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Originally Posted by RiderSkyward

I still think it's that that put me off slightly with pacific rim and Avengers.

Avengers I agree was nuts with CGI, and not all of it was good. But Pacific Rim only used CGI for shit you couldn't do real. And yet despite that, the entire cockpits in the robots were massive three-story, hydraulic sets with the only CGI being the holograms and foot harnesses. (for safety reasons) All that moving mechanical business, the gallons of water splashing around, taht was real, physical stuff. Any other movie you know would make the cockpits all CGI They'd probably even take advantage of the pilots in full armour to make them CGI. (Afterall, Green Lantern took an entire bodysuit costume and mask and made it CGI for no good reason)

And plus, at leats in Pacific Rim, the CGI is astounding. When Knifhead first rises out of the water and we see him from head-on, he looks real. And most of all, huge. Ditto when he takes Gipsy's arm off. The way the water moves, the detail of the skin, the amount of little things affected by physics at that scale. Suits could never do that.

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On the other hand, a guy in a rubber suit smashing up a model village just feels all that more real to me. Probably nostalgia's fault that...

I guess it's just different viewpoints, because for me that nostalgia works against rubber suits. All I can think of is the silly Power Rangers and Godzilla films I've seen whe I think suits and miniatures.

Practical effects may be a craft... but that doesn't mean every single practical effect is good. There's a lot of awful practical effects out there. Hell, look at Transformers 2007. They went to a lot of trouble making a full-detailed life-sized Bumblebee, and a full sized Frenzy puppet operated by three people... and they looked AWFUL compared to the fluid, realistic CGI robots. There's also one scene I remember from the Dark Knight. When the Tumbler crushes a garbage truck in a tunnel. I rember thinking "man that's bad CG, it looks so fake and unnatural." Imagine my suprise to find that entire bit was real, done with miniatures. Yet it looked phoney.

And people complain about how fake 1998 Godzilla was... and there was a ton of practical effects in that, including a huge (but obviously not life-sized) godzilla from the waist-up, and full velocibaby suits with leg extentions that sadly I think were ditched despite being incredible.

CGI and practical effects both have merit, are both an artistic craft, and both take years of study and practice by dedicated individuals to perfect. If CGI has a downfall practical effects don't, it's that public opinion of CGI is worse, which is reflected by thsoe who do it. To paraphrase De Toro on the subject of CGI "People think Computer nimation and think the computer does the work. You don't put five dollars into a computer and a shot comes out. It's all still animated by hand." This incorrect mentality leads studios and effects workers to believe CGI is easier, use it, and not put the right ammount of time and effort into it and turn out substandard results. With Practical effects, the idea that it is a difficult, intricate craft means only the most serious and dedicated still try it. So it means less is used, but when it is it's usually better made. It has nothing to do with practical effects being better, or needing more work or skill. CGI just has a bad rap for being "easier." If popular opinions were reversed, I seriously believe there'd be more sub-par practical effects, and less CGI, but it'd be of better quality.

That's why it always bugs me when people propagate that mentality. You're only doing a disservice to both methods of effects. A true artist can make the most of whatever tools they're given. Sometimes effects companies will actually take a practical footage scene and remake it in CGI to show their chops, even though obviously you wouldn't do it in a movie.