CO said:

I look at movie like Bladerunner, and then a movie like AOTC, and you tell me which one is more realistic? The CGI Coruscant Greenscreen Environment or the urban gritty look of the city in Bladerunner?

I think that would depend on what someone is looking for. If I'm looking for a gleaming city with tall spires and rounded buildings, Coruscant is the epitome of that. If I'm looking for a gritty, metropolitan area, with a bunch of downtrodden people, then downtown LA is the perfect location for that. Sure, you could build Coruscant as a model, but I'm sure it would take much longer to do with very little reward.

But what if I'm looking for a water planet where it's always raining as in the case of Kamino? Aside from building a huge tank, it just can't be done in a controlled environment. That's the key in some of these cases. Sure, you could do something like it 75 years ago, but you wouldn't get nearly the same effect. It would cost millions to either 1) build a tank and then build set pieces on the water or 2) build sets out on the open ocean and then deal with the environment as things change. Look at what happened with WaterWorld. They had to rebuild the set several times because they were filming out in the open water. Would it have looked any different with CG? I don't know. Would it have been possible with a tank? Not likely since the area they needed was so huge. Even The Abyss had to use a huge tank so they could control what was going on and so the people would look like they were under water.

The point is that sometimes it's more practical and safe to use CG then it is to try to use a real environment where you end up putting peoples lives in danger. But I guess from your perspective they should either 1) simply not use that environment or 2) keep it real anyway.

I get the feeling that if Jaws were made today, Spielberg would use a CG shark. The movie probably wouldn't do as well, but I attribute that to today's viewers rather than whether the shark is CG or a model. The story wouldn't change, so it really wouldn't matter if the shark was CG or not. And he could get a feel for whether or not what he was attempting would look better with a model right on the spot. A reversed situation would be that if Jurassic Park had been done with models, it probably would've looked lame. Since they were able to put a bunch of Dinosaurs on screen at once with CG, it actually made the movie far better.