Random Times Movies Used CGI For Absolutely No Good Reason (13 items)

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  (#10) Vacation

  • Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Chris Hemsworth, Leslie Mann, Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Charlie Day, Catherine Missal, Ron Livingston, Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, Regina Hall, Alkoya Brunson, Hannah Davis

  One wouldn't generally associate the Vacation movies with the egregious overuse of CGI (mainly because most of them came out when computers couldn't do much more than make you wait two hours to see a naughty picture). But in the 2015 reboot attempt, it was deemed necessary to pull out all the digital stops when a scene required Christina Applegate to chug a full pitcher of beer. After she complained that drinking that much lager all at once would potentially result in barf-related complications, she was allowed to mimic the act using an empty container, with the offending fluid added later in post-production.

  For the amount of money involved, you'd think she could have practiced imbibing large amounts of apple juice or something. Or hire any third-rate magician to create the illusion of a chugalug. It was a silly situation, but when you have critics (like Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times) calling your film a "vile, odious disaster," perhaps CGI-versus-practical-effects arguments are the least of your worries.
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  (#13) Tag

  • Ed Helms, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Jake Johnson, Annabelle Wallis, Hannibal Buress, Isla Fisher, Rashida Jones, Leslie Bibb

  You know Jeremy Renner has to be tough when his alter-ego is a superhero who has no superpowers and got into the Avengers with nothing more than a weapon that anyone can buy at the local Walmart. He proved his intestinal fortitude when he injured himself while trying to evade co-stars Jon Hamm, Ed Helms, and Hannibal Buress in a scene in the comedy Tag, after which he agreed to perform another take with two broken arms.

  And if that wasn't enough evidence that Renner is a trooper, he filmed the rest of the movie in pain and with casts on. You'd never know it, however, because instead of writing "Get well soon LOL" on the casts, they were painted green so that the magic of CGI could make it look like they weren't there at all. Well, almost. If you pay close attention, you can see Renner wearing a brace while he's wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and there's one part where his hands noticeably levitate oddly over a tabletop. Which begs the question: If you're going to go through all that trouble to make arms that look only semi-realistic, why not just make the movie a thousand times cooler by giving him tentacles?
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  (#8) Blood Diamond

  • Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, David Harewood, Arnold Vosloo, Caruso Kuypers, Michael Sheen, Basil Wallace, Ntare Mwine, Stephen Collins, Jimi Mistry, Chris Astoyan, Benu Mabhena

  While Jennifer Connelly had been in all sorts of acclaimed films by 2006 and even won an Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress in A Beautiful Mind), crying on command apparently was a skill she had yet to snap onto her acting toolbelt. No big deal, however - the filmmakers could simply insert a virtual drop of drippy saline during a scene in which she was required to display some proof of her emotion-driven sniveling.

  You'd think as a trained thespian she could have drawn on some past tragedy, put a thumbtack in her shoe, or thought back to David Bowie's aggressively prodigious codpiece in Labyrinth to get the tears flowing. Heck, haven't there been all sorts of movie tricks to elicit fake weepage for decades? Well, reportedly the simple truth is that using CGI is the cheapest option when compared to dragging actors back to the set for reshoots, even though (according to an anonymous insider who told The Times of London), "Everyone feels a bit dirty about it."
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  (#12) Eyes Wide Shut

  • Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Marie Richardson, Rade Serbedzija, Todd Field, Vinessa Shaw, Alan Cumming, Sky du Mont, Fay Masterson, Leelee Sobieski, Thomas Gibson, Madison Eginton, Louise J. Taylor, Stewart Thorndike, Julienne Davis, Carmela Marner, Tres Hanley, Clarke Hayes, Leslie Lowe, Phil Davies

  Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut sure did have a whole lot of nekkid people cavorting about, engaging in acts that... let’s just say it's not the sort of movie you'd want to go see with your grandmother. In fact, the film was so jam-packed with wanton coitus and various bits flopping about that the ratings board was going to slap it with the dreaded NC-17 rating if drastic measures weren't taken to tone down the in-your-face perversity.

  While it's unknown whether Kubrick would have approved of any ratings board-placating alterations, as he passed late in post-production (after submitting a completed edit), the studio found a way to avoid having to do everything over while keeping the perfectionist director's perfectly staged orgy scenes intact. By using CGI to insert and rearrange some of the figures in frame to block out just enough of the smut, Warner Bros. was able to secure the much more acceptable R rating. A PG-13 was probably out of the question, at least without adding a whole football team's worth of digital extras to block the screen and have them all sing a jaunty tune to cover up all the moaning.
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  (#6) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

  • Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Drew Barrymore, C. Thomas Howell, Robert MacNaughton, K.C. Martel, Sean Frye

  Toward the end of the sci-fi classic E.T., the plucky kids our alien hero has befriended try to help the unclothed, disturbing-looking xeno-monstrosity escape the authorities so that it might return to space (and presumably deliver the vital intelligence to its race needed to plan humanity's demise). The FBI agents tasked with saving Earth are armed with shotguns, which seems perfectly reasonable when you're dealing with an interplanetary, telekinetic goblin with a threateningly bioluminescent pointy finger.

  But decades after the film's release, Spielberg apparently developed the same overwhelming urge that caused George Lucas to make unnecessary "special edition" alterations to the Star Wars universe. Specifically, Spielberg thought showing FBI agents wielding firearms was simply too terrifying a notion to be contemplated by our sensitive youth, and so he digitally replaced the weapons with less threatening walkie-talkies (which, when you think about it, could be used to call in more agents with shotguns). But at least later on he apparently saw the overbearing nanny-like errors of his ways, lamenting to an audience at a 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, "I realized that what I had done was I had robbed the people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T. And I regretted that."
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  (#4) Justice League

  • Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons, Ciarán Hinds, Joe Morton, Amber Heard, Michael McElhatton, Lisa Loven Kongsli

  In 2017, Hollywood was at the center of a scandalous follicle-related controversy when Henry Cavill showed up on the set of Justice League wearing a bushy mustache more suitable for a 1970s cop movie. Why? Well, Cavill just so happened to be filming Mission: Impossible - Fallout at the same time, and he had grown out his bountiful cookie duster specifically for the role of a CIA assassin named August Walker.

  As Cavill was presumably more willing to annoy the filmmakers behind Justice League rather than risk Tom Cruise coming over to his house to furiously jump up and down on his couch, the chosen solution was to digitally eradicate the offending facial fuzz. Unfortunately, the end result was that Superman's mug in certain scenes somehow ended up looking not just unrealistic, but simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Which generally isn't considered a good look for superheroes outside of the Deadpool franchise.

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