CGI has the capability of many things look real. While a properly made CGI asset will help improve a movie, a bad one is guaranteed to be a target of criticism.
An example of CGI that aged beautifully are the oliphaunts and fell beasts of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the Titanic and the ocean it is cruising on in James Cameron's "Titanic."
The movies on this list, however, are examples of how not to use CGI in movies, and we hope your eyes are ready for these ones:
Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet
The proper portrayal of a character's ethnicity, especially of a colored one, is high on the list of people's demands in a movie. As such, when Disney released a trailer for "Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet," people were livid when Tiana's skin color did not match her 2D counterpart.
Fortunately, Disney met with Tiana's voice actress, Anika Noni Rose, and Black advocacy group Color of Change to address what changes need to be made to Tiana's 3D portrayal. The company darkened Tiana's skin color to match her 2D counterpart for the final movie.
Pcahontas' skin color also received some darkening to make her skin color similar to her 1995 animated movie counterpart.
The Mummy Returns & The Scorpion King
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson may have much to thank the 2001 film "The Mummy Returns" for as it served as his springboard to the big screen. However, his first appearance in cinemas left much to be desired.
While he first appeared in the movie as the man he is, he next appeared as a scorpion-human hybrid fitting the title "Scorpion King." However, his face, which was added to the hybrid through CGI, doesn't feel right or natural.
The resulting CGI was due to a hasty production schedule, with many of the movie's effects only completed at the last minute.
This CGI disaster took down the audience's interest in watching the spin-off movie of the second "Mummy" movie, "The Scorpion King."
Cats
"Cats" may have had a fur-midable cast, but no one could have seen how badly the movie performed at the box office because of its creepy CGI.
The creepy CGI is a product of "digital fur technology," a process of transforming actors into... cats with fur through CGI.
Jeff Brock, a media analyst with Exhibitor Relations, said the CGI's creepiness created a social media blowback big enough that it hurt the movie's potential despite its star-studded cast.
Sonic The Hedgehog
One of the more recent examples of movies blasted by the world because of poor CGI is "Sonic the Hedgehog," which almost never became a success due to its first official trailer.
In the trailer, the world saw its first look at what a CGI Sonic would be like. However, instead of sticking to the source material, Paramount elected to make the Blue Hedgehog human-like, putting the character in the uncanny valley.
Thankfully, the backlash caused Paramount to remove that iteration of Sonic even before the movie was featured on the big screen, leading to the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie people love.
Justice League
The infamous CGI lip will never be forgotten it seems. It all began when Superman actor Henry Cavill was cast in another movie, "Mission Impossible - Fallout," a movie where he was contractually obligated to avoid shaving his mustache for the film.
Unfortunately, his appearance in the "Justice League" movie required him to have no facial hair, causing an impasse for Cavill. Thankfully, Warner Bros.' CGI team solved it by digitally removing Cavill's mustache with CGI through adding a digital upper lip.
However, the upper lip was widely considered weird and out of place, upsetting many fans and eventually becoming one of the key factors that led them to petition Warner Bros. to release the Zack Snyder version of the movie.
