Deepfake Catherine Keener ruined The Adam Project's third act.
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00:00 So, CGI is everywhere in movies these days.
00:04 All but the most low-budget of films will use visual effects for a multitude of reasons,
00:08 but all are in an attempt to elevate the production in one way or another.
00:11 But the examples that we're looking at today, well, they dragged entire projects down.
00:16 So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10
00:20 CGI fails that totally ruined recent movies.
00:23 10.
00:24 All the goofy analyst effects
00:26 The Matrix Resurrections
00:28 The Matrix Resurrections is one of the most confounding movies of the last year, an ambitious
00:33 swing and a miss for writer-director Lana Wachowski, which overreaches with its clumsy
00:38 meta-commentary while also failing to deliver satisfying action sequences.
00:43 There are admittedly several issues which prevent the action from living up to the three
00:47 previous films, and the ugly digital cinematography is a major culprit.
00:51 And Wachowski's clear disinterest in even trying to match, let alone top, the accomplishments
00:56 of the original trilogy.
00:58 But perhaps the biggest disappointment of Resurrections is that it's utterly lacking
01:01 in groundbreaking visual effects moments.
01:04 In an era where spectacle is commonplace, Resurrections' VFX looks dead ordinary at
01:10 best and in some cases are legitimately unpleasant.
01:14 The biggest offender by far is the decision to deploy a visually repulsive effect on the
01:18 film's villain, the analyst, during several of his scenes.
01:22 For instance, when the analyst springs a bullet-time trap on Neo, the scene was shot with the bullet
01:26 two cameras at the same time, each running at a different frame rate, 24 frames per second
01:31 and 120 frames per second.
01:34 These shots were then composited together in post-production to produce an off-kilter
01:38 image that we see in the final film, which is ultimately more of a stuttery, blurry mess
01:43 than a compelling, trippy look that Wachowski was presumably going for.
01:46 Unlike most films on this list, it's less that the fidelity of the VFX were poor throughout
01:51 than the execution being totally off, ensuring the awe-striking feeling of the first three
01:56 movies was completely absent here.
01:58 9.
01:59 The Tyrant and the Cerberus – Resident Evil, Welcome to Raccoon City
02:03 Oh, Resident Evil.
02:06 Fans of the video games really, really, really wanted Welcome to Raccoon City to deliver
02:10 a more spirited, faithful rendition of the video game series compared to the Paul W.S.
02:15 Anderson films, but the end result was a cheap, unintentionally comical and mostly poorly
02:20 acted mess.
02:21 One of the defining problems was its rather low budget of $25 million, less than even
02:26 the original's $33 million price tag, ensuring that the directing team was unable to render
02:31 the series' iconic creatures with lavishly grotesque VFX.
02:34 Instead, there's a pronounced bargain-basement quality to the film's two major digital
02:39 creatures, the zombie dog known as the Cerberus and William Birkin's final mutation.
02:44 Given that these are two of the game's most iconic villains, to see them look ironically
02:48 like something out of a PS1 FMV was the last straw for a lot of fans, who had basically
02:53 already given up on the movie.
02:55 Hopefully Netflix spent a little more money on the upcoming Resident Evil TV series.
03:00 8.
03:01 Poorly Green-Screened Fan Bing Bing – The 355
03:04 The 355 is admittedly a pretty terrible movie any way you slice it.
03:09 A migraine-inducingly boring spy thriller packed with limp action sequences, atrocious
03:14 dialogue and some weirdly awful visual effects.
03:17 Many of the few people who actually bothered to watch it noted that the cast member, Fan
03:21 Bing Bing, looked a little strange throughout the film, as though some sort of post-production
03:26 effect was applied to her.
03:27 But upon closer inspection, it appears that Bing Bing was actually green-screened into
03:31 a number of the film's scenes, most distractingly during her final farewell from the rest of
03:36 the team, where her personal lighting doesn't match that of the rest of the scene at all.
03:41 Throughout the film, we rarely see her in shots with her fellow cast members, and it's
03:44 hilariously clear that she shot a good portion of her material without them, with the VFX
03:49 and editing teams tasked with incorporating it into the existing footage.
03:53 While we don't know exactly what went down, between the 355 undergoing extensive reshoot
03:58 and Bing Bing's movement being restricted by the Chinese government due to her recent
04:02 tax evasion scandal, it's possible that director Simon Kinberg simply had to make the best
04:06 with her limited availability.
04:07 Either way, Bing Bing looks subtly off most of the time that she's on screen, and while
04:12 the audience might not know precisely why, their brain absolutely understands that something
04:16 isn't right, the lighting doesn't match, and she isn't sharing a physical space with
04:20 her co-stars.
04:21 7.
04:22 That's Definitely Not Egypt – Death on the Nile
04:26 To be completely fair to Kenneth Branagh's long-delayed Agatha Christie adaptation, Death
04:30 on the Nile is actually a pretty fun time in terms of its frothy story and knowing performances,
04:35 even though it's tough not to be constantly distracted by the rather woefully unsatisfactory
04:40 VFX.
04:41 The bulk of the murder-mystery plot naturally unfolds on the cruise ship, the SS Karnak,
04:45 that's sailing down the Nile, and yet there's such a blatant artificiality to the exterior
04:50 elements that it's never even remotely convincing that the film was actually shot in Egypt.
04:55 Though the production originally considered filming in Egypt and then Morocco, the latter
04:59 a common stand-in for the former, it was ultimately deemed too difficult, and so the entire main
05:03 shoot was instead filmed on soundstages in England.
05:07 A second unit did shoot some background plates in Egypt, yet whenever the cast are outside
05:11 of the ship, it's painfully apparent that they're just performing in front of a green
05:14 screen which was then composited into a digital backdrop later.
05:18 This is most egregiously apparent when Jackie first boards the ship in a lavish wide shot
05:22 of the horizon, which looks laughably fake.
05:25 6.
05:26 The Uncanny Valley Mermaids – The King's Daughter
05:29 The plot focuses on King Louis XIV's attempts to kidnap a mermaid and steal her life force
05:34 in order to ensure his own immortality.
05:36 The mermaid is played through performance capture by Fan Bingbing, who seems to be rather
05:40 unlucky where botched CGI is concerned according to this list, and the mermaid is, quite simply,
05:44 horrific to look at.
05:46 Bingbing's features are basically distorted beyond almost all recognition, at which point
05:50 you have to even wonder why the filmmakers bothered hiring her at all.
05:54 Despite the performance capture work, nothing about the mermaids feels rooted in a physical
05:57 reality.
05:58 It all looks painstakingly hand-animated by an overworked VFX artist, and feels unmistakably
06:04 off in every single scene.
06:06 This is almost certainly the aspect of the movie's post-production which held up its
06:10 release, and yet it would also shock absolutely nobody if this was the exact same state it
06:14 was in 8 years ago, as the CGI certainly doesn't look like it's evolved beyond 2014, or 2004
06:20 to be fair.
06:21 5.
06:22 Video Gamey CGI – Uncharted
06:24 Though general audiences have responded with mild enthusiasm for the big screen adaptation
06:29 of Naughty Dog's hit video game Uncharted, the reception from fans of the games and critics
06:34 has been considerably more mixed.
06:36 While on paper it might seem unscrew-uppable to adapt a game to the big screen like this,
06:40 seeing as it was itself so indebted to classic action and adventure movies like Indiana Jones,
06:45 it's actually not quite so simple.
06:47 Even beyond the questionable script, mediocre performances and lacklustre direction, Uncharted
06:52 is ultimately hamstrung by its frequently garish CGI.
06:56 Right from the opening sequence, in which we glimpse Nathan Drake scrambling his way
07:00 up a cargo plane's perilously hanging luggage, there's an off-putting, ugly blurriness
07:04 to all of the effects.
07:06 Never once are we convinced that we're watching anything other than Tom Holland on
07:09 a green screen set that he's just been keyed into.
07:12 Ironically, it looks less like a live action movie and more like a, well, a video game.
07:16 Part of the problem is that Uncharted had a budget that's just not quite big enough.
07:20 Though Sony were in many ways sensible to make it for "only" $120 million and reduce
07:25 their financial exposure, the trade-off is that so many of the effects shots look absolutely
07:30 hideous.
07:31 4.
07:32 Low Budget Animation – The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wilde
07:36 Now, expectations were admittedly through the floor for this new Ice Age spin-off that
07:40 was recently released to Disney+, but would it have killed billionaire conglomerate Disney
07:44 to throw a little bit more cash at this sorry production?
07:47 Beyond the fact that The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wilde is a fundamentally unremarkable,
07:51 completely forgettable entry into the series, it doesn't even function as a basic aesthetic
07:55 pleasure because it's clear that Disney just cut corners to save what money they could.
07:59 Though the studio behind the previous Ice Age films, Blue Sky Studios, was shut down
08:03 after being acquired by Disney, did Disney really need to outsource production of this
08:07 spin-off to a small Canadian studio with little experience working on major Hollywood animations?
08:12 Evidently, the studio did the best they could, with a small crew working entirely remotely
08:17 during the pandemic on a project far outside their usual scope.
08:20 But make no bones about it, this is a shockingly ugly film.
08:24 3.
08:25 The Digital Demon Effects – Studio 666
08:28 On paper, comedy horror film Studio 666 actually seemed like a lot of fun.
08:33 Here the Foo Fighters play scarcely fictionalised versions of themselves who face off against
08:37 their demonic presence while recording their new album.
08:39 It's a fun idea that positions the movie to be a giddy homage to classic horror films
08:43 such as The Evil Dead and Halloween.
08:45 Hell, John Carpenter even helped compose the score and even has a small cameo.
08:49 And while the Foo Fighters themselves, outside of Dave Grohl, aren't exactly the most natural
08:53 of actors and the script is basically a mess, what really sinks Studio 666 is its unfortunate
08:58 commitment to some truly wretched CGI.
09:01 Whenever the demonic entities appear on screen, the resulting elemental effects look like
09:05 terrible Adobe After Effects plugins that somebody just paid a few bucks for at most.
09:10 For a film that's mounted as a throwback to campy horror films of decades past, these
09:14 digital effects feel jarringly out of place, especially next to the movie's far more
09:18 impressive practical gore effects.
09:20 2.
09:21 Digitally De-Aged Catherine Keener – The Adam Project
09:24 Netflix's new sci-fi action film The Adam Project was a mostly fun time courtesy of
09:29 its Ryan Reynolds-led cast.
09:31 With an enjoyable time travel premise and spectacular production values.
09:35 That is, except for the movie's nightmare-fueled digital de-aging of the great Catherine Keener,
09:40 who plays the film's primary antagonist, Maya.
09:42 At the end of the second act, she ends up meeting her younger self from 32 years in
09:46 the past, which is achieved through the digital de-aging technology which is becoming increasingly
09:51 common in big-budget blockbusters.
09:53 Though the Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven the mind-boggling potential of this tech,
09:57 in this case it falls massively short of the mark, looking more like a cheap deepfake that
10:01 somebody mocked up on their home computer.
10:04 It's an embarrassingly lousy job for a $160 million movie with otherwise robust visual
10:09 effects.
10:10 1.
10:11 The Opening Car Chase – Kate
10:12 Netflix's recent action thriller Kate certainly benefited from the steely presence of Mary
10:18 Elizabeth Winstead as the titular assassin, though suffered immensely from both its laughably
10:22 generic script and a VFX gaffe in the opening 10 minutes so shambolic it sent audience expectations
10:28 barrelling into the Earth's core.
10:30 The film's instigating set piece sees Kate get into her car for a high-speed car chase,
10:34 which for reasons which will likely never be made clear, is rendered entirely digitally.
10:39 Though the movie features some acceptable practical action later on, this opening sequence
10:43 is a hideous video-gamey mess bringing back bad memories of early 2000s CGI car chases
10:49 from the likes of 'Too Fast, Too Furious'.
10:52 It immediately obliterates any hope that Kate might actually be a good film, perhaps lowering
10:57 viewer expectations enough that they don't even really give the movie a chance or even
11:02 just turn it straight off.
11:03 It's altogether weirder when you consider that the director for this project is actually
11:06 a VFX artist who received an Oscar nomination for his work on 'Snow White and the Huntsman',
11:11 so that makes this absolutely wild.
11:13 And there we go my friends, those were 10 CGI fails that totally ruined recent movies.
11:17 I hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in
11:20 the comments section below.
11:22 As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJWithA0 or you can
11:26 swing by Liv and Let's Dice where I do all of my streaming outside of work and it'd
11:29 be great to see you over there my friends.
11:31 I'll speak to you soon, bye.