistic.

While some scenes are obviously CGI, without looking bad that is. Others make it hard to tell which effects are CGI and which are practical. There are many remarkable scenes to choose from. I went with two which are remarkable without blood and gore. Since some may object.

The T-1000 pouring into the helicopter.

The shattering of the frozen T-1000 was an iconic scene. I remember them redoing it in "Hot Shots! Part Deux". This is a scene where it is tough to tell how much is CGI and how much is practical.

 

[SoggyCheese]

Surprised nobody has mentioned the trailblazer for all this. Tron.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

And, of course, (and normally I detest film adaptations of books I had loved) but the CGI in Lord of the Rings was most impressive, as was the spectacular landscape and scenery of New Zealand.

 

[hawkeye_a]

I have to admit that I'm over the "novelty" of CGI being used to dress-up and sell a film. I tend to prefer the subtle use of CGI(where I cant even tell if CGI was used); think Forrest Gump.

Maybe it's getting older, but I kind of find myself preferring practical/real/physical special effects instead.... like in the original Star Wars trilogy, Conan the Barbarian(1982), Blade Runner, etc.

It could be that the uncanny valley just cannot be breached, and the heavier the reliance on CGI the more apparent the shortcomings become.

 

[velocityg4]

I have to admit that I'm over the "novelty" of CGI being used to dress-up and sell a film. I tend to prefer the subtle use of CGI(where I cant even tell if CGI was used); think Forrest Gump.

Maybe it's getting older, but I kind of find myself preferring practical/real/physical special effects instead.... like in the original Star Wars trilogy, Conan the Barbarian(1982), Blade Runner, etc.

It could be that the uncanny valley just cannot be breached, and the heavier the reliance on CGI the more apparent the shortcomings become.

For myself, I'd say it is a matter of the quality of writing, directing and acting. The novelty has worn off. The movies themselves have little substance. Just something mildly entertaining and quickly forgotten. Never to be seen again.

They aren't all horrible. Usually the most you can hope for is clever or funny. Considering the obscene budgets. You'd think they could spend a little on a decent writer and cancel 30 seconds worth of CGI to pay them.

Mostly I just find myself watching movies from the 30's through 60's. There are a lot of good movies from the late 70's through the 90's. I've just seen them so many times that I haven't rewatched them for a while. When it comes to special effects. The 50's through the 70's had acceptable practical effects. Some pretty darn good for the time ("Forbidden Planet", "2001 A Space Odyssey", "The Blob", "The Ten Commandments"). Heck there are movies from the 30's with decent special effects.

Conan the Barbarian (1982) has to be in my top ten favorite movies.

 

[Huntn]

Movies continue to stand primarily on their story and how the story is told.

I have to admit that I'm over the "novelty" of CGI being used to dress-up and sell a film. I tend to prefer the subtle use of CGI(where I cant even tell if CGI was used); think Forrest Gump.

Maybe it's getting older, but I kind of find myself preferring practical/real/physical special effects instead.... like in the original Star Wars trilogy, Conan the Barbarian(1982), Blade Runner, etc.

It could be that the uncanny valley just cannot be breached, and the heavier the reliance on CGI the more apparent the shortcomings become.

CGI has come a long way, the biggest was achieving photo realism, but instead of filming on location, the CGI takes over or auments that aspect and it enables stories to be told that could not be told before with the same emmersive impact.

For myself, I'd say it is a matter of the quality of writing, directing and acting. The novelty has worn off. The movies themselves have little substance. Just something mildly entertaining and quickly forgotten. Never to be seen again.

They aren't all horrible. Usually the most you can hope for is clever or funny. Considering the obscene budgets. You'd think they could spend a little on a decent writer and cancel 30 seconds worth of CGI to pay them.

Mostly I just find myself watching movies from the 30's through 60's. There are a lot of good movies from the late 70's through the 90's. I've just seen them so many times that I haven't rewatched them for a while. When it comes to special effects. The 50's through the 70's had acceptable practical effects. Some pretty darn good for the time ("Forbidden Planet", "2001 A Space Odyssey", "The Blob", "The Ten Commandments"). Heck there are movies from the 30's with decent special effects.

Conan the Barbarian (1982) has to be in my top ten favorite movies.

When you are talking practical effects with the list of movies you cited, it’s an easy argument to say CGI is just the natural progression of illusion in movies to benefit the telling of the story.
[doublepost=1542812683][/doublepost]

In addition to staying true to a film created decades earlier without inheriting its pacing issues, Blade Runner 2049 also features some amazing CGI, particularly when bringing Sean Young's ageless Rachel back to screen. I never would've guessed how extensively a CG model was used, but after watching a VFX breakdown, my mind's blown. Below are some GIF'd excerpts from that video:

It was especially cool to learn that even the flashbacks to scenes from the original Blade Runner were all recreated with CG:

As you'd expect, motion-capture was used to ensure natural, fluid movement:

EDIT: Some of the embedded GIFs aren't properly loading. If you wanna see them, hit the REPLY button on this post, and the text box at the bottom will get filled with the working GIFs.

Thanks for posting, fascinating! Animating animals is easy as compared to the last big hurtle, animating human faces convincingly. If I understand it, motion capture is just copying a human, my guess is the next breakthrough is an independent animation based on 3d mapping of a human, where the motion capture is no longer required and then the completely independent creation of the human frame along with corresponding motion, expressions, personality, voice, etc.

 

[Huntn]

Looking at some Avatar info and stumbled across this:

​

Alita: Battle Angel (Feb 2019) another James Cameron project, where the lead character is animated based on motion capture. Yes, I will have to see this in the theater.

Skin or CGI? Alita: Battle Angel takes manga to photorealistic levels
https://www.cnet.com/news/alita-battle-angel-takes-manga-to-photorealistic-levels/

Here’s Looking At You, Kid: ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ Has Changed Alita’s Anime Eyes
http://sciencefiction.com/2018/11/19/looks-like-alita-battle-angel-changed-alitas-anime-eyes/

 

[Huntn]

Having just watched The Blob (1958), which is almost completely sanitary with lines like “don’t go in there, it’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen!”, to make up for it’s lack of graphic gore, which a story like this really needs, and which the 1988 movie makes up for.

The two movies I can think of with the best FX practical effects are The Blob (1988) and The Thing (1982). And I agree that practical effects have more of an impact than pure CGI when it comes to horror films. One horror movie with mostly CGI, that really dissapointed me was The Haunting (1999) as compared to the original 1963 movie that relied mostly on suspense, and besides some minimalist practical effects, like a bulging door, was extremely effective leaving most of it to the audience’s imagination.

From an interview with Chuck Russell, director of The Blob:
[ Exclusive] ‘The Blob’ 1988 Director Talks Practical Effects and Second Remake
https://bloody-disgusting.com/exclu...rector-talks-practical-effects-second-remake/

​

“I’m in a funny space about visual FX today vs. the eighties,” he admitted to us. “I helped perfect CGI with The Mask… But I always used CGI in careful conjunction with physical FX and the on camera actors performance. Bottom line, full CGI characters can be fascinating, but are rarely scary.”

The Painstaking Practical Effects Behind The Thing “Chest Chomp” Scene
https://news.avclub.com/the-painstaking-practical-effects-behind-the-thing-s-c-1798278719

 

[rhett7660]

Surprised nobody has mentioned the trailblazer for all this. Tron.

I would think Young Sherlock Holmes which was the first movie to use CGI.

Tron was a fun movie though. I also liked Tron II.
[doublepost=1543244957][/doublepost]

Having just watched The Blob (1958), which is almost completely sanitary with lines like “don’t go in there, it’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen!”, to make up for it’s lack of graphic gore, which a story like this really needs, and which the 1988 movie makes up for.

The two movies I can think of with the best FX practical effects are The Blob (1988) and The Thing (1982). And I agree that practical effects have more of an impact than pure CGI when it comes to horror films. One horror movie with mostly CGI, that really dissapointed me was The Haunting (1999) as compared to the original 1963 movie that relied mostly on suspense, and besides some minimalist practical effects, like a bulging door, was extremely effective leaving most of it to the audience’s imagination.

From an interview with Chuck Russell, director of The Blob:
[ Exclusive] ‘The Blob’ 1988 Director Talks Practical Effects and Second Remake
https://bloody-disgusting.com/exclu...rector-talks-practical-effects-second-remake/

View attachment 806430
​

“I’m in a funny space about visual FX today vs. the eighties,” he admitted to us. “I helped perfect CGI with The Mask… But I always used CGI in careful conjunction with physical FX and the on camera actors performance. Bottom line, full CGI characters can be fascinating, but are rarely scary.”

The Painstaking Practical Effects Behind The Thing “Chest Chomp” Scene
https://news.avclub.com/the-painstaking-practical-effects-behind-the-thing-s-c-1798278719

I have watched the The Thing behind the scenes before and it never gets old. I still watch that movie once a year. Between the over the top blood and guts scenes to the music, it just works.

Did you happen to catch the remake of it? It was just ok... in my opinion.

 

[Huntn]

I would think Young Sherlock Holmes which was the first movie to use CGI.

Tron was a fun movie though. I also liked Tron II.
[doublepost=1543244957][/doublepost]

I have watched the The Thing behind the scenes before and it never gets old. I still watch that movie once a year. Between the over the top blood and guts scenes to the music, it just works.

Did you happen to catch the remake of it? It was just ok... in my opinion.

I did see the remake, prequel and meh. It seemed to rely on a lot of what came before it and honestly the practical FX effects in the original were better from an impact standpoint than the CGI monster effects in the prequel (if I am remembering it correctly).