Do modern audiences need so much CGI?

Give me that CGI. More!

Right into my veins!

It's largely due to safety, convenience (get all the actors together in a big warehouse full of green screen. No travelling and paying to shut down actual streets so that you can film on them.) and also post production flexibility.

You should see some of the behind the scenes stuff on some Marvel films. They can literally change the entire background/location on a whim (well kind of, the poor CGI effects artists are worked like dogs).

I think the post production flexibility is the big one. You can edit the film so much, completely changing the entire setting if you so please. When you shoot on location in real life you can't do this and if you want to change something you have to reshoot.

delusional nostalgia fan

Batman (1966) has NO CGI and it's better than everything DC last 30 years. All you need is a muscle car and utility belt!

CGI would improve most if it were a result of prescient storyboarding. Forethought goes a long way in this business. It separates the also rans from the mega blockbusters. The current studio execs still think audiences will flock to a movie if it has a lot of CGI, no matter what. They live, ironically, in the past, while relinquishing tried and tested methods from the distant past.

CGI is also too beefed up. The veins of lightning employed in The Flash's scenes are too thick and too luminous. The same thing happened way back in Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) movie. ILM artists had conjured up the best and most realistic looking Hulk, but Lee insisted on it being greener and greener. The result played a big part in the movie being a flop and in the ILM team not getting a visual effects Oscar. On the contrary, ILM got a humiliating Least Special Special Effects award from a lower tier award show.

CGI also should be at the service of the script. The CGI in this movie was like on steroids. A bodybuilder on steroids, unlike the true Olympian athletes, looks too musclebound. A balance is needed. Like any cinematic tool, CGI can be elegant and refined. Currently it is being applied to any big budget film or TV show without consideration. If one carries a CGI hammer with you all the time, every movie would seem like a nail - in the coffin of good cinema.

CGI should be getting a lot cheaper now that AI can do it.
I'm surprised and disappointed that CGI seems to not have improved much in the past 20 years. CGI should have been getting a lot better and a lot cheaper. But recent movies don't seem to do it as well as older films like Titanic or Spiderman or Star Wars or Jurassic Park.

I LOVE THE COMIC BOOK FLICKS...HOWEVER...I AGREE...THE CGI OVERKILL IS PLAYED OUT...I STILL ENJOY THE MOVIES BUT WOULD APPRECIATE SOME MORE DOWN TO EARTH STORIES...LOGAN COMES TO MIND...A GREAT EXAMPLE OF CHARACTER AND STORY OVER CGI.