I have to say, I agree with your assessment of the complaints against the CGI deer. Personally, I thought they were fine. Sure they didn't look completely real, but they were close enough I could definitely buy Neville hunting them during the film's deliriously entertaining first act.

What I have a problem with is just how cheap, familiar and uninspired the CGI zombies look in the second half. They all looked like they were refugees from the latest "Silent Hill" or "Resident Evil" video game, and as good as the effects work is in the first half during the second the artists behind it all completely fall flat on their collective faces. There is no ingenuity to them, no creativity, and by the time they start marauding across the screen in wave after wave of computer generated mayhem I was almost ready to call it a night and head on home.

That said, I still would have been more than willing to give the film a pass had they not chosen to end it all the way they do, and this portion of the film has nothing to do with CGI at all. The final minutes are absurd and brutally cliche, and considering the brilliance (and I actually do mean brilliance) of the first hour or so the fact the filmmakers completely took the easy way out with the finale is as tough a pill to swallow as their probably is.

Otherwise, you're pretty much right. While I'm not a huge fan of CGI compared to miniature and composite effects (just look how well BLADE RUNNER still holds up) they definitely do have their place. Sometimes they can work beautifully (I personally loved the bears in THE GOLDEN COMPASS), sometimes not so much (ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS anyone?), but overall they allow filmmakers to be lazy and that is where I start having problems. Not everything can be fixed or made palatable inside a computer, and if filmmakers don't start figuring that out soon than all we have to look forward to are even more feature films like HITMAN or I AM LEGEND where you get the feeling you're watching someone else play a video game, and not even remotely enjoying yourself while you're watching them do it.

Calling filmmakers "lazy" is an opinion of perception. I don't think it is a fair assessment unless you are in there making the film with them.

As for the zombie/infected statement… Zombies are uninspired as it is. There is no way to make them anymore interesting other than to have them jump out of the dark (I Am Legend), eat things (Dawn of the Dead) or look funny (Shaun of the Dead). There is no originality left to be had in the genre so I am not sure why anyone should expect anything more than what is already out there.

It sounds to me like the real complaint is that they went CGI with the infected as opposed to practical effects. That complaint is a legitimate one, I think saying anything else is a worn out criticism, sort of like the zombie genre itself.

However, for your movie vs. videogame comments… Sorry to say, but that is what you are getting already and there is sure to be a lot more of it in the future.

[I]"Those deer looked fake!" That's because they are.
"Those infected people looked fake!" That's because it is a fictitious ailment.
"Everything was fake!" Yup, CGI is not real.[/I]

However what you're ignoring completely is that the very reason CG is used on a movie like this is to make those deer and other creatures appear real to the audience. They're there to help advance the story, not suck us out of it in wonderment at such poor effects. If there isn't the talent or budget to take it 100% of the way, then don't do the effect.

[I]Films with numerous visual effects can't really win these days. Hell,
I thought the polar bears in The Golden Compass looked fantastic, yet
I still read reviews about how the talking bears didn't look right.
Sheesh! They're talking bears! For all anyone knows that is exactly
what a talking bear would look like.[/I]

If you have to make excuses, you've already lost the battle. The bottom line is, if the audience feels the bears don't look right, then they don't. The effect was not successful. You can't just say 'well, bears don't really talk, so it's not my fault they look weird'. Find a way to make it look right, or again- don't do the effect!

[I]Think back to 1933's King Kong. Sorry to break it to you folks, but
the great ape was fake. However, people allowed themselves to enjoy
the film despite the glaringly obvious.[/I]

OK… here you are comparing two movies that were made 74 years apart from each other. Regardless of what audiences thought in 1933, a movie with such effects today would be laughed out of theaters around the world. Don't get me wrong, I have a high appreciation for the movie as a milestone in film history, but you can't compare it's effects to todays.

I do agree with your point that movies can be enjoyable with bad CG. I'm just really not down with defending bad CG, especially with the reasons you listed.

cheers

I thought the deer in the movie were cool, partly BECAUSE of the odd CGI.
First, they were obviously not normal deer: They looked like a wierd cross between a white-tail and a mulie, but they were dun-colored and their coats had no gloss AT ALL. They looked like stuffed and mounted deer: i.e. dead ones. This was pointed up in the chase scenes where the deer behaved as no forest-deer would EVER behave. First, when the car shows up, none of them flash, I don't recall seeing a single flag on any fleeing deer.Granted that might be okay if they're Mulies, but the racks on some of them are clearly white tail antlers. One of them is actually seen hiding behind a sign, tail-down. Second, they don't disperse: everybody knows, whose knowledge of deer goes beyond Bambi, that the first thing deer do when alarmed is flash and disperse. Every deer for himself behavior. NO. They join together and the encountered groups actually seem to merge with the original pack: they're STAMPEDING for god's sake! Third: they are in a herd so big that the fact that he's covering miles of streets, he's still seeing stationary stragglers. I remember Bernheim during the big die-off and I NEVER saw so many deer in one group. They're acting like caribou or reindeer, or maybe Bison. And last and most extreme: THEY"RE RUNNING AT SIXTY MILES AN HOUR!
Conclusion: these are not INTENDED to be normal deer, any more than the Undead are intended to be normal people. a further example being when the lion takes a deer down, it does not flail, it does not bleed, it's eyes do not roll, it does not foam and it does not blink. The lions don't act normal either.
For me this got the movie going with just the right version of the eerie "Things are not normal here" feeling that just the abandoned city itself would never have done. And it was done subtly, with the beginning being "hey it's a deer" to OMG WTF? by the time the zero to eighty deer is taken down by the lightspeed lion, I understood that something was BAD here and I would have been curled up in the bathtub with the dog WITHOUT there being zombies outside.