CGI in cinema has been a major advancement in modern technology which has allowed filmmakers to create unbelievable worlds of fantasy for the enjoyment of audiences. They're an essential part of filmmaking today, often appearing in subtle, unnoticeable ways to enhance visuals and, other times to create fantastic worlds in their entirety.
Update August 23, 2023: This article has been updated with even more terrible CGI disasters in movies, with one notable recent film.
Given their ubiquity in movies today, audiences have become quite critical of the CGI effects that they see on screen. "Use it well, or don’t use it at all" seems to be the common opinion among nerdy fandoms and general spectators alike. One might ask if this stance is a bit too harsh on their beloved franchises and filmmakers. But there have been many instances in modern cinema where everyone felt movies were utterly ruined on account of what they consider CGI disasters. In some cases, these moments inspired spirited discussions among fandoms, while in others, they were terrible enough to go viral on the internet. Here are 15 of the most infamous CGI disasters in movies.
15 Hyde - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the big-screen adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Mooe and Kevin O'Neill. It featured an impressive cast (Sean Connery, Jason Flemyng, Tony Curran) in a story about famous characters in a Victorian age where they're supposed to fight crime. Among those is the famous Dr. Jekyll and its alter ego Mr. Hyde.
The film's visual effects aren't so bad, but when it came to the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde, it seems there was no computing power available to make the rendering watchable. It's a debacle taking place on the screen, as the monster's movements are all over the place and will probably make you laugh rather than scare you.
14 The Snake - Freddy vs. Jason
Sure, we're not supposed to take Freddy vs. Jason seriously. It's literally what it sounds like: two of our favorite slashers fighting over our realm. It's the most 2000s film there is, with its nu-metal soundtrack and its strange coloring. You either hated it or loved it. But there's a scene in the film that portrayed a snake-like Freddy creature making an appearance to a stoner whose luck runs out too quickly. The CGI snake is terribly animated, and what makes us angrier, is that there wasn't any need for this. We're talking about Freddy Krueger, a guy whose past adventures featured incredible practical effects. Fortunately, people forgot about Snake Freddy quickly.
13 CGI Head — Thor: Love and Thunder
The situation has been somewhat precarious for the MCU following the glorious conclusion to its Infinity Saga. The response received by the latest installment of the Thor film series certainly didn’t help. Fans criticized Thor: Love and Thunder for its directionless plot, and matters were made worse by a terrible CGI scene that went viral, with entire news pieces written about it. After all, how could a big-budget movie have made such a mistake?
The scene in question involves Heimdall’s son, Axl, appearing to Thor as a partial apparition to pass on a message. But the special effects look so half-baked that it’s difficult to believe that the scene is from a 2022 movie. The effect was so highly criticized it was changed for the home video release but it still looks bad.
12 Sonic’s Character Design — Sonic the Hedgehog
The case with 2020 live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie has a rare happy ending that illustrates the good things that can happen when a studio carefully listens to its audience. The Sonic video game character holds a lot of nostalgia for millennials, and a live-action movie based on the character was eagerly anticipated. However, responses to the trailer were disastrous, as fans felt that the filmmakers had completely botched Sonic’s character design.
The odd facial proportions and the use of fur in the design made the character appear somewhat terrifying and far from cute, with the word “uncanny valley” thrown around. Thankfully, the filmmakers decided to completely redesign the character and pushed back the release date by three months. The drastic redesign of the character was much more personable and familiar to fans and ended up becoming a smash hit at the box office, leading to a sequel. The now dubbed "Ugly Sonic" did get a chance to shine on film as he had a role in Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers.
11 Superfight — The Matrix Reloaded
One of the most influential action franchises of the 21st Century, The Matrix, wowed audiences with its thought-provoking plot, mind-blowing fight sequences, and groundbreaking special effects. One particular scene in The Matrix Reloaded, however, has polarized fans to this day. It’s a magnificent fight sequence that barely lasts two minutes, in which entire hordes of Agent Smiths pile in on Neo, who manages to best all of them.
Audiences were understandably awestruck at this scene, as nothing like it had ever been seen in cinema. However, some fans couldn’t help but raise eyebrows at the sudden drop in the quality of CGI effects that can be noted in this scene. Interestingly, a popular fan theory tries to explain this drop in CGI quality as an in-universe phenomenon. Since this fight scene takes place inside the Matrix, the theory contends that the drop in CGI quality could be the Matrix struggling to render visuals accurately as so many Smiths were spawning at the same time. Cool theory, huh?
10 Jabba — Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
The Star Wars fandom tends to be among the most particular in its opinions, often debating the merits of minor differences between different cuts of their favorite installments in the franchise. The Jabba scene in A New Hope is one of those moments that fans generally dislike, not the least because the scene wasn’t even included in its original cut in the first place.
The 1997 re-release brought back the short scene in which a fully CGI Jabba can be seen alongside an out-of-place Boba Fett. Fans opined that the scene was completely unnecessary. On top of that, the scene only added a low point in the otherwise brilliant film with its terrible CGI design of Jabba.
9 Wolverine’s Claws — X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was received so poorly that Fox was forced to reevaluate its plans for the franchise. Fans had issues with multiple things, the most glaring one being the botched portrayal of the famed comic book character, Deadpool. There was also a strangely heated reaction to Wolverine’s CGI claws.
In the early X-Men movies, Wolverine’s claws were set up with practical effects, giving them a convincing look. Fans were confused about why this one went back from a working formula and decided to go with shady CGI work to furnish the character with his defining features. The result was laughable.
8 Green Lantern’s Character Design — Green Lantern
Ryan Reynolds has had the rare opportunity of getting two do-overs to secure his superhero legacy. While the first of them was the doomed Deadpool portrayal in X-Men Origins, the second one of them was as the DC hero, Green Lantern. Despite its $200 million budget, the movie ended up being a complete CGI disaster. Green Lantern relied too much on CGI and fully dressed its characters using special effects. The movie remains so widely disliked that it rarely surfaces in discussions about superhero movies.
7 Superman’s Moustache — Justice League
DC Studios have had their share of CGI disasters while building their cinematic superhero universe. Among them, the most infamous one by far is the botched CGI work that went into removing Henry Cavill’s mustache during reshoots for Justice League. Replacing Zack Snyder after his sudden departure from the project, Joss Whedon decided to put his own spin on the movie and demanded extensive reshoots.
Unfortunately, Cavill had moved on to shooting Mission: Impossible - Fallout by that point, for which he was required to sport a mustache. Whedon took the only remaining option and had his mustache removed with special effects — but the work was so terrible that it became the internet’s talking point for weeks.
6 Everything - A Sound of Thunder
You probably never heard about A Sound of Thunder, and that's OK. You're not supposed to. This massive box-office failure (it made over $10 million against an $80 million budget), was directed by respected director Peter Hyams, who was very vocal about the hassles in post-production. It tells the story of time travelers making changes in the past and then seeing the consequences in the future, and most of the film features them acting against a green screen that would then be replaced by some of the most horrible CGI ever put on film.
An impressive cast (Ben Kingsley, Edward Burns, and David Oyelowo, among others) wasn't enough to make audiences look away from the disaster taking place on the screen. For dinos, stick to Spielberg's franchise about bringing them back to life.
5 The Speed Force - The Flash
2023's The Flash is the flop of the year and one of the biggest bombs of all time. One of the biggest factors for the movie's bad word of mouth was the terrible CGI, particularly when The Flash is in the Speed Force. From rubery looking humans to tasteless CGI recreation of deceased actors, the entire scene is a visual sore and a low point not only for DC movies but the entire superhero genre. A scene that was meant to inspire cheers and applause only generated mockery. The filmmakers claim it was designed to look like this, but it's a terrible design choice if that was the case.
4 The Scorpion King — The Mummy Returns
The Mummy trilogy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz continues to be celebrated today for its unbeatable entertainment factor — it was scary, witty, and told a well-tuned story that awed viewers with its lore. Additionally, it had a spot-on casting that fans continue to praise to this day. The second movie in the series, The Mummy Returns, also swiped up Dwayne Johnson to play the final boss, a giant half-man half-scorpion beast who came straight from the underworld.
The monster design for the Scorpion King was absolutely fantastic and could have been seen as way ahead of its time. But the filmmakers missed the mark on the CGI by a huge margin, to the point that Johnson could barely be recognized in the role — and that was the legacy of one of the most memorable cinema monsters of the 2000s.
3 CGI Baby — The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2
Despite all the memes surrounding it, the Twilight film franchise did one thing right, and that was recognizing its fanbase. The franchise can be considered iconic in the way it captured public interest, but it was far from perfect. The saga is littered with moments of horrendous special effects that somehow escaped widespread commentary.
However, the CGI design of Bella and Edward’s child in Breaking Dawn, Renesmee, is too terrible not to be included in this list. The franchise had taken a horror subgenre and turned it into something romantic. But the CGI baby turned it into horror again. When the animatronic version appeared, we felt trapped in the David Lynch universe of creatures.
2 The Birds (and Everything Else) - Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Birdemic: Shock and Terror is part of the modern cinema catalog of films that are so bad, you can't help but love them. Most of it has to do with the poor performances and the direction by James Nguyen who can't connect sequences at all. However, when the film was released, it was the special effects that people could not believe.
Poorly rendered birds were the star of the film that at some point, it appears to be a bad joke to waste your time with. What's even more intriguing is how Nguyen managed to get some money to make a second and third film in the franchise about birds invading a small town. Legend says Hitchcock's grave twitched a bit when the film was released (just kidding).
1 The Entire Movie — Cats
Despite featuring an impressive star cast, including the likes of Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, and Taylor Swift, the 2019 movie Cats was widely criticized for its unsettling visual effects. The movie was an adaptation of a famed stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. This meant that the animators had to figure out a way to allow the actors to emote through the special effects while still making sure the movie was filled with photo-realistic humanoid cats.
That’s quite a tall order — and the movie crashed hard after the release of its first look. The characters in the movie looked as if from a dream and successfully creeped out audiences, which was far from its intended effect.