4 Horrible CGI Effects That Movies Need to Stop Using

Really, Stallone? You of all people would replace practical fake blood with CGI-rendered goop, when you owe your career to tangible fake blood? We're not sure why films like this started digitally phoning in their gore, but our best guess is that it has something to do with turning a PG-13 theatrical release into an "unrated edition" Blu-ray with the press of a few buttons.

And then again, why not? For the studios, CG blood is cleaner on set and easy to control in post-production -- the only measly drawbacks are that characters are now apparently filled with red Flubber, and the movie looks like crusty dog shit.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.
The fluid physics were based on a careful study of the porn parody 369.

Yeah, we're honestly not sure why the 300 sequel needed an R rating when all the violence looks like a stop-motion Go-Gurt ad. Well, at least that other hallmark of action movies -- the bare-knuckle car chase -- remains unsullied by bleep-bloop laptop fuckwittery.

In fact, seeing real stunts is kind of the point of action and adventure films. The Matrix Reloaded may suck ass in every other conceivable sense, but you still feel it is worth your money because they smashed up real cars. The Expendables 3, on the other hand, apparently couldn't be bothered to leave the four-block radius around Arnold Schwarzenegger's Malibu compound:

Lionsgate Films

Lionsgate Films
Pictured: The sunset filmed from the window of a limousine.

Isn't this supposed to be the Fantasia of action films? And they didn't bother to go to an actual city to film it? At least the movie Lucy gives us a real car in a real city ... albeit surrounded by a bunch of fake shit.

Universal Studios
Also, Scarlett Johansson is actually a 79-year-old Armenian man.

It's not hard to see why the Need for Speed movie was flooded with praise for shooting actual car chases, when the next Fast and Furious film looks like someone hooked a computer up to an 8-year-old's brain.

Universal Studios
Or the gritty Pitfall reboot.

It doesn't matter how nice it looks; if your action film has a cartoon man jumping off a computer-generated bus, it has failed as an action film. At least the literal and figurative CGI car wreck from In Time is hilarious enough to be entertaining.

20th Century Fox
People that ran out of time: Olivia Wilde, the CG department.

Yeah. That's not one of those robot soldiers or putty patrollers or whatever-the-fuck from the cartoon; a human man gets thrown into a high-speed train by what's supposed to be one of the film's heroes. And now, presumably, he's mangled on the train floor with shards of glass in his lifeless face, next to some small child who will now probably grow up to join ISIS. For some reason, Hollywood's totally fine with that being in a kid movie, just how they're fine with incinerating the comic relief in Transformers 4 before completely forgetting about his death a few scenes later.

Paramount Pictures
"Stop covering your eyes, boy. I paid IMAX 3D prices; you're watching it. All. Of. It."

Don't get us wrong: trivial violence is a lot of fun when the action guy is mowing down rows of evil terrorists or Nazis -- but there's a big difference between Indiana Jones letting a bad guy get shredded by a war plane and Captain America's sidekick, Bucky, casually sidekicking a good guy into a turbine:

Marvel Studios
"Witness the secret origin of The Splendid Turbine-Man! Marvel Phase 7!"

Spoilers: Bucky is evil when this happens, but he's supposed to eventually turn good again, and the film spends exactly zero time letting us reflect on how fucked-up it is that he uses an innocent man as an anti-aircraft projectile. But, then again, that's just how it is now: Man of Steel carelessly murders hundreds of thousands because Superman punching a guy through a building looks cool. CGI can make casual deaths so cartoonishly removed from real life that we're spending only enough time for it to be trivial -- not long enough to realize the irony of doing so. That is, when CGI is even showing death in the first place ...

This is why CG is great for making fantastical beings look real, but it sucks at making real beings look fantastical. We can buy Gandalf fighting a Balrog in Lord of the Rings and falling off a cliff, because we see him royally fucked-up afterward. But the moment this shit starts to happen in The Hobbit ...

New Line Cinema

New Line Cinema

New Line Cinema
"Oh, dear. Got a splinter in my finger."

... they might as well just make a cartoon.

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While we're on the topic, check out The 7 Most Common CGI Screw-Ups (Explained) and 7 Amazing Movie Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI.