Yep I’ve had that happen many times , where people assume my work is real and the practical is CG.

Worse, directors often lie about what’s practical and we’ll have replaced it with CG. So people online will cheer the “practicals” as being better visually, while not knowing what they’re even looking at.

I’ve seen interviews with actors even where they talk about how they look in a given shot or have done something, and not realize they’re not even really in the shot anymore.

People just have terrible eyes once you can convince them something is a certain way.

But films without CG are clearly superior and it’s not even in contention.

Lawrence of Arabia or Cleopatra alone have incredible fully live shot special effects which can not be easily replicated with CG and have aged like fine wine, unlike the trash early CG of the 80s and 90s which ruined otherwise great films like the last starfighter

I’m sorry, but you make an absurd argument.

You’re taking the best films of an era and comparing them to an arbitrary list of movies you don’t like? Adding to that, you’re comparing it to films in the infancy of a technology?

This is peak confusion of causality and correlation. There are tons of great films in that time frame with CG. Unless you’re going to argue that Jurassic Park is bad.

Jurassic Park isn't just a good example of CG, it also a good example of making the right choices on practical vs CG (in the context of technology of the time) and using a reasonable budget. You can have great CG and crappy CG by cutting corners. Plenty of people that decry CG don't actually know how much there is, even in non-sci-fi movies like romcoms, just for post-editing. But when it is done well nobody notices, the complaints only come when it looks like crap. Great use of technology to achieve the artistic vision will stand the test of time.

It's also directed by one of the best directors in history.