But I wonder at what point digital effects become 'good enough' in some sense that they never look aged beyond the containing film. At some point surely there's no more perceptible 'resolution' to be had.
The advertising tries to tell you "we did everything practical!", it's always a lie and you believe it.
Let's forget for a second that "heavy handed cgi" is tautological because it wouldn't look "heavy handed" if it looked real, and forgetting that some things like energy beams have no analogue in real life so are obviously effects.
You said "digital effects haven’t approached being convincing the way practical effects do" and the truth is this isn't true at all, you just don't know that you're seeing digital effects and you think you're looking at photography or something practical.
You can throw your hands up, but I think if you could explain why what I'm saying isn't true you would have done that instead.
Marketing feeds into this and tells people movies were done all practical or made "heavy use of practical effects" and it's just lies.
This is 5 part series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo
Even before this people were saying stuff like mad max was done "almost all practical" because they saw behind the scenes stuff of flipping a few cars even though the movie is wall to wall digital effects. Sometimes the elaborate "practical effects" don't even move right and are used for reference and completely replaced.