Too often when watching a film, it’s obvious that the spectacle we’re witnessing is the product of CGI, essentially ruining the moment and making it harder to suspend our disbelief. Instances of the opposite do occur; just look at the spectacle of James Cameron’s Avatar, for instance, even though we’re still acutely aware that what we’re seeing is computer generated.
In the following examples, however, the scenes are so stunning that we think they’re real, either simply by way of a camera capturing a live environment, or a camera capturing a practical effect, such as an animatronic. Either way, these effects are thoroughly impressive, and you wouldn’t begin to think they were CGI.
10. Johnny Blaze’s Abs – Ghost Rider
Nicolas Cage stands as one of the few action stars who rarely bothers showing off a hulking physique, like say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone did in their primes (and in Stallone’s case, quite often these days too). Still, occasionally the roles he takes will ask for his wise-cracking character to actually produce evidence of muscle mass, so Cage, rather than hit the gym in preparation, just decided to let the visual effects wizards – who proved themselves oh-so-competent with the rest of the film’s CGI – touch up his abs and make him look buff.
In fact, that’s probably why the rest of the CGI in the film looks so crappy; they wasted so much time making it look like Cage actually put any effort into the role. To be fair, his physique is about as convincing as it gets.
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10 Comments
Waterworld made nearly $90 million profit. Not great, but still. ”hilariously catastrophic box office failure” nope.
How can you talk about real cg and not have the apes esepcially Caesar and the orangutan not on there. They’re the greatest cg creations ever so far
I agree 100% about the T-Rex. But I have to disagree with Zodiac. That movie has some of the worst, most obvious usage of CG I’ve ever seen.
Benjamin Button deserves a mention. I seen that flick with my pares and they had no idea there was any CG.
I don’t know what I’d take off, but I’d saay that the T-1000 from Terminator 2 and King Kong in the Peter Jackson film definitely deserve to be considered on this list. Maybe you should just extend the list to 12.
The best CGI I have seen is this http://vimeo.com/51226312 from a Norwegian film called Kon-Tiki. Never seen it, not sure if it’s out but in most of those shots you would just assume it’s a real shark. This is also a great vid for people who like to see how it’s done because they show you the composite layers they’ve used. Also, the film has been wonderfully colour graded. Make Life of Pi look crap. That said, this is the only CGI in the film so they could really take their time.
You forgot Birdemic.
Let’s give it up for an entire scene in Children of Men. I can’t say what it is, but it’s the most important event of the whole plot and tons of it, including the room it happened in, just didn’t exist.
Even to this day, I believe Jurassic Park has some of the most amazing CGI in a movie. Ever.
Which is pretty incredible considering it’s almost 20 years old. Most modern movies (even the ones with big budgets) still don’t have the level of realism that JP had.
I agree with a few of these on this list, including JP, as a previous poster said, has some of the best CGI ever and it’s 20 years old. What happened in those 20 years that made CGI to be more… shiny and wet looking?
Anyway, the one on the list that I just HAVE to call BS on is Davy Jones. As impressive and detailed as that character looks, no way does he look real!
And as someone else said, no Caeser or any of the other apes from Rise?
Also, I totally forgot about that scene in Children of Men. When I saw the making of it, I was like WHAT?!
Another WHAT?! is in Titanic, where an entire dining room isn’t even really there. I NEVER once assumed it to be fake, as it never crossed my mind to even question it. But I do believe the green screen elements were replaced with a miniature, so I’m not sure if that deserves a place here. Not to mention a giant BOAT sinks in that film – but some of that they actually did, so it’s kinda hard to draw the line.