There’s a newish David Attenborough–narrated CGI nature documentary about dinosaurs, and I think it suffers from something like this. The photorealism is top no

There’s a newish David Attenborough–narrated CGI nature documentary about dinosaurs, and I think it suffers from something like this. The photorealism is top notch but it still looks fake. At first I thought it was that the dinosaurs’ movement felt off, but I now think it’s more that the the cinematography doesn’t feel enough like a nature doc. It feels more like a cinematic feature, where everything about the framing and mise en scene is intentional and beautiful, too much so. Bits of blurred foliage in front of the subject feel like a DOP’s intentional ‘dirty frame’ rather than something that accidentally got in the way of the (imaginary) camera operator while they tried to get their shot of a fleeting animal moment. It’s all just too nice and considered. Or maybe it’s just that I know it’s fake because it’s dinosaurs, making this an unsolvable problem, I’m not sure.