Smash. Smash!

The Incredible Hulk

For this post, Hulk is a stand-in for CGI animation in general. I hate watching CGI characters fight on the screen. There is no drama, no story, just the output of a bunch of computer geeks who should have "`Can` is Not the Same as `Should`" tattooed on their foreheads. CGI is becoming more and more the province of lazy movie-making: "More CGI! More gun fights! More car chases!"

(An all-CGI movie is a cartoon, those do not count.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have a killer CGI team. Big fucking whoop. Reliance on CGI is just pitiful. You need only watch the first Star Wars movie (before Lucas fucked it up in `97) and compare it to any of the last three to see that. CGI is how Lucas was able to wring three movies out of this premise:

"Anakin Skywalker grows up, becomes a Jedi knight, schtups Princess Padamane and knoocks her up with twins, turns to the dark side with the assistance of Dick Cheney, slaughters all but two of the other Jedi knights, is horribly wounded by Obi Wan, and has to put on the black suit. The end."

Just as in every movie since Bullitt, a long car chase is a sign of "we haven't got much of a story, so we're going to drag it out" (think Ronin or Bourne Supremacy), a lot of CGI is a pretty good indication that there is going to be no there, there in the movie. CGI is the movie equivalent of "hamburger helper" or sawdust.

There ought to be a tax on the use of CGI. Or the directors need to be beaten with chains. Frankly, either solution is fine with me.