Special Effects in the Movie Industry

So for awhile now I've talked about video games pretty much exclusively. So, today I thought I would talk about another industry that I am interested in-movies, specifically about the presence of special effects in movies.

The Good
We all admit and know that special effects are awesome. Without them, the Death Star would never blow up, lightsabers wouldn't exist, and Neo could never destroy Agent Smith. Today, most special effects are computer generated, and if they aren't computer generated, than they're computer enhanced. This is good, because it makes otherwise improbable or impossible things appear realistic and awesome, and also just help to make things look altogether awesome. Half of the things that appear in movies today wouldn't be possible without the advent of high quality CGI effects, and so it is good that they have arrived and are doing well, because otherwise we'd be stuck watching the 90's cheesy James Bond films with the most apparent CG imagery ever.

The Bad
Movies today are becoming too relient on digital and CGI technology. Many special effects people have said that the greatest thing you can say to them is that you don't realize its fake, and yet today, everyone knows whats fake and whats not. You don't go to a movie and come out wondering how something was achieved, you just automatically know how they did it. When someone does make a movie with pretty much no CGI (I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure that they're there) they don't get the credit that they deserve because most people think that they used it anyways. So, CGI is becoming a crutch for the movie industry, that's basically my point.

Conclusion
I love movies that use a whole ton of CGI because I love action movies, albeit ones with plot, like The Matrix. However, I think that for some pictures, they need to tone down the reliance on CGI effects, until they can make it so immersive that no one does know whether it is real or not. To be truthful, the first time that I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I was divided on whether or not Davy Jones was CGI or real, it was that convincing. That's how all CGI effects should be. Now I understand that some movies require elaborate and exaggerated CGI effects, and not all of them can only focus on realism, but those that do focus on realism should really push that and make it work right.

Also, super props to Weta for making the absolute best mixture of live action and CGI elements in Halo: Arms Race.