We live in an age of some sort of VFX-Phobia. VFX has become almost a bad word in film. If you tell someone that VFX was used for a sequence, that sequence suddenly becomes far less cool. Whenever a blockbuster movie trailer releases, there is a pretty big chance that it will be met with comments like: “CGI looks like PS4 Game”. On top of all this, directors are always proud to say that their movie is 100% real. No CGI.
It has become almost like the “gluten-free”, or “vegan” of the film world. These are the healthy movies, the movies that haven’t been polluted by the toxin called VFX. Gone are the days when VFX was the coolest newest toy, that many filmmakers were trying to get their hands on in order to tell new stories. I wonder what the pioneers of the VFX industry would have thought if someone could tell them that in the future, people would be proud to say that “No VFX Was Used In the Production of This Film”. They loved to use new tools to tell new stories.
Those who say that a movie is far less impressive because of the use of good VFX are like people who go to a magic show and complain that the rabbit wasn’t actually in the hat.
When VFX is done right (granted, this doesn’t always happen), it will be unnoticeable. In these cases those who made it should be proud to say it’s fake (unless it was already pretty obvious).