Photo Courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd.

“We’re on the verge of a golden age… wonderful and illuminating cinema seen in large theaters.” said the well known film director, Francis Ford Coppola, after the release of Oppenheimer and Barbie. Both movies used a wide variety of practical effects to create spectacular scenes that seem like they were made using CGI.

Practical effects are special effects that aren’t computer generated. These effects include the use of makeup and prosthetics for a character, as well as the use of puppets to create a character. It also includes props to create a realistic setting in a movie.

In more recent times, we’ve seen CGI take over the movie industry with movies like Avengers Infinity War, The Flash, Blue Beetle, etc. Since the release of Oppenheimer and Barbie, the use of practical effects have made a comeback. With these blockbuster movies hitting the theater, movies that rely heavily on CGI are losing the attention it used to have. And it is mostly because of how fake they look.

Many of the movies that rely on CGI would be superhero movies. Marvel and DC have been all over the theaters with upcoming movies like, The Marvels, Kraven the Hunter, and Aquaman 2. But regardless of the spine chilling trailers that we see, the movies are usually a great disappointment.

A great example would be The Flash. Although the movie flopped because of the controversy and arrests of Ezra Miller, I wouldn’t doubt it if fans were let down by the horrible special effects too. For those who saw the movie, I’m referring to the beginning scene of the movie where the Flash saves what seems to be babies from falling to their doom.

Furthermore, Marvel has also been known to have some interesting and breathtaking special effects, but we’ve seen so many Marvel movies that the CGI isn’t as spectacular as it used to be. It got old and the quality got worse. In Ant Man 3, we saw an iconic character ruined by these special effects. MODOK was very fake, it was very obvious and that took away from the excitement of the character. Cinema used to be about who could come up with a breathtaking story using their creativity to tell it, but now it’s about who can create the most realistic CGI

However, there are some movies that make an exception. And that is because they told a great story and created an authentic experience. The Avatar franchise, for instance, used motion capture body rigs to authenticate the CGI movement. In other words, these special effects captured every emotion and body language that the actors conveyed while filming.

Nevertheless, the use of CGI has led to a lot of flops and a lot of controversy between directors who take film very seriously. In 2019, Martin Scorsese criticized Marvel and the movies it created. Scorsese created award winning films, such as Goodfellas and Taxi Driver. He said that Marvel movies are like “theme parks” This controversial statement that was backed up by many other directors like Francis Ford Coppola. Many of which said the same thing, these movies lacked the creative storytelling and they focused more on special effects that weren’t even good.

This is why practical effects are better. They create an authentic experience while also telling a story. Take Top Gun: Maverick for example, it used real planes and the actors who play these characters were flying those planes. This created more of an emotional response because we saw a genuine reaction from the actors.

Oppenheimer used no cgi in the film, everything you saw in that film used practical effects only. Yes, even the trinity A-bomb test was not computer generated. Christopher Nolan is known for creating movies with limited or no CGI. Nolan has been known for creating iconic movies like Interstellar and Inception, yet he creates movies with crazy visuals. Nolan did use CGI for both of those films but it was very minimal. The Hallway scene in Inception and the cornfield chase in Interstellar did not use CGI.

When I watched Oppenheimer in theaters, I was taken away from the effects in the film because it was something I had never seen before. But when I see movies like Ant Man 3 or The Flash, you start to lose interest in the movie because it’s the same thing everytime. A sad attempt to create a movie that solely relies on CGI. “Wonderful and illuminating cinema seen in large theaters.” That is the kind of cinema I admire and one I hope to see take over the industry.