In the review above

In his intemperate diatribe that substitutes insults and name-calling for reasoned opinion, the OP shows not only his ignorance of most criticism concerning CGI but reveals his own intolerance and the lack of quality his acceptable level of entertainment demands.

First, I like CGI, when it looks good and is used to convey something successfully. Like all effects, CGI runs hot and cold. Some is transparently fake, while much is astoundingly realistic. Jurassic Park, early CGI, is a good example: most of it extraordinarily real, but with some shots that were patently phony. On the other hand, I disliked the 2005 King Kong for many reasons, not least because basically all it had was endless CGI, which is not only tiresome and empty-headed but much of which was simply fake and obvious. It's a textbook case of the indolent overuse of a technology simply because it exists, not because it makes "better" pictures.

Second, most people do not hate CGI, or call movies bad simply because they use CGI. (A few people may do this, and I agree, that kind of knee-jerk reaction is as bad as the OP's is in the other direction.)

What most people seeking something entertaining -- or, dare I say, meaningful -- dislike about some uses of CGI is that too many filmmakers have nothing to offer but vacuous eye-candy. They use CGI not to tell or advance the story or with any discretion or imagination, nor to make a good movie, but simply to throw endless stuff at the audience. They rely not on plot or acting or anything substantive but merely believe that if they show enough colorful, loud effects on the screen they can distract stupid or undemanding viewers from wanting anything better.

On the other hand, Rise of the Planet of the Apes used CGI with care and to advance its story. Independence Day and Titanic utilized CGI excellently in combination with their human dramas. There are many other such good examples. Unfortunately, there are also many other bad examples.

Even the OP himself admits that you can have a bad movie with CGI, but partially excuses this on the grounds that with CGI you at least come away with something good. He is therefore a symbol of exactly why so many CGI-laden movies are bad -- not because of the technology, but because it's so badly put to use. As long as there are people willing to put up with films even they admit are bad, but excuse because the CGI gave them "something", we'll continue to get lots of bad movies with lots of CGI to distract the simple-minded or indiscriminate.

In this the OP also insinuates that a viewer can't get that "something" from an older film that doesn't have CGI. This is typical of the mindless rejection of anything out of a person's experiences or preferences that the OP so loudly condemns CGI "haters" of. This nonsense about people who once created older forms of special effects now being free to go get other jobs is so paralyzingly idiotic that it defies rationality. In fact, CGI uses more manpower than older effects ever did. Ray Harryhausen essentially worked alone on all his films and showed far more skill and dexterity in his creations than any CGI artist ever has. CGI creation takes talent, but it's a talent of a very different kind. Sorry, sitting in front of a computer screen creating digital images, while requiring skill, is hardly as exacting or demanding as most older special effects processes were.

Even CGI artists repeatedly state they have enormous admiration for those effects pioneers, like Harryhausen or Willis O'Brien or George Pal, who created amazing images without the benefits of modern technology. Unlike the OP, they not only understand and appreciate what these people could do, but regard their work with awe and -- something else absent from the OP's tantrum -- respect. Similarly, Japanese effects people today honor the trailblazing work of Eiji Tsburaya, who pioneered Japanese science fiction films and their "suitmation" techniques, and who in essence began the special effects industry in Japan. Many of his techniques remain in use, combined with newer technologies.

So, you can be a closed-minded jerk either way: mindlessly damning CGI as such, or mindlessly damning anything pre-CGI, as such. The one pernicious effect of CGI is that too many filmmakers today rely on it in place of anything truly imaginative. The ease with which even lower-budget movies can use CGI has made many filmmakers lazy and arrogant. They produce trash that even people like the OP may dislike, but because it has CGI, they take away "something" from it, like the undemanding sheep the movie-makers hope they'll be.

By contrast, most older films with older effects techniques had to rely on some semblance of plot and acting at a minimum in order to tell their stories. Good, bad or indifferent, their effects helped carry the film; they didn't constitute the film. Unfortunately, CGI has let a lot of inept or uncaring filmmakers off the hook. They'll still get their $20,000,000 paychecks even for an addle-brained piece of dreck like Battleship.

Again, CGI isn't the problem. Used well and creatively and in good movies with actual plots and acting, it's terrific. Technically, it may also be terrific in bad movies. But as long as so many bad movies get made simply because the studios know that millions of people will traipse slack-jawed into the theater to watch glassy-eyed as tons of empty-headed, moronic and intellectually vacuous images are flashed at them, and leave thinking they've been entertained (or "took away something"), so will CGI continue to be misused and wasted.