At this point in time, CGI is synonymous with blockbuster film-making from trash like Transformers: The Last Knight to good films like Avengers: Infinity War. It is completely understandable to use CGI since much of the characters and the worlds these films build are quite fantastical and would require the use of it.
Avengers: Infinity War is considered a really good film and its CGI is definitely a contender for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards. There were tons of CGI used in the film as revealed in the newly released commentary of Infinity War. The commentary includes plenty of new material such as deleted scenes, an audio commentary and “Beyond the Battle” featurettes which explore the creation of the scenes.
In one of the features, executive producer Victoria Alonso discussed the amount of CGI used in the film and it’s well, a lot. During the “Beyond the Battle: Wakanda” featurette, Alonso mentions that there are 3,000 shots in the film with 2,900 visual effects shots. Avengers: Age of Ultron had over 3,000 VFX shots but let’s try to ignore that film. How she describes Infinity War is also something noteworthy. She said:
“This entire movie is one big CG scene. The environment is CG, the weapons are CG, every shot is dense in layers.”
Now, she could mean that in a good way or a bad way and for the most part, it’s often associated in a bad way. Films like the Star Wars prequels and The Hobbit trilogy have been labelled this way and well, they suck. However, perhaps it’s just a testament to how good the CG was since it looked miles better than the CG in The Hobbit trilogy (the prequels are a different case, since they were released a while ago).
One thing we have to address is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe does rely on CGI a lot and it can honestly break the immersion. It is understandable however since the worlds they build are phenomenal but in all honesty, there are other ways to do so. The Lord of the Rings trilogy used miniatures for much of their establishing shots and they look better than anything CGI can muster.
