This is the final part of a 4 part series this person did.

If you haven’t seen any of the others … here’s the playlist on youtube

You should check it out. Basically a VFX artist calling bullshit on the whole “we did it all practically without any CGI” marketing and fan hype as the lies they are. The key take away being that so much CGI is actually really hard to spot and everywhere and all of those who say they can easily spot CGI are just catching the obvious things and full of themselves.

The rest of the CGI in films is just flatly lied about by the studios. Parts 3 and 4, IIRC, do a good job of recounting how this is an old behaviour from way before CGI all tied up with the marketing (ie lying) impulses of the studios and also likely with their greed. You’ll see (in part 1 I think) a particularly egregious example of lying (or being deceptive) about CGI usage.

As part 4 concludes with, you can’t trust hollywood on whether they’re using CGI … they’re much more interested in lying to you than being open about how they do things … and second, the industry is now stuck in an anti-CGI hype cycle, where the audience think they know what “no-CGI” looks like because they’ve been influenced by the studios’ lies which has now created expectations that can’t be disappointed which continues the studio lies and audience misconceptions.

For me, the insidious part here is that there is a whole industry of artists being swept under the rug while also being absolutely essential to what we enjoy about films today. That they have fair compensation issues cannot be a coincidence at all. So, for me, anyone who’s all about “no-CGI” in films is really part of something rather hauntingly dumb and sinister.