Over the years, computer generated effects have become an increasingly crucial tool in
Hollywood's arsenal — but there's a right way and a wrong way to handle them.
While some movies use CGI as a gentle paintbrush, others have clobbered audiences over the head
with it, resulting in big-budget disappointment.
Not all the movies in this list are clunkers, but if the digital effects were a little bit
better, they might have been better received.
Here are some movies that were all-but-ruined by their special effects.
I Am Legend
This 2007 movie put Will Smith as the lone survivor of a zombie-ruled world.
Aside from his trusty canine, Smith spends the first 40 minutes of the movie totally
alone — then the Darkseekers show up and ruin everything.
Director Francis Lawrence didn’t intend to use CGI for the Darkseekers.
He wanted to rely on actors and practical effects, but when it came time to shoot the
movie, the effects weren’t convincing.
With no time to make corrections, he had to resort to CGI.
He would later describe the CGI compromise as a major disappointment in a conversation
with Den of Geek.
"When I saw the dailies, I broke out into a cold sweat.
They were very pale, and covered in this chalky powder to protect their skin, which was a
really interesting concept, but it looked like a bunch of mime artists running across
Washington Square Park.
It didn't work at all."
The Thing
John Carpenter's The Thing is a masterpiece of practical effects, with body horror sequences
that still look frighteningly good to this day.
The same cannot be said for The Thing’s 2011 prequel.
While the filmmakers worked to make the story fit with Carpenter’s chronology, the movie's
special effects don't hold a candle to what the 1982 version accomplished.
That's not to say they didn't try — the production hired special effects house studioADI
to bring the gooey, gross monsters to life.
Unfortunately, due to problems with scheduling and budget, many of the company's practical
effects didn’t show up in the movie.
According to Bloody Disgusting,
"[The film] was such a disaster that studioADI later fan-funded a film called Harbinger Down,
which was made as an apology for what happened in 2011."
Tron: Legacy
The majority of the special effects in the 2010 Tron sequel are pretty great — except
for the CGI face of a young Jeff Bridges as the movie’s villain, Clu.
Despite best efforts, the de-aged Bridges looked off.
A Time magazine review summed up the issues, saying,
"He looks just like young Bridges if young Bridges had had way too much plastic surgery,
so it's hard to take him seriously.
Clu seems more like an unfortunate Botox victim than a dastardly despot."
Green Lantern
Before Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds suited up for DC as Hal Jordan, aka Green Lantern — the
first film in a planned franchise for the glowing green hero.
Those plans didn't pan out.
People came to see the Green Lantern, but what they got was mostly green screen.
While Reynolds told Yahoo!
Movies that the script was to blame for the film's failure, the mediocre, wall-to-wall
CGI didn’t help.
A review from ScreenCrush went in on the movie’s fatal flaws, saying,
"Almost nothing on-screen is real, up to and including the sense of adventure.
It's just a bunch of digital stuff shooting other digital stuff.
And some of that digital stuff looks really bad."
"WOAH"
The Matrix Reloaded
In 1999, The Matrix was a special effects marvel.
But when The Matrix Reloaded hit theaters just a few years later, CGI took the driver's
seat.
The high-tech wire work and practical effects that made the original so jaw-dropping were
washed out in a sea of CGI that looked iffy, and aged poorly.
This issue is most apparent during the movie's infamous "Burly Brawl" scene — a sequence
that found Keanu Reeves' Neo battling hundreds of Agent Smiths.
The concept probably jumped off the page, but the finished product of the Burly Brawl
is really more of a mushy mess.
The Mummy Returns
When the sequel to The Mummy hit theaters in 2001, digital effects were still very much
in their infancy, but that didn’t stop this movie from leaning into the spectacle.
Like a cake that isn’t quite done cooking yet, the effects look rubbery and half-baked,
and they’ve aged even more poorly than the mummy itself.
This was Dwayne Johnson's first foray into the big-budget world of blockbuster movies,
being introduced as the villainous Scorpion King — unfortunately, the People's Champ
ended up looking more like a video game villain when he showed up for his climactic fight
scene.
It would’ve been impressive on the Playstation 2, but on the big screen?
Not even close.
Hulk
Ang Lee's character-driven take on the Hulk has its supporters, but the movie’s special
effects are far from incredible.
The Dissolve, discussing the Marvel movie, noted that:
"The effects used to create the Hulk keep hitting the limits of what 2003 CGI could
accomplish, making the monster look more like a work of animation than green flesh and blood."
When Lee's Hulk hit theaters, the MCU was just a twinkle in Marvel's eye.
Lee did the best with what he had, but at the end of the day, Hulk's green giant left
us pining for the good ol' days of Lou Ferrigno in all his body painted glory.
At least that getup felt real.
Well — sort of.
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