I’ve come to a funny realization: My constant complaints against CGI are somewhat akin to complaints against blogging. Yet, while I admit that my writing isn’t quite the same as print journalism and film criticism of the past, I also don’t cost a ridiculous amount of money relative to the cost of modern special effects.

Anyway, I don’t need to defend or justify my existence as compared to the way things used to be, yet it’s certainly necessary for the people at ILM to defend their use of CG rather than old-fashioned matte paintings and models for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Especially considering how many reviews, both positive and negative, harp on the fact that Indy’s world doesn’t look like it used to.

So, perhaps in anticipation of all the nostalgic moviegoers who leave the theater this weekend wondering why all the locations and creatures looked so bad, the Associated Press has a story on the making of the latest Indy installment, complete with plenty of prematurely defensive quotes from visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman:

The first three Indy films were gritty, sweaty and tactile affairs, largely because everything onscreen physically existed somewhere. Not so with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” — though that was almost the case.

When first approaching the latest “Indy,” director Steven Spielberg considered dusting off his old-school approach.

“He thought maybe we should just go back to the way we did things before, like matte paintings on glass and things like that,” said visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. “We entertained that idea for a little bit, but we realized we could serve the story better by using our digital tools.”

Or is it really to serve the spectacle? Apparently ILM constructed 450 effects shots for the film, which is just 150 shy of Transformers, a movie about transforming robots. Still, Helman claims all the CG in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are “completely reality based.”

That is if your reality includes a blooming atomic mushroom cloud, seemingly endless Area 51 warehouse, vicious monkey army, the City of Gold, thousands of man-eating ants and sundry otherworldly things. All those locales and critters were created by Helman and his ILM team for “Crystal Skull,” making up the film’s 450 effects shots … more than you might expect from a flesh-and-blood character from the 1950s.

That’s exactly what I would have said had the AP writer not beat me to it. And in response, I could have probably also written Helman’s seemingly formulaic defense of his work:

“The only reason why they weren’t using computer-generated effects back then is because they weren’t invented yet, but they were using the most up-to-date technology at the time,” said Helman, who finished his work on “Crystal Skull” in mid-April. “So it only follows that we would do the same thing now.”

So, on that note, I steer you in the nostalgic direction of the video above showing us the making of Raiders of the Lost Ark (continued here and here and here).