An interesting thing I've noticed recently is that CGI both opens up possibilities and closes them down, and it's in the closing that it becomes painful. As th

An interesting thing I've noticed recently is that CGI both opens up possibilities and closes them down, and it's in the closing that it becomes painful. As the author points out, in older practical effects movies, you knew that you wouldn't get many big macro shots of a lot of things happening at once. In Alien, you weren't going to see the alien walking around in natural light with camera angles all around it, because it would quickly become obvious that it's someone in a suit or an animatronic. In CGI you get the opposite scenario: you'll see big believable macro shots of fleets of spaceships, but when a human actor is interacting with a CGI actor, you know that they aren't going to believably inhabit the same small space: e.g. hugs, kisses, punches, etc., are probably not going to happen, or, if they do, will involve some predictable trickery. For example if a menacing CGI robot strides threateningly towards a human actor, you know they won't believably grab the actor and go face to face, not without some cunning cuts. This is especially apparent in television shows with lower budgets. The space scenes in Battlestar Galactica were consistently incredible, but I was never once convinced by the non-human Cylons when they were in the same room as humans. I watch newer CGI movies with an eye towards how artists are addressing these issues.