Avengers: Doomsday (2026)

[HalfGlass]

The CGI of it all has become way too commonplace.

The scene of Thor getting stopped by Doom should have been amazing. Instead it is the same old lightning CGI, guy flying/jumping CGI, eyeball CGI that we have seen too many times now.

Especially poor timing releasing that right after the practical The Odyssey...

When CGI hit its prime - aka Dead Man’s Chest, where studios brought characters like Davy Jones to life in photorealistic form… it felt revolutionary. But everything around them was for the most part, on location. There was a grounded reality to the proceedings that made those details and flourishes feel like an organic part of the storytelling when given care and detail. They still built the pirate ships to scale. They still shot the film on the ocean. They assembled lifesize sets for the more fantastical locations.

Now more and more locations are produced in the Volume, making the entire shot CGI (motion, setting, visual effects, etc). When something like Avatar comes along and the artistry has been executed at a high level it can be transformative. But for most movies, they have neither the budget nor the time spent in post to make that feel real.

That’s why so many blockbusters today seem formulaic and unimpressive. Then something like The Odyssey comes along where even the cyclops is done mostly practically and it blows everyone’s mind. People want to be fooled, or at least ask “how was that even possible?”. None of the Marvel movies do that and it’s gotten egregious to the point where people call out how obvious the lack of real locations and CGI backdrops are (Cap 4, Ant-Man 3).