This was the argument about Fury Road (mostly real) vs Furiosa (a lot of CGI.)

But only bad CGI is visible. I guarantee you have watched CGI footage and not noticed. At all.

The problem over the last decade or so hasn't been the technical limits of CGI, but studio unwillingness to spend enough on it to make it good.

And directors have also become less creative. You can find UK newsreels from the 50s on YouTube, and some of the direction and editing are superb - a beautiful mix of abstraction, framing, and narrative.

Most modern directors don't have that kind of visual literacy. The emphasis is more on spectacle and trying to bludgeon audiences into submission, not on tastefulness and visual craft.