This is one for the more Hollywood-insidery types. I know a lot of you are in the industry and are religious in your fandom of screenwriters and DOPs, etc. I think that's really cool, and I'm hoping you can help me out:


The trailers for Jurassic World look terrible and I think this movie is DOA. And while I'm happy for the Rock, I think San Andreas looks awful as well. The reason I'm disinterested in both of these films is simple; the CGI looks really fake.

The best use of CGI I've ever seen is still the first Jurassic Park. What I've tried to figure out so many times since then is whether it's really still the best or whether it made such an impression on me simply because I was so young when I saw it in theaters (about 8) and the technology was so new at the time.

Nonetheless, CGI isn't going anywhere. We first saw this frail excuse being touted when Lucas decided to make the Star Wars prequels. Of course we all know the line now - the technology wasn't available to make the movies in the 70s, but in the early 2000s the tech had finally caught up with the vision. Not only is this hilariously self-serving of Lucas to say, it also seemed to open up Pandora's box in a way. CGI now seems to be more than a tool; CGI has become a reason to make movies

Having recently read Wired's oral history of Industrial Light and Magic, I was truly surprised to see how adoring major directors like Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard are of CGI. They spoke of the technology in a way that seems to indicate they think it looks real and that it's far better than animatronics. This was strange to me. Those guys obviously know so much more about movies than I do, but does Steven Spielberg REALLY think a CG dinosaur looks better than an animatronic one? And even stranger, do Spielberg and his peers think they're getting performances from their actors that are as authentic as they were in, say, Jaws or ET or JP1?

So my larger question is this - do directors like Spielberg, Howard, Lucas, and Peter Jackson REALLY love CGI because of how it adds to a film OR do they just like the efficiency of it (sending a shot off to the computer guys, spending a day against a green screen in a warehouse versus spending a week making repairs to 20 ton T-Rex for example.)

I'm hoping one of you film guys can help me out, look forward to hearing what you have to say.