Random Times Movies Used CGI For Absolutely No Good Reason (13 items)

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  (#1) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

  • Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Mackenzie Foy, Julia Jones, Booboo Stewart, Lee Pace, Christian Camargo, Mia Maestro, Casey LaBow, Maggie Grace, MyAnna Buring, Joe Anderson, Omar Metwally, Rami Malek, Guri Weinberg, Noel Fisher, Chaske Spencer, Jamie Campbell Bower, Christopher Heyerdahl

  The Twilight franchise naturally required plentiful CGI assistance to accomplish the required amount of sexy vampire twinkle and bedazzlement. But in the final installment of the series, Breaking Dawn - Part 2, the filmmakers decided to go with a practical effect to introduce the audience to Bella’s daughter, a half-human/half-undead abomination named Renesmee. And it would have been wildly successful if their goal was to create one of the most disturbing, sinister affronts to the natural order ever put to film.

  However, this was not their intention, and so the monstrosity (which the cast and crew referred to as Chuckesme in an homage to the villainous doll from another franchise) was replaced with a digital version (seen above). While not as primally repugnant as Chuckesme, the computerized replacement definitely had its own instinctually abhorrent lack of charm. The reported reason they didn't use an actual infant to play the role of Renesmee was that the unspeakable hybrid was supposed to appear as if it could believably talk when only a few days out of the womb - which is something Look Who's Talking accomplished way back in 1989, but whatever.
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  (#7) X-Men Origins: Wolverine

  • Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney, Ryan Reynolds, Danny Huston, Scott Adkins, Tim Pocock, Tahyna MacManus, Julia Blake, Max Cullen, Troye Sivan

  By the time X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out in 2009, it had been nearly two decades since Jurassic Park showed audiences what could be accomplished with the judicious use of computer-generated graphics. So you'd think poor Logan would have had something a bit more menacing to wave around than the cheap, sad, tinfoil-looking kitchen implements the filmmakers equipped him with in his first solo outing.

  The thing is, the digitized adamantium claws have always appeared flimsy in every film Wolverine's been in. It's just that in the other movies, the effects crews created a nice balance between showing the viewers the CGI stuff along with physical props with actual weight and heft. The reason Jurassic Park worked so well all those years ago was that Steven Spielberg knew the magic of a computerized brachiosaurus goes out the window if you don’t have huge latex velociraptor puppets to help maintain the suspension of belief. It’s a fine line, to be sure. And when you get it wrong, you sometimes get a superhero who looks like he bought his equipment by calling in to a late-night infomercial.
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  (#10) Vacation

  • Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Chris Hemsworth, Leslie Mann, Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Charlie Day, Catherine Missal, Ron Livingston, Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, Regina Hall, Alkoya Brunson, Hannah Davis

  One wouldn't generally associate the Vacation movies with the egregious overuse of CGI (mainly because most of them came out when computers couldn't do much more than make you wait two hours to see a naughty picture). But in the 2015 reboot attempt, it was deemed necessary to pull out all the digital stops when a scene required Christina Applegate to chug a full pitcher of beer. After she complained that drinking that much lager all at once would potentially result in barf-related complications, she was allowed to mimic the act using an empty container, with the offending fluid added later in post-production.

  For the amount of money involved, you'd think she could have practiced imbibing large amounts of apple juice or something. Or hire any third-rate magician to create the illusion of a chugalug. It was a silly situation, but when you have critics (like Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times) calling your film a "vile, odious disaster," perhaps CGI-versus-practical-effects arguments are the least of your worries.
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  (#6) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

  • Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Drew Barrymore, C. Thomas Howell, Robert MacNaughton, K.C. Martel, Sean Frye

  Toward the end of the sci-fi classic E.T., the plucky kids our alien hero has befriended try to help the unclothed, disturbing-looking xeno-monstrosity escape the authorities so that it might return to space (and presumably deliver the vital intelligence to its race needed to plan humanity's demise). The FBI agents tasked with saving Earth are armed with shotguns, which seems perfectly reasonable when you're dealing with an interplanetary, telekinetic goblin with a threateningly bioluminescent pointy finger.

  But decades after the film's release, Spielberg apparently developed the same overwhelming urge that caused George Lucas to make unnecessary "special edition" alterations to the Star Wars universe. Specifically, Spielberg thought showing FBI agents wielding firearms was simply too terrifying a notion to be contemplated by our sensitive youth, and so he digitally replaced the weapons with less threatening walkie-talkies (which, when you think about it, could be used to call in more agents with shotguns). But at least later on he apparently saw the overbearing nanny-like errors of his ways, lamenting to an audience at a 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, "I realized that what I had done was I had robbed the people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T. And I regretted that."
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  (#8) Blood Diamond

  • Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, David Harewood, Arnold Vosloo, Caruso Kuypers, Michael Sheen, Basil Wallace, Ntare Mwine, Stephen Collins, Jimi Mistry, Chris Astoyan, Benu Mabhena

  While Jennifer Connelly had been in all sorts of acclaimed films by 2006 and even won an Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress in A Beautiful Mind), crying on command apparently was a skill she had yet to snap onto her acting toolbelt. No big deal, however - the filmmakers could simply insert a virtual drop of drippy saline during a scene in which she was required to display some proof of her emotion-driven sniveling.

  You'd think as a trained thespian she could have drawn on some past tragedy, put a thumbtack in her shoe, or thought back to David Bowie's aggressively prodigious codpiece in Labyrinth to get the tears flowing. Heck, haven't there been all sorts of movie tricks to elicit fake weepage for decades? Well, reportedly the simple truth is that using CGI is the cheapest option when compared to dragging actors back to the set for reshoots, even though (according to an anonymous insider who told The Times of London), "Everyone feels a bit dirty about it."
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  (#4) Justice League

  • Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons, Ciarán Hinds, Joe Morton, Amber Heard, Michael McElhatton, Lisa Loven Kongsli

  In 2017, Hollywood was at the center of a scandalous follicle-related controversy when Henry Cavill showed up on the set of Justice League wearing a bushy mustache more suitable for a 1970s cop movie. Why? Well, Cavill just so happened to be filming Mission: Impossible - Fallout at the same time, and he had grown out his bountiful cookie duster specifically for the role of a CIA assassin named August Walker.

  As Cavill was presumably more willing to annoy the filmmakers behind Justice League rather than risk Tom Cruise coming over to his house to furiously jump up and down on his couch, the chosen solution was to digitally eradicate the offending facial fuzz. Unfortunately, the end result was that Superman's mug in certain scenes somehow ended up looking not just unrealistic, but simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Which generally isn't considered a good look for superheroes outside of the Deadpool franchise.

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