The Most Impressive Special Effects

Some movies are known for their special effects. LOTR is one of them

If you were like me, then you were fascinated by the special effects of certain movies. There were some that managed to create magic, whereas there were some that managed to create laughter, as they were excruciating bad to look at. Many of them used animatronics, or dolls, but the more recent ones use CGI. These are the most famous movie special effects.

One of the most famous and most praised sci-fi movies is Blade Runner, with none other than Harrison Ford. One of the best special effects of the movie is the presentation of the 2019 Los Angeles. If you have not seen the movie, there is a scene which presents flying cars going through the atmosphere. That scene recreated the city of Los Angles, filled with smog, and with large factories. It was a truly horror scene, and it managed to recreate the city with much accuracy. It set a standard when it comes to presenting cities in a futuristic manner. It is said that the movie Fifth Element got its inspiration from Blade Runner. You might consider the special effects to be weak, but you need to remember that the film was shot in 1982.

Independence Day, the movie released on July 2, 1996, was the highest grossing film of that year. I am certain that you have seen it, and that you know the scene which I am going to talk about. Yes, that is right; it is the destruction of the White House scene. In most of the cases when a scene like this is created, the filmmakers use very small models of the building or of the vehicle they want to destroy. In the case of the White House, the situation was different, as the White House used in the film was one-twelfth the actual size of the real building. The scene looked incredibly real thanks to it.

The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey has been considered by many to be one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. The most memorable special effect from this movie is the Star Gate one, a scene which has managed to stand the test of time, as many people consider it to be the most hypnotizing scene from a movie. In order to create the scene, Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Trumbull, used a “Slit Scan” machine which gave them the possibility of filming two infinite planes.

I am 100 percent positive that you have seen this movie: Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The T-1000, which is the villain of the movie, is a great example of special effects. This was the first movie that used computer graphics to generate human motion. In order to achieve that, Industrial Light and Magic scanned the body of Robert Patrick, the actor who played T-1000, in order to be able to recreate its movement. They used the frame of his body to create the water-like body of the robot from the movie. As you can imagine, that was a very difficult task.

The movie Jason and the Argonauts was released in 1963, yet people are still amazed by the skeleton scene. The movie used the stop motion technique, which was rare for that moment, being used more often in the following years. The main reason why it was used very rare is because it took a lot of time.  The scene was 4 minutes long, but it took Ray Harryhausen, the man who was in charge with the special effects, four and a half months to achieve. The scene is very impressive especially since the actors needed to use their imagination to fight against the skeletons.

The T-Rex from the movie Jurassic Park was designed by Industrial Light and Magic, the same company that created the T-1000 robot from the movie Terminator 2. Initially, Steven Spielberg wanted to create the dinosaur by using animatronics and the stop motion technique. Industrial Light and Magic used CG animation, and I think that you agree with me when I say, that the dinosaur would have looked worse if Spielberg would have used that technique to create it. They did an incredible job, as they managed to recreate the T-Rex with perfect accuracy.

One of the most famous characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy is Gollum. Initially, the movie director wanted to make the character completely CGI, but thanks to the skills of Andy Serkis, the actor who played it, they used his body movements and voice for it. The process of creating Gollum was very difficult, but “we loves it, don’t we?”

The movie King Kong was created in 1933, and the final scene is considered to be one of the most impressive in the history of cinema. The movie makers used technologies never seen before, and they managed to make the scene very real for those years’ standards. I know the scene looks terrible now, but you have to remember that the scene was done 77 years ago.

The opening scene of the Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is considered to be one of the most impressive scenes in a sci-fi movie. It features space ships fighting each other, lasers, robots, basically something unseen before in movies at that particular moment. The scene took a very long time to take, and George Lucas used miniature models of the ships in order to create the scene. The Death Star attack scene was created using a miniature model which was various meters long and wide. I guess the force was with them when they filmed the movie.

The special effect used in the bullet scene from the Matrix movies has been used in more movies that I can count. I am certain that you tried to recreate it, bending like Neo. In case you did not know, the scene was created using semicircle of still-image cameras that all take the same picture, just from a different angle. Then some computer graphics were introduced, and the result was the “Bullet Time” scene.

Which one do you like the most?