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00:00So, CGI is everywhere in movies these days. All but the most low-budget of films will use visual
00:06effects for a multitude of reasons, but all are in an attempt to elevate the production in one way
00:11or another. But the examples that we're looking at today, well, they dragged entire projects down.
00:16So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 CGI fails
00:20that totally ruined recent movies. 10. All the Goofy Analyst Effects
00:26The Matrix Resurrections The Matrix Resurrections is one of the most
00:30confounding movies of the last year, an ambitious swing and a miss for writer-director Lana Wachowski,
00:36which overreaches with its clumsy meta-commentary while also failing to deliver satisfying action
00:42sequences. There are admittedly several issues which prevent the action from living up to the
00:46three previous films, and the ugly digital cinematography is a major culprit. And Wachowski's
00:52clear disinterest in even trying to match, let alone top, the accomplishments of the original
00:57trilogy. But perhaps the biggest disappointment of Resurrections is that it's utterly lacking in
01:02groundbreaking visual effects moments. In an era where spectacle is commonplace, Resurrections
01:07is as it is, VFX looks dead ordinary at best, and in some cases are legitimately unpleasant.
01:14The biggest offender by far is the decision to deploy a visually repulsive effect on the film's
01:19villain, The Analyst, during several of his scenes. For instance, when The Analyst springs a bullet-time
01:24trap on Neo, the scene was shot with two cameras at the same time, each running at a different frame
01:30rate, 24 frames per second and 120 frames per second. These shots were then composited together
01:36in post-production to produce an off-kilter image that we see in the final film, which is ultimately
01:41more of a stuttery, blurry mess than a compelling trippy look that Wachowski was presumably going for.
01:46Unlike most films on this list, it's less that the fidelity of the VFX were poor throughout
01:51than the execution being totally off, ensuring the awe-striking feeling of the first three movies
01:56was completely absent here.
01:589. The Tyrant and the Cerberus
02:01Resident Evil – Welcome to Raccoon City
02:03Oh, Resident Evil. Fans of the video games really, really, really wanted Welcome to Raccoon
02:10City to deliver a more spirited, faithful rendition of the video game series compared to
02:14the Paul W.S. Anderson films, but the end result was a cheap, unintentionally comical and mostly
02:19poorly acted mess. One of the defining problems was its rather low budget of $25 million, less
02:26than even the original's $33 million price tag, ensuring that the directing team was unable
02:30to render the series' iconic creatures with lavishly grotesque VFX. Instead, there's a pronounced
02:36bargain basement quality to the film's two major digital creatures, the zombie dog known as
02:41the Cerberus and William Birkin's Final Mutation. Given that these are two of the game's most
02:46iconic villains, to see them look ironically like something out of a PS1 FMV was the last
02:51straw for a lot of fans, who had basically already given up on the movie. Hopefully,
02:55Netflix spent a little more money on the upcoming Resident Evil TV series.
03:008. Poorly green-screened fan bing-bing – The 355
03:04The 355 is admittedly a pretty terrible movie any way you slice it, a migraine-inducingly
03:10boring spy thriller packed with limp action sequences, atrocious dialogue, and some weirdly
03:15awful visual effects. Many of the few people who actually bothered to watch it noted that
03:20the cast member, Fan Bingbing, looked a little strange throughout the film, as though some
03:25sort of post-production effect was applied to her. But upon closer inspection, it appears
03:29that Bingbing was actually green-screened into a number of the film's scenes, most distractingly
03:34during her final farewell from the rest of the team, where her personal lighting doesn't
03:38match that of the rest of the scene at all. Throughout the film, we rarely see her in shots
03:43with her fellow cast members, and it's hilariously clear that she shot a good portion of her material
03:47without them, with the VFX and editing teams tasked with incorporating it into existing footage.
03:53While we don't know exactly what went down, between the 355 undergoing extensive reshoot
03:58and Bingbing's movements being restricted by the Chinese government due to her recent
04:02tax evasion scandal, it's possible that director Simon Kinberg simply had to make the best with
04:07her limited availability. Either way, Bingbing looks subtly off most of the time that she's
04:11on-screen, and while the audience might not know precisely why, their brain absolutely understands
04:16that something isn't right, the lighting doesn't match, and she isn't sharing a physical
04:20space with her co-stars.
04:227. That's Definitely Not Egypt
04:24Death on the Nile
04:26To be completely fair to Kenneth Branagh's long-delayed Agatha Christie adaptation, Death
04:30on the Nile is actually a pretty fun time in terms of its frothy story and knowing performances,
04:35even though it's tough not to be constantly distracted by the rather woefully unsatisfactory
04:40VFX. The bulk of the murder mystery plot naturally unfolds on the cruise ship, the SS Karnak,
04:46that's sailing down the Nile, and yet there's such a blatant artificiality to the exterior elements
04:51that it's never even remotely convincing that the film was actually shot in Egypt. Though the
04:55production originally considered filming in Egypt and then Morocco, the latter a common stand-in for
05:00the former, it was ultimately deemed too difficult, and so the entire main shoot was instead filmed on
05:05sound stages in England. A second unit did shoot some background plates in Egypt, yet whenever the
05:11cast are outside of the ship, it's painfully apparent that they're just performing in front of a green
05:14screen, which was then composited into a digital backdrop later. This is most egregiously apparent
05:20when Jackie first boards the ship in a lavish wide shot of the horizon, which looks laughably fake.
05:25Number 6. The Uncanny Valley Mermaids, The King's Daughter
05:29The plot focuses on King Louis XIV's attempts to kidnap a mermaid and steal her life force in order to
05:35ensure his own immortality. The mermaid is played through performance capture by Fan Bingbing, who seems
05:40to be rather unlucky where botched CGI is concerned according to this list, and the mermaid is, quite simply,
05:44horrific to look at. Bingbing's features are basically distorted beyond almost all recognition,
05:50at which point you have to even wonder why the filmmakers bothered hiring her at all.
05:54Despite the performance capture work, nothing about the mermaids feels rooted in a physical reality.
05:58It all looks painstakingly hand-animated by an overworked VFX artist, and feels unmistakably
06:04off in every single scene. This is almost certainly the aspect of the movie's post-production which held
06:09up its release, and yet it would also shock absolutely nobody if this was the exact same state it was
06:14eight years ago, as the CGI certainly doesn't look like it's evolved beyond 2014, or 2004 to be fair.
06:215. Video Gamey CGI
06:23Uncharted
06:24Though general audiences have responded with mild enthusiasm for the big-screen adaptation of
06:29Naughty Dog's hit video game Uncharted, the reception from fans of the games and critics
06:34has been considerably more mixed. While on paper it might seem unscrew-up-able to adapt a game to the
06:39big screen like this, seeing as it was itself so indebted to classic action and adventure movies
06:44like Indiana Jones, it's actually not quite so simple. Even beyond the questionable script,
06:49mediocre performances, and lacklustre direction, Uncharted is ultimately hamstrung by its frequently
06:54garish CGI. Right from the opening sequence, in which we glimpse Nathan Drake scrambling his way up a
07:00cargo plane's perilously hanging luggage, there's an off-putting, ugly blurriness to all of the
07:05effects. Never once are we convinced that we're watching anything other than Tom Holland on a
07:09green-screen set that he's just been keyed into. Ironically, it looks less like a live-action
07:14movie and more like a, well, a video game. Part of the problem is that Uncharted had a budget that's
07:18just not quite big enough. Though Sony were in many ways sensible to make it for only $120 million
07:24and reduce their financial exposure, the trade-off is that so many of the effects shots look absolutely
07:30hideous. 4. Low-Budget Animation
07:33The Ice Age Adventures of Buckwild
07:35Now, expectations were admittedly through the floor for this new Ice Age spin-off that was
07:40recently released to Disney+, but would it have killed billionaire conglomerate Disney to throw
07:45a little bit more cash at this sorry production? Beyond the fact that The Ice Age Adventures of
07:49Buckwild is a fundamentally unremarkable, completely forgettable entry into the series,
07:53it doesn't even function as a basic aesthetic pleasure because it's clear that Disney just
07:57cut corners to save what money they could. Though the studio behind the previous Ice Age
08:01films, Blue Sky Studios, was shut down after being acquired by Disney, did Disney really need to
08:06outsource production of this spin-off to a small Canadian studio with little experience working
08:11on major Hollywood animations? Evidently, the studio did the best they could, with a small crew
08:15working entirely remotely during the pandemic on a project far outside their usual scope. But make no
08:21bones about it, this is a shockingly ugly film.
08:243. The Digital Demon Effects
08:26Studio 666
08:28On paper, comedy horror film Studio 666 actually seemed like a lot of fun. Here,
08:33the Foo Fighters play scarcely fictionalized versions of themselves who face off against
08:37their demonic presence while recording their new album. It's a fun idea that positions the movie to
08:42be a giddy homage to classic horror films such as The Evil Dead and Halloween. Hell,
08:45John Carpenter even helped compose the score and even has a small cameo. And while the Foo Fighters
08:50themselves outside of Dave Grohl aren't exactly the most natural of actors and the script is
08:54basically a mess, what really sinks Studio 666 is its unfortunate commitment to some truly wretched CGI.
09:01Whenever the demonic entities appear on screen, the resulting elemental effects look like terrible
09:05Adobe After Effects plugins that somebody just paid a few bucks for at most. For a film that's
09:11amounted as a throwback to campy horror films of decades past, these digital effects feel jarringly
09:16out of place, especially next to the movie's far more impressive practical gore effects.
09:202. Digitally De-Aged Catherine Keener
09:23The Adam Project
09:24Netflix's new sci-fi action film The Adam Project was a mostly fun time courtesy of its
09:29Ryan Reynolds-led cast, with an enjoyable time-travel premise and spectacular production
09:34values. That is, except for the movie's nightmare-fueled digital de-aging of the great Catherine
09:39Keener, who plays the film's primary antagonist Maya. At the end of the second act, she ends up
09:44meeting her younger self from 32 years in the past, which is achieved through the digital de-aging
09:49technology which is becoming increasingly common in big-budget blockbusters. Though the Marvel
09:53cinematic universe has proven the mind-boggling potential of this tech, in this case it falls
09:58massively short at the mark, looking more like a cheap deepfake that somebody mocked up on their
10:02home computer. It's an embarrassingly lousy job for a $160 million movie with otherwise robust
10:09visual effects.
10:101. The Opening Car Chase
10:12Kate
10:13Netflix's recent action thriller Kate certainly benefited from the steely presence of Mary Elizabeth
10:18Winstead as the titular assassin, though suffered immensely from both its laughably generic script
10:23and a VFX gaffe in the opening 10 minutes so shambolic it sent audience expectations barreling into
10:29the earth's core. The film's instigating set-piece sees Kate get into her car for a high-speed car
10:34chase, which for reasons which will likely never be made clear, is rendered entirely digitally.
10:39Though the movie features some acceptable practical action later on, this opening sequence is a
10:44hideous, video-gaming mess bringing back bad memories of early 2000s CGI car chases from the likes of
10:50Too Fast Too Furious. It immediately obliterates any hope that Kate might actually be a good film,
10:57perhaps lowering viewer expectations enough that they don't even really give the movie a chance
11:01or even just turn it straight off. It's altogether weirder when you consider that the director for
11:05this project is actually a VFX artist who received an Oscar nomination for his work on Snow White and
11:10the Huntsman. So that makes this absolutely wild.
11:14And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 CGI fails that totally ruined recent movies. I hope that
11:18you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section below.
11:22As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJWithAZero,
11:26or you can swing by Liv and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
11:29and it'd be great to see you over there, my friends. And I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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