Why doesn't cgi look like real life?

Good evening, Sir Fractious.

The reason CGI is not better in television, films, or video games is something called the uncanny valley. You see, as graphics get better, there comes a point when the human face looks almost perfectly realistic, but not quite, and the result is extremely disturbing.

Because real life is boring. You specifically talk about using CGI to enhance muscular tone which should be noted that in many cases this is a human actor that has been post processed to look more impressive.

You can look up "deep fakes" to see what we can do with CGI these days (making a video of Obama saying Trump is a dipshite… and even then the technology is better than what Jordan Peele shows).

It's all about cinema, making things look more appealing to the eye than in reality.

The software just isn't able to produce images indistinguishable from real life

yet.

Give it 50 years

maybe less

and we will probably no longer have big-screen movie actors

but, rather

big-screen voice actors

and "real" actors only on stage.