I've been watching a lot of films recently. Films started getting better during the 80s, leading to a golden era from 90s to 2000s, I feel CGI has contributed to a drop in quality. Especially in action films

I've also tried to avoid selection bias: I've seen bad (& not funny B-movie bad) films from the 90s

Death Proof is a masterpiece discarding CGI

This isn't to say there aren't good films anymore, there definitely are, CGI isn't what makes them good tho

CGI can be beneficial, it just can't carry a film or show by itself. think about star wars OT. for a trilogy that's ostensibly about a galaxy-wide struggle for freedom, we spend an awful lot of time following a few people around in small rooms and remote earth biomes. as a product of the time, they hold up just fine, but like, where are all the normal people? are the rebels fighting for the freedom of a few dozen moisture farmers on tatooine and some small bears? the crew of a single star destroyer must be larger than the combined population of every world we see in the original trilogy (note: we don't actually "see" alderaan). the prequels (for all their faults) show that there was a very large part of the star wars universe that george lucas simply couldn't depict in the early 80s. I suppose some might argue it would have been better if he hadn't, but I digress.

Yes, budget. The newer versions of ROTJ for example have scenes of celebration on other planets inserted after the DS2 explodes.

More to do with budget than limitations of lack of CGI.

Take a look at epics like Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia. They use HUGE scales with no need for CGI.

if we do a naive inflation adjustment to 2021 dollars:

star wars ANH: $50 million

star wars ESB: $100 million

star wars RoTJ: $90 million

lawrence of arabia: $137 million

ben hur: $144 million

so yeah, the movies you mentioned had significantly larger budgets, but not massively so (at least compared to ESB and RoTJ). I'd argue the bigger difference is the subject matter. you can do a large 1930's battle without CGI just by throwing money at the problem. there isn't an amount of money you could spend in 1970 to do any of the prequel trilogy coruscant scenes. they probably could have done most of the naboo scenes, though.

I'm also not arguing that huge CGI renders are always a good thing. most stories are really just about the interactions between a few people. I do think it's a significant value add for the scifi genre especially, where the world itself is often a character.

Except now those huge budgets went from shooting everything on location to shooting everything on a sound stage and the movie being 95% CGI.

>I feel CGI has contributed to a drop in quality. Especially in action films

This is a logistics issue not a technology issue of the major players who make action movies these days. Your average Avengers film has the action sequences already pencilled out and being created and finished before the rest of the plot is even really figured out and the connective tissue of these scenes is filmed later which is why the action scenes all feel like just random set pieces that are sometimes tonally different and also often don't really have any plot development or repercussions to the rest of the movie because they're just set pieces the director is slipping their story between.

I still remember seeing Tron as a 11 year old with my Dad. His reaction as we left the theater: they spent millions of dollars on special effects and a couple thousand on plot.

CGI contributes to making everything bigger (see late GoT seasons), which isn't better storytelling or more compelling, just more "badass", which is what they were optimizing for anyway.

Late GoT seasons lacked books to be based on. Heck, Winds of Winter hasn't been released, yet.

"They say" GRRM is rewriting it because we disliked HBO's GoT story. I say he had no idea what to write and now he knows what not to write.

Hah, Death Proof is a classic, there’s the scene in Texas Chilli Parlor where Stuntman Mike talks about how CGI is replacing what he did… was that the scene you’re referencing? Or is it that the movie itself is made with no cgi? Those last scenes couldn’t have been easy.

The movie itself is made with no cgi. Helps when the cast is made up of stunt actors

Tarantino on JRE described how the car crash scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imS39s9DKtQ) was done by pulling the two cars together with a wire & dummies for the gore

There's a whole generation of filmmakers that shoot everything on a sound stage and have all the complicated stuff done in post. As the generations from the 70s/80s/90s who blended practical effects with tasteful CGI use retire, their knowledge and wisdom will be permanently lost.

It's part sad and disgusting.

CGI can be incredibly well done and definately enhance a scene. But is has to be used by a competent director.

I think there are different kinds of better, so for some people the answer is definitely yes.

I think CGI is coming up on "effectively perfect", especially with the way it has gone from a post-production thing to becoming part of the world around the actors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StageCraft

So once people get used to perfection, I expect there will be a revival of "practical effect" productions, where people go for intentionally imperfect but more "human" approaches to making scenes. It'll be niche, of course, like low-fi games or fancy barista pourovers. But that's what feels like "better" to some people.

I'd certainly love that in the right context. In the same way Stranger Things was a success as an 1980s revival, I could imagine modern takes on sci-fi films of the 50s-70s that are intentionally done without CGI.

> I think CGI is coming up on "effectively perfect"

Then why does it still look ... like CGI? I've seen several of the biggest budget productions from recent years, and it seems to me like CGI is not getting any better. Take buildings with debris destroyed in recent Marvel movies for example, or almost any scene in the last film in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, or even Dune, which I just saw in theaters. The CGI sandworms look like CGI.

> especially with the way it has gone from a post-production thing to becoming part of the world around the actors

I can agree with you on this point. The good / unnoticeable uses of CGI are to add background details around the actors, not replace action / stunts, and use as few digital models as possible (the models are still the weak point). Mad Max: Fury Road was the one film where I'd say the CGI approximates "perfection".

I get what you mean; I am also a fussbudget when it comes to these things. But I don't think that's the common reaction.

If you look at Dune reviews, there was high praise for the look of the film. Ditto for audience reaction. So I think "coming up on effectively perfect" is a reasonable way to phrase it. Things can always be better, but as long as the effects are good enough to not be distracting to 95% of the audience, I think we'll still see the sort of plateau that will eventually lead to some directors and audiences getting bored enough with CGI that we'll see a revival of practical effects as an aesthetic.

I think it really just comes down to the skill of the film makers, as it always has.

I think a really good example of this is this comparison between the old and new Dune movies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHPkdMGI6D4

The new Dune is masterfully crafted, and I was never once bothered by the CG, even though there was clearly a ton of it. The old Dune, on the other hand...I don't think it's aged particularly gracefully. Then again, I've never been a huge Lynch fan.