Holy shit, CGI has changed the way we
look at the world around us. Back in the 70’s if you were waiting for
the
movie to start and the bucket of popcorn grew eyes and started
dancing
around the counter top assisted by a reanimated bag of Skittles
you’d
puke in your hat and call a ventriloquist, a priest, and a burly
cop
six weeks from retirement to come deal with it. Now we can’t flip
through
the channels without seeing a seemingly living 2,000 foot robot
whipping
up a lather in his 17,000 foot shower or a muffin writhing out
of
some
bitch’s grasp as she does a walk-and-talk about menopause being a
real pisser. Superman
made us believe a man could fly but it wasn’t until The Revenge of the Sith
that we could believe that Christopher Lee had both Jedi Powers and
Phase-Shift
Parkinsons.
CGI is an amazing tool that many
filmmakers
wield like a digital Mjolnir,
creating worlds and creatures that take our breath away. Unfortunately
through
the years some have used it as a scythe, slashing our dreams and
severing
that muscle that connects our sexual pleasure organs to the
muscle
that tells our mind we’re really good at using our sexual
pleasure
organs.
The result is oblivion.
So with that we bring you CHUD’s
latest
glorious list. The twenty worst instances of CGI in movie
history.
In
no order. Well, except the order we decide to do them.
Brought to you by Renn Brown
THE OFFENDER: Ultraviolet (2006)
THE
SCENE:
Pick one. Ultraviolet is nothing short of an extravaganza of shitty CGI that ranges from competently rendered but poorly implemented to low-grade direct-to-video effects to fondled. There’s a helicopter chase and rooftop shootout that may be the worse offenders in terms of bad CGI, but this is akin to trying to figure which of the sixteen knives that are simultaneously stabbing you is the sharpest. Pointless.
WHERE IT
ALL GOES WRONG: Right here:
Cleverly, you’ll notice they’ve actually taken all of the live action footage and smeared it with a defocusing blur that removes the texture and detail from the real elements, so they don’t stand out so hideously against the cheap visFX. The thing is, it works! But it works by further lowering the bar from expecting this to be a real movie down to expecting a non-interactive video game experience.
BEEN DONE PRACTICALLY:
It already was! Ultraviolet is a victim of excess on every level and despite having many of the same advantages (great sets, keen eye for combat action, unique aesthetic), by cranking everything up to such a heightened level, the film is dragged down by all the things we were willing to forgive in Equilibrium. The film is chock full of amazing modern architecture the production found in Shanghai and Hong Kong that, were they not floating amidst relentless scenes of laughable computer scenery, would have been brilliant locations for a stylized science fiction flick.
It’s so bad that some of the buildings I laughed at during the movie turned out to be real Chinese skyscrapers! You become so used to terribly rendered buildings patterned after hyperbolic needles, radioactive symbols, and other stupid crap that you can’t even appreciate reality when it peeks through.
HOW BAD
IS
IT? I’ve gotten some shit (mostly from boring, literally-minded people) about my previous entries that focused on examples that weren’t necessarily the WORST CGI IN HISTORY but instead represented some other failure in judgment, but I’m confident that Ultraviolet contains not only some of the qualitatively worst CGI put on a big screen, but perhaps the highest volume of it as well. It is almost non-stop and must be seen to truly be believed.
IN
SUMMATION: The opening credits of Ultraviolet are set over a montage of comic book art, as if it wants to excuse the illogical, over-stylized mess that follows as a genre entry that follows different rules. That may do something to explain (if not excuse) the terrible plot, dialogue, acting, and pacing, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that if you try and offer us a live-action world but fill it with utterly unconvincing, plastic pixels… nobodies going to buy it. Fuck off.