Great movies ruined by CGI and bad special effects

Over the years, computer generated effects have become an increasingly crucial tool in Hollywood's arsenal. The addition of CGI in TV and film have not only helped directors achieve some of the best action scenes money can buy, the technique has helped streamline the process—bringing to life epic sequences originally deemed too expensive or even impossible, and helping create a slew of theatrical successes.

That said, there's a right and wrong way to handle CGI. Where some directors have utilized the tool as a gentle paintbrush, others have clobbered audiences over the head with it, and big-budget disappointment is often the result. Not all the movies in this list are clunkers, but it's worth pointing out that if the digital effects were improved, they might have been better received. Without further ado, here are some of the movies most memorably ruined by bad CGI and special effects.

One of the components that make John Carpenter's classic sci-fi 1982 horror film so epic are its practical effects. Of course, it was made before CGI was even a thing. But there's a delightfully cringeworthy air about the slimy, visceral nature of the alien creature in the story. Not for nothing, but watching a severed head grow alien insect legs and scurry away always makes the hair on the back of our necks stand up.

Unfortunately, as much as first-time director Matthijs van Heijiningen Jr. worked to make his 2011 prequel fit into Carpenter's chronology, the movie's special effects don't hold a candle to Carpenter's original. That's not to say that the crew didn't try—the production hired special effects house studioADI to bring some gooey, gross aliens to life.

Unfortunately, due to scheduling and budgetary limitations, the company's practical effects never showed up in the film's final product. As Bloody Disgusting reports, "it was such a disaster that studioADI later fan-funded a film called Harbinger Down, which was made as an apology for what happened in 2011."

Amid rewrites, reshoots, and a production budget that ballooned to over $200 million, World War Z still ended up a box office success. The 2013 big-screen adaptation of Max Brooks' book pitted Brad Pitt against a global zombie threat. But while the finished product works pretty well on the horror-thriller front, the overuse of CGI effects end up downplaying a good portion of the movie's intended scares, showcasing undead hordes as cartoonish and floppy.

"The zombies were like army ants," George Romero told The Hollywood Reporter in a 2015 interview. Referencing the scene in which a mass of sprinting zombies fall over each other in order to scale Jerusalem's huge walls. Romero wasn't wrong. 

The concept of an insanely large mob of zombies rushing through town like an undead tsunami looked great on paper, but without any sort of human physics implemented in the movie, the end result is far from frightening. Thankfully, Pitt faced off against multiple zombies up close, making those jump scares more grounded and visceral.  

While the CGI effects featured throughout The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies aren't as distracting as some of the other films in this list, they definitely suffer when compared to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In fact, the entire Hobbit prequel trilogy represents a step back from Lord of the Rings, in quality and in tone. There are a number of reasons: an ill-prepared production, a rushed schedule, and huge differences between the visions of Guillermo del Toro (who left the project roughly two years into pre-production) and LotR director Peter Jackson, who came in to clean the whole thing up.

"[Jackson] spent years prepping the original Lord of the Rings trilogy," reported The Verge, "and on the Hobbit things got so bad that when they started shooting the titular Battle of Five Armies itself they were essentially just shooting B-roll: footage of people in costumes waving around swords, without any cohesive plan for how the sequence would actually play out."

If you take one look at this special feature clip from The Hobbit's home entertainment release, you'll see the whole thing was a mess from the get go. Heck, when Peter Jackson admits he doesn't know what he's doing, you know things have gone awry.

Brendan Fraser's Mummy franchise had a lot of promise, but once this sequel hit the big screen, the film's drama and action sequences ended up buried underneath the weight of some horrendous CGI.

Chock it up to timing. The Mummy Returns hit theaters in 2001, a time when digital effects were still very much in their infancy. As Common Sense Media summed it up, "The special effects of The Mummy Returns are dated but the fight scenes are well staged and very exciting." Unfortunately, writer/director Steven Sommers used the plastic-looking CGI effects almost everywhere.

Let's not forget, this was Dwayne Johnson's first foray into the big-budget world of blockbuster movies. Long before he became "franchise Viagra," the Rock was the Scorpion King—a character that got his own movie a year later. Unfortunately, the People's Champ ended up looking more like a poorly designed video game villain and less like a formidable big-screen baddie when all was said and done.

The Wachowskis definitely raised the special effects bar when The Matrix premiered in 1999. The use of practical and digital effects, along with some epic stunt work, changed the movies—inspiring a whole load of copycats to follow suit.

But when The Matrix Reloaded hit theaters just a few years later, CGI took the driver's seat, mostly replacing the high-tech practical effects and wire work that made the original so jaw-dropping. From the big car-hopping chase scene to some overloaded fight sequences, distracting computer-generated visuals show up everywhere. This issue is most apparent during the movie's infamous "Burly Brawl" scene—a sequence that found Keanu Reeves' Neo battling hundreds of Agent Smiths. The concept probably jumped off the script during the table read, but the finished product is far from the riveting spectacle the Wachowskis were hoping for.

"What hurt the scene was their terrible creation," argued Screen Rant, "delivering a rubbery and off-colored texture that stood out like a sore thumb. The scenes where the human actors are fighting edited with the CGI figures hurts the momentum of the scene and takes the viewer out of the experience."