10 Groundbreaking Movie Special Effects (That Aged TERRIBLY)
These FX don't hold up.
When you see some next-level special effects, it can be a magical moment. The computer-generated imagery used to bring Gollum to life was so ahead of its time, for example, you felt like your brain couldn't process what it was looking at.
You were in awe of such magnificent CGI, you felt like a child again.
So, when you rewatch these scenes, you expect to have that same wonder ignited within you. When you revisit Jurassic Park, you can see the CG dinosaurs looks better than the VFX in the recent sequels. Watching the T-1000 transformations in Terminator 2 is breathtaking, even after 30 years.
But this isn't always the case.
When you give some classic films another go, you'll notice the visuals aren't as great as you remember. In fact, they're downright awful or unintentionally hilarious. These effects may now look so shoddy, it's like the film replaced the scene you remember with a deeply inferior version.
At one point, these moments were impressive, even jaw-dropping. But it's time to take off the rose-tinted glasses and see these eyesores for what they really are.
10. Poltergeist
Poltergeist has so many mind-blowing special effects, its baffling how it didn't win any Oscars (It lost out to E.T.) But after 40 years, you'd assume a lot of these visuals would be pretty ropey nowadays.
Amazingly, most of these optical tricks still look top-notch. The way the house collapses into itself is one of the coolest visuals of the 1980s. The elongated corridor sequence is is just as mesmerising now as it was when Poltergeist was released.
But there's one scene that has aged worse than Mickey Rourke. When the parents open their children's bedroom door, they see all sorts of paraphernalia spinning throughout the room. As they gaze in horror, records twirl around, books fly towards them, and a lightbulb places itself into a lamp by itself.
Although this scene should be scary, it feels like it was only put together to show off these gimmicky visuals. Not only that, the camera lingers on every shot, making the stop-motion and green-screen painfully obvious. Because this scene doesn't add anything to the story, it feels self-serving . (Also, did we really need to see a floating Hulk action figure riding a toy horse?)