Beeeeeyoouuuu

While I maintain that I Am Legend was great, I have been thinking a bit on one of it's flaws/shortcomings/whathaveyous:

Computer Generated Imagery - CGI use nowadays in film might be likened to the use of synth in 80's music. "Why use a guitar/drum kit/human voice? We can just hit this key!" It seems that the excitement at the possibilities of electronic elements proved too great a temptation for most. There have been countless times I've heard a great 80's song covered by some guy and his guitar that sounds way better than the soulless, bleeping original. I'm all about electronic beeps and hums thrown in to augment a great rock song, or electronically based music (sometimes) but the problem seemed to be the forcing of a perfectly good rock song through a Casio mold.

Likewise with CGI in movies, there's definitely a way to use it that doesn't feel like an obnoxious keyboard solo, which is sometimes what the special effects in Legend felt like. Could they really not find someone to lie on a table with makeup on and breath quickly? Or someone else, again with makeup, to run out of a dark doorway and frown at Will Smith? Why did it ALL have to be CGI? I'm actually surprised that Sam the dog was real. Sure, there were a few times that the Darkseekers were pulling some crazy shiz that necessitated some computer help, but it should have been by far the exception. This is one of the areas that The Lord of the Rings excelled in. Wherever possible characters were living, breathing, often slime-excreting characters. CGI was used to create vast numbers of them, or to render a creature that probably couldn't be physically created realistically enough to blend with the film. Legend, with a youthful Tom Cruise, is another example of what costuming can pull off, and that movie was made in 1985.

I think that much like we look back on 80's music and laugh (or I do anyway) at the excessive use of electronics, we'll look back at movies of this time and chuckle at the excess of CGI. And not because the effects will look out of date or "old," just like we don't listen to an 80's hit and think "Man that fake trumpet sounds sooo fake, we could totally make a fake trumpet sound way better now." Thankfully we came out of the era of replacing instruments with synths and returned to using a snare drum where a snare drum would sound good.

So, like Mr. Gibbs, I'm kinda looking forward to more guys in rubber suits in the cinematic future.