the obsession with realism as the gold standard of quality is the hole where good creature design and interesting fx goes to die
it’s not realism that’s the issue, by the way, that’s just a style, it’s the way people often treat realism as the dictionary definition of good special effects
I have a lot of thoughts about realism as an aesthetic and how it is incredibly relative and how “realistic” is used to mean a huge variety of different things when people say it as a compliment for media lol