Wasn't it even Tron who didn't qualify for the special effects oscar because they "used computers"?
It's interesting that it's no longer "computer bad", now it's "AI bad".
Soon, we’ll have no idea what’s AI-generated or not. I care about good, tight story telling.
In the case of this ad.. it’s okay?
If all you care about is just the story then maybe you personally will be satisfied but a lot of people cared about the animations, cinematography, etc, and all of the work that went into that.
Having to do things for-real also kept things grounded. Modern action movies are often cartoon-like with supposedly human characters stringing together super-human moves that’d leave a real person with dislocated shoulders, broken bones, and brain damage, because they’re actually just CG, no human involved.
[EDIT] OMG, or take Bullitt (1968) versus, say, the later Fast and the Furious sequels (everything past Tokyo Drift). The latter are basically Pixar's Cars with more-realistic textures. They're cartoons with live-action talking segments. Very little actual driving is depicted. Bullitt may have used the movie-magic of editing, but someone did have to actually drive a car, for every shot of a car driving. Or at least they had to set up a car with a dummy to convincingly crash. What you're seeing is heightened, but basically within the realm of reality.
Or take A Bridge Too Far. It's a bit of a mess! Make it CG and it'd be outright bad. But ho-lee-shit do they blow up a lot of stuff, like, you cannot even believe how much. And look at all those tanks and armored vehicles they got! And planes! And extras! Those are all 100% real! AND ALL THE KABOOMS! And it all looks better than CG, to boot. The spectacle of it (plus some solid performances) saves the movie. Make all the FX CG and it'd be crap.
Imagine a Jackie Chan movie with CG stunts. What is even the point. It'd be trash.
I think this might be your nostalgia. The thing looks different in different scenes, and there's a scene that feels like it's a guy inside from the way it moves. So I disagree that Alien is peak special effects. (still peak over things. Peak ambience for sure)
Alien nails it like 80% of the time (I've watched it twice in the last year, in 4k on a wall-size screen, so it's fresh for me). It's an early, major example of getting it damn near perfect pretty often. Not every shot's great—like, about two-thirds of the shots of the exterior of the landing craft look like a miniature, not as glaring as a Showa-era Godzilla or anything, but you can tell—but it's still a better average than modern computer-heavy movies. It's one of the earliest that's exhibiting the potential of peak pre-CG special effects, if not nailing it all the time. But, very few movies nail it all the time, including modern ones doing the computer graphics thing.