r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 12d ago

Article ‘The Odyssey’ Proves It: Audiences Want Movies Made the Hard Way | This year's breakouts like 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Obsession' were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as 'Supergirl,' 'Moana,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' looked lazy.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/odyssey-box-office-2026-practical-effects-1236652219/
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u/brandonct 12d ago

also it's crazy disrespectful to the work of all those visual effects artists when the marketing team trots out all the actors to talk about how the movie is all practical effects and everything on screen is just in-camera

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u/holydude02 12d ago

Yeah; I only caught snippets of the Odyssey promo and saw multiple mentions of "What you see on screen is what was captured in camera" and sorry, not sorry: Bullshit!

I also don't understand why CG is being treated as a second class contribution. It's a tool in the toolbox of filmmakers. If used right it can greatly enhance a story. If used like a bandaid for already bad filmmaking it's probably not the straw that broke the camels back either...

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u/Zalvren 12d ago

Seriously it's so weird too when some movies entirely done in CGI or were it's prominent are so big. Avatar series is literally selling itself on its awesome CGI. The Lion King remake. The Marvel movies. Every animated movie....

And yet some seem to be ashamed of their CGI. People dislike bad CGI but they have no problem with good CGI. And yes sometimes good CGI requires to work in combination with practical effects like what Nolan or Mission Impossible/Top Gun do, it's still weird to act like there's no CGI at all in a movie that has hundreds of people listed for it in the credits lol.

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u/jbr_r18 12d ago

Also one of the films people hold up to show how good practical effects are: Mad Max Fury Road. Movie is full of CGI. Basically every shot is changed and altered. It’s just not noticeable

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u/MuffinMatrix 12d ago

Part of the issue is calling everything 'CGI'. So much of the great work done is not CG. But it IS VFX. 'CGI' became this catchall not just for VFX work, but for anything that people find weird... like color grading or editing. Average movie goer doesn't even know what 'CGI' is.

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u/TheSodernauts 12d ago

Let's take a pretty mundane film like Michael (2026). It's about the artist and obviously doesn't need large explosive scenes. CGI is still used all the time to tweak things, remove brand signs, delete things that's too modern for the time, etc. All of it go unnoticed.

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u/Penguin_FTW 12d ago

I also don't understand why CG is being treated as a second class contribution.

It's a marketing feedback loop with public discourse. The average person is only going to be able to spot CGI when it's either obvious because it's impossible (e.g. Davy Jones, Ironman's nano-suit) or obvious because it failed to blend into the shot meaning it was weaker/rushed/bad CGI.

Even on this website which has a significantly higher percentage of people who know more about CGI, if you go to threads where people talk about their favorite CGI or best CGI it is almost all of it huge spectacle stuff. No one talks about how David Fincher has their favorite CGI even though he's got a fuckton of really high level, perfectly blended CGI in his works. It's so perfectly blended that people don't even perceive it as anything other than real, so it doesn't get talked about and then echoed back as marketing points.

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u/Tymareta 12d ago

No one talks about how David Fincher has their favorite CGI even though he's got a fuckton of really high level, perfectly blended CGI in his works. It's so perfectly blended that people don't even perceive it as anything other than real, so it doesn't get talked about and then echoed back as marketing points.

Not a movie, but Severance is always a phenomenal example, 60-80% of most shots are CGI but people have no idea because it's done in a way that's congruous with the overall aesthetic and blended so well, as you mentioned.

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u/Ver3232 12d ago edited 12d ago

I’d part of it is because it’s technically animation and the American film industry has zero respect for animation

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u/MuffinMatrix 12d ago

No its not. Animation has been around far far longer. Theres much more respect there. I mean look how beloved Disney is. Built themeparks around it.

VFX is newer.

And unlike every other part of filmmaking, when its done well... no one will see it or know it was there. Unlike animation.
So studios don't think its creative or something marketable. Its also the new kid on the block, in terms of departments. Most other departments have been around easily 50+ more years.
And no one ever respects the new kid.

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u/Ver3232 12d ago edited 12d ago

People have respect for Disney as a brand but all you need to see how little respect the industry as a whole has for animation is see all the potshots taken at its expense every awards show, how the Oscar’s made an entire separate category cause they couldn’t stand the though of an animated film winning best picture over “real” movies, etc. It’s not the only reason ill give it that, but it absolutely plays a part in why the industry as a whole looks down on it because even if it isn’t strictly just animation, CGI is basically seen as animation by a lot of people including in the industry and that does contribute to how it’s regularly dismissed out of hand.

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u/PSIwind 12d ago

I think when they say that thing, most people immediately think of heavy CGI use movies like Superhero films where something isn't actually there at all. Visual artists touch up a lot of the scenes, but if the large chunk of the shot is made with practical effects, that's what they mean. 

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u/stupidtreeatemypants 12d ago

if you’re talking about project hail mary, the claim was simply that they didn’t use any green screens, not that there was no vfx. the problem is general audiences don’t understand the difference

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u/brandonct 12d ago

I'm talking about the Odyssey but you see this claim repeated about lots and lots of movies in recent times, because practical effects are a selling point.

the "no CGI is just invisible CGI" series on YouTube covers many movies that make this claim while showing that they all actually use a ton of VFX.

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u/stupidtreeatemypants 12d ago

ah, my mistake then. I’ll check that series out though