Yeah I largely agree with you. I don’t know what all marvel is about at this point, mainly in terms of chronological story. I’ve seen the first iron man, I’ve seen the Incredible Hulk with the fight club guy, I saw the first Thor, but I honestly can’t think of anything else I’ve seen in their “cinematic universe” other than spider-man no way home, and the only reason I went to see that was because of Toby Maguire. The sci-fi to fantasy part, I can’t really say anything bad about that, because it’s all based on or inspired by the comics, which themselves have however many different universes and timelines. As for the CGI take, it’s mixed with me. I understand where you’re coming from, literally 2-3 people in front of a big green screen and everything is added in post production, but it also takes a lot of effort on graphic designers to create those graphic images, and to have them fit perfectly frame by frame. I find it difficult to say CGI is not film for various reasons, the first and foremost being that animation itself would fall under the category of not being film, when we have many examples of excellent animated movies that have meaning and bring forth emotion. Toy Story is entirely CGI, but I would argue it is indeed a film. Tron was one of the first movies to use computers for its development, and got banned from awards because of it, yet it is also an excellent film, and its sequel, while lacking in my opinion, does manage to have a tear-jerking ending and build the world of Tron much better thanks to CGI. I myself am a fan of practical effects, and I think almost always practical effect works better than CGI, (the Thing is a great example) but CGI is able to pick up the slack when practical can’t meet the demand, such as the scale of something (which can sometimes be done practically with forced perspective) or if it would be considered too costly/dangerous for say, a large explosion in a junk yard. Even the fight at the end of No Way Home around the Statue of Liberty. I’m sure many of scaffolding shots were practical, especially close ups or calm/talking shots, but it’s also impractical to build a scale model of the Statue of Liberty and expect people to swing on cables around it for a 6 man super-powered fight, with the amount of time and resources it would take to produce that in comparison to the budget and production time allotted.
