My stance on CGI comes mostly from my childhood beliefs and such. Basically, thanks to my school and family, I developed something of a hatred for all things digital at a young age. Its pretty hard to warm up to CDs when your parent's buy you only a cassette player than rub in how CDs are "the wave of the future" when tapes became scarce. Its also hard to like DVDs when people call you insane for not thinking they're God's gift to home video. So basically, digital just hasn't been my friend until I got over most of it, and realized my problem wasn't really with things that are digital, but rather being forced into said things. As a kid, I helped my dad build models(a hobby, I'd like to get back into). I used to watch "Movie Magic" and was fascinated with how model effects were done. I was always impressed by the time and effort that people like John Dykstra and Ray Harryhousen would put into their work. I always loved the show of Wedge's X-Wing zooming past the camera followed by the Falcon shooting out of a fireball to escape the Death Star. It just looked so real. I know that if it hadn't been done by hand, I wouldn't be so impressed. CGI just provides so many shortcuts, the making-ofs are all the same. There's no sense of wonder, no appreciation into the hard work it takes to make model's look right. Just compare "War of the Worlds" to its atrocious remake "Independence Day", WotWs was entirely by hand and look utterly convincing for its time. ID4 has your basic CG effects and, while realistic in apperence, just don't have that, "how the hell did they do that" feel. Of course, effects aren't the only thing WotWs has over the horrendously asinine ID4. Naturally, this is one of the reasons I prefer the original versions of the OT. The CGI sticks out like a sore thumb and completely replaces one of the things I loved about the old ones. Lucas' new effects was basically a slap in the face to Dykstra and the others. It says, "I'm sorry, you're out of date guys, you lose". Check out the Star Trek: The Motion Picture DVD to see how this should have been handled. Only the unfinished shots were redone, and every single retouched shot is availible, in anamorphic widescreen no less, in its original form as an extra on the DVD. They had the courtesy to realise that, while not what they needed, the old shots still had value in the work that went into them. Its not just live films either, but animation. CGI often looks worse in animation as I has to be dumbed down to try to match better, and winds up looking more cartoonish than the rest. I've noticed that CG always looks more vabrint than anything else, which always gives it away. I am far more impressed by the hand work in Macross : Do You Remember Love than the CGI in Macross Zero. My stance though really comes down to necessity. Is the use of CG justified? In Macross Zero, yes, as its put to use in providing angles and movements which would be difficult by hand. In Last Exile(or most of Studio Gonzo's works), mostly no, a lot of the CG is for looks and distract from the overall presentation, imho. So if the work can be done by hand, it should, if not, that is the purpose of CGI.