7 Films With The Best Special Effects
As a visual artform, good special effects in film are vital when they’re needed. A large team of talented people is usually behind the marvels you see on screen. They need to satisfy an audience’s expectation for realism, while also achieving the director's vision. Special effects are often done using CGI, VFX, practically, or with a mixture of the three. Whenever possible, filmmakers prefer using practical special effects as they usually achieve a greater amount of realism, but with talented artists, computer generated effects can be just as - and sometimes more - amazing. Regardless, all of the methods require patience and skill, whether it be extraterrestrial landscapes, animals, or horrific monsters.
Inception (2010)
Christopher Nolan is well known for going all out with special effects in his blockbuster films like The Dark Knight. This is certainly the case with Inception, where he had an entire dreamworld built on set. Most of the film used practical effects, which seems impossible until you see the behind-the-scenes footage of the famous rotating hotel hallway scene. They even used real air cannons that shot out debris to mimic an explosion during the cafe scene. When the film did use CGI, it was used with spectacular intricacy and dedication. In the very same scene, Paris begins to fold in on itself. The special effects team took stills of the streets in Paris and recreated them with CGI to create the folding effect, which took 8 month. The Oscars were so impressed with the film's surreal and trippy visuals that they awarded the film the Academy Award For Best Visual Effects.
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Life Of Pi (2012)
CGI is often used to create moments that would be impossible to see in real life, but sometimes it’s used to create seemingly simple and familiar things. In Life Of Pi, the tiger is completely made using CGI. At first glance, it might not seem like a CGI tiger wouldn’t be that difficult to make. To make it look realistic requires enormous amounts of time, patience, and talent. The effects artists had to craft every single strand of hair and its movement frame by frame. The visually stunning phosphorescent whale was also created using CGI.
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Annihilation (2018)
Annihilation is packed with beautiful and stunning visuals created by special effects. Sci-fi films often use special effects to create terrifying creatures and atmospheres - Annihilation did the same, but opted for gorgeous, luminescent colours. The visual effects masterfully combine elements of nature and fantasy to create terrifying creatures, most notably the bear. With a mix of practical effects and CGI, the human-toothed mutated bear was created for the film's most disturbing scene. The last scene is another piece of VFX art, with a morphing, glowing mass of energy.
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War For The Planet Of The Apes (2017)
War For The Planet Of The Apes deserves the spotlight for its incredibly life-like use of CGI. The special effects team had to create an entire world of primates interacting with each other and with their surroundings, making the realism extremely impressive. One of the bigger challenges with CGI is making every intricate detail seem realistic. This is the challenge the effects team faced, since the film is set in a snowy environment. Making a bit of snow fall off an apes fur using CGI sounds more difficult than it sounds.
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Interstellar (2014)
The spectacular, extraterrestrial imagery from Interstellar is nothing short of dazzling, with surreal planets, space architecture, and colourful galaxies. The special effects team were dedicated to realism, so they worked with astrophysicist Kip Thorne. They were able to translate his knowledge into realistic images, which is apparent with the praised interpretation of a blackhole. The blackole isn’t the only visual that generated marvel in the theatre. The 4,000 foot waves slowly coming towards the characters is one of the most well known scenes, thanks to the talent that went into creating the effect. The special effects artists took footage of big waves on the coast of Hawaii, and manipulated the shape of the waves, and simulated a series of intricate details.
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The Thing (1982)
80s horror films were some of the most gruesome, since filmmakers relied on practical effects rather than CGI, which is often less effective. The Thing is an excellent example of this, with its gruesome, ever-changing monster. Prosthetic Artist Rob Bottin used nearly anything he can get his hands on to create the monstrosity, like strawberry jam, mayonnaise, and foam latex. Bottin faced a real challenge, since he’d have to create every transformation the monster goes through. Various machines were used to puppet its movements. For one scene, to create the effect of tentacles slivering intio the monster, hoses were pulled out of it, and then the video was reversed. These intricate manoeuvrings brought director John Carpenter's vision of a shape-shifting monster to life.
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Jurassic Park (1993)
If you haven’t seen Jurassic Park, you’ve most likely heard of it. This is partly thanks to the enormous praise it got for its special effects. Looking back at Jurassic Park now, its effects still hold up, which is something we can’t say for many films made in the 90s. Only about 15 minutes of the film uses CGI, and the dinosaurs are life-sized animatronics made by technician Stan Winston. He also had stuntmen dress up as Velociraptors. CGI was used minimally, which is probably for the better, since it had a long way to go in the 90s. Director Stephen Spielberg planned on using far more CGI, but was so impressed with Winston’s work that he rewrote the ending into the famous scene where the animatronic T-Rex roars.
