CGI is temporary; practical effects are forever

I remember having this visceral awe when I first watched someone play Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader at a Nintendo Gamecube demo station (remember those?) at the Best Buy on Barry Road and 169 in November of 2001. As a fan of the first Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64, the graphics for the new one just absolutely blew me away. They looked just like the movie!

Of course, in hindsight, drooling over a video game depiction of the Death Star Attack run was silly. But...isn’t it always silly in hindsight? Technology marches on. What was once the new, great technology isn’t anymore. I remember in 2007 when Sam Raimi’s third Spider-Man movie came out and the filmmakers were bragging about how it was such a huge leap in computer graphics imagery (CGI), which, ok, whatever.

Films are using more CGI than ever, which is leading to a visual effects crisis where the workers actually performing the artistry are underpaid and taken for granted. CGI isn’t inherently bad in and of itself, and it has resulted in plenty of things being brought to the screen that would have never been otherwise. Bad visual effects—the practical stuff, like setting off explosives and using rubber costumes—can be just as distracting as bad or overused CGI.

But in a world where it feels like there’s a new Marvel movie every week, I didn’t realize to the extent that I missed practical effects until I saw two films this summer. Both were a breath of fresh air into my CGI-weary heart: Everything, Everywhere All at Once and Top Gun: Maverick.

Each film is on a completely different spectrum. EEAaO was a small-budget film that couldn’t spend millions on expensive CGI and had to come up with creative solutions. Maverick was a sequel with a gigantic budget whose creative leads were hell-bent on filming practically. Each one features some CGI, of course, but the bulk of it was practical effects and a log of gumption.

While CGI may be extremely effective and nearly photorealistic, we still aren’t at the point where CGI matches real life. We may never be. And the films that lean on visual effects first and use CGI to fill in the gaps are the ones we tend to remember. The original Star Wars still looks great because nearly everything was a special effect or done in miniature. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy had some of the best costumes and prosthetics, well, ever and also used miniatures to great effect.

Time marches ever on, and even the best of the best technical CGI from films like Avatar and the best Marvel work eventually get surpassed by other, better CGI. But too often CGI is used as a shortcut and not a tool, and we’ve lived in that space for a long time. For EEAaO and the new Top Gun to feature old-fashioned movie magic so prominently was wonderful to see. Hopefully, we see more of it.