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It often sucks
I was watching a trailer for some movie that had a scene of a car flipping over another car with someone firing through the sun roof, and I began to think again how CGI is a two-edged sword. I've loved the CGI in films like Inception, and Moon. The best CGI is often so subtle you don't even realize that it is CGI. Where it becomes offensive is when it breaks the bounds of my suspension of disbelief. Of course a film doesn't have to employ CGI effects to do this. Someone mentioned the Indiana Jones franchise. People tended to dislike the second movie because it was too far over the top. The minute someone jumps from a plane and uses an inflatable raft to escape certain doom (let's not forget the two waterfalls), you've lost me. The biggest complaint I hear on the last was the episode of the refrigerator and the atomic blast.
What CGI has done is to make anything one can dream about possible to achieve, whereas before, you were limited to stunt men and practicals. The problem with that is that you shouldn't necessarily be able to do everything you can dream of. Somethings are downright silly and idiotic, and we see a lot of that in film today. Even if the technology was flawless there are some things you are not going to get me to believe and when I see them in your film, I'm going to sigh and roll my eyes. That's bad storytelling, and it seems to be in abundance in the Hollywood writers of this era. CGI has made for lazy writers, because whether they realize it or not CGI has become the new Deus ex machina.
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