Denis* (Not Dennis) wanted to shoot in the real desert because you can literally see where the end of a virtual set is (The Mandalorian) by looking at the ground, and noting where the material changes from real to the Unreal engine.
Besides, the techniques used to obtain the material you use for your virtual set still has to come from a real place, which means sending a team to the desert anyway. Why should Denis be restricted by a library of 3D images he can choose from, and a limited amount of sets when he can literally fly to the desert, scout the entire place, make adjustments, and change shots at a whim.
By requiring someone to work out of a studio with a limited amount of options you're tying their hands and preventing creativity.
By not being there, you can't capture "there". You cannot change the blocking of shots, you cannot send people "into the distance" because
it isn't there and neither are you.
Shooting something in a swimming pool is clearly for an insert shot, or for a close up since they are depending on "a gallon of milk" to create diffusion, so there is a drop off after a certain distance. You can't use a tank or a pool to replicate space. Its actually a perfect example of what I'm talking about. If you shoot in a real location you can capture scale. If you shoot in a studio, you have to fake it.
Yup here it is
No depth required, since its a close up. You can't use a swimming pool to shoot anything with a depth of field though, or the surface, or anything with any kind of distance!
This is Bob being that guy who goes "ACKTUALLY, 1 out of 100 things does not prove your point about this pattern of 99 things, therefore you are le incorrect".
Film Twitter is stupid across all fronts in my opinion, because its a bunch of social media goblins who don't make anything criticizing people who make things, but Ramen Rey is a moron if he's trashing Denis.
As much as I don't like movies like Blade Runner 2049 for script reasons, Denis clearly understands what "Cinema" is on an epic scale. As cold as his movies can be, he absolutely understands how to frame things to convey scale and drama. Without people like Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Denis, and Edgar Wright who have an affinity for shooting on film and the technical aspects of cinematic tradition, we'd be watching the stupid whizbang quippy television movies shot on digital cinema cameras with cheap lighting and ugly marvel esque sets that we have been stuck with for the last 5 years.