Virtual paws find it hard to make contact with the real world
While CGI spaceships, robots and buildings can all be made to look
vaguely believable, the animals always look as if they’re floating slightly
above the ground, and usually at a slightly weird angle too. The trailer for ‘The
Golden Compass’ (with the exception of the overly shiny airship) all looks
pretty convincing until a ridiculous armoured bear appeared, looking almost
exactly like a computer generated beast that had been badly superimposed onto
the film. Funny that.
The same also goes for the animals in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia,’ the bouncing
beasts in the field-frolicking ‘love scene’ in ‘Attack of the Clones and the prehistoric
animals in just about every ‘documentary’ about extinct animals. I’ll accept
that there are few alternatives to CGI in these instances; I wouldn’t want to
be the guy who had to persuade the polar bear to put on his armour, and
animatronic animals often look even more ridiculous than their CGI
counterparts.
As such, I instead propose to abolish all talking animals from films
(because talking animals are always extremely irritating, however well done
they are), and allocating a larger budget for the animals in the rare cases
where CGI animals must be used.