Why do blockbusters get a free ride now?

[T'Pau]

Films from the time we are all remembering fondly, mostly came from well written books or short stories.

As soon as people could bring home a VHS/DVD or watch untold amounts of PayPerView and stream content legally or otherwise, the move in the film community seemed to turn to 'the louder and more bombastic, the more seats we will fill..they will HAVE to see it on the big screen because the CGI is sooo cool' mentality. I find some films are played at such an extreme volume that I need ear protection of some format.

Here in the US, there are more people in an expensive movie theater seat using their phones or talking loudly to their friends, than are watching the film in front of them. Rude is the new normal. Feet up on chair backs, talking AT the screen, texting, etc.

I'd love to take a survey, and see how many of the average movie goers, have read a good book recently. I'm betting not as many as 10-20yrs ago.

Do I enjoy a full blown CGI extravaganza? I do, from time to time. I can turn off the outside world, and revel at what is possible in movie making. I just bring ear plugs!

[McAvoy]

I got this theory that has been brewing pretty much since the first Transformers movie. With the easy use of CGI in creating anything you want for a movie where as before it woukd have been impractical or unbelievable with practical effects.

We have all seen or read about behind the scenes on older movies where there may have been a scene in the script that just wasn't doable or would have been prohibitedly expensive to do, they made work arounds. They may havd deleted the scene or or altered it in a way to expand the film or in hindsight could have slowed the movie down in some way. They could have added a new scene to flesh out the characters more or something.

Or when it came to making SFX practically they got creative in how they did it and sometimes it looked believable.

It seems nowadays that the script is written around the SFX shots and not the other way around. Like the script is secondary to what CGI stuff you can throw in.

Maybe it's just me but it just seems the scripts are just dumber and don't hold up as well as they used to. Especially sequels. Got directors like Bay and Abrams who both are guilty of that.

[T'Pau]

I still find the CGI of humans to be, plain and simple, creepy as sh*t!

Whether it is de-aging or complete fabrication, it stands out glaringly as wrong in so many ways.

For me, it interrupts the storytelling and makes me wonder "why did they feel they needed that character/moment?". Less about adding to the moment, more subtracting and derailing it.

Most CGI of animals is pretty spot on (as long as they aren't partially human and singing badly <shudder>), so maybe it should be left to that!

[McAvoy]

On one side, it's not like practical effects were any good in recreating human faces either. They always looked lifeless and plastic. Like in the first Terminator when he was fixing his eye.

I think when it comes CGI it's the limit of what they can do now and they have to use some trickery. Like the human face is not flat or static. I think in order to make a human truly look real, they would have to make a really large scale face and design the underlying features to do certain things involuntarily. Like a miniscule muscle twitch, or a slight increased of decreased in blood flow to small a section of the face. Making the pores of the face actual pores and not a CGI skin made to look it.

Ultimately though the problem with faces specifically human faces is that due to how we evolves as a species is that rely very heavily on facial cues from everything from love, threats, mere conversations to just facial recognition. It's sometjing ingrained into us as babies when we first recognize our parents.

It's also why we can recreate animals to look lifelike because of the fact that we as a species are not as tuned to animal behavior and their own slight quirks.

Hell, we still have some issues creating realistic looking robots due to how natural metal reflects light. Metal like steel has grain and slight imperfections in it that will reflect the light slightly different.

This works better with scale though. Like ships or even cars because you are not that close to it to see up close.