10 Awesome Special Effects You'll Be Shocked Didn't Use CGI

Special effects technology is becoming more advanced by the day. Soon we'll reach the point where Christian Bale's transformation into a mummified corpse for The Machinist becomes almost solely a job for computers, able to make him as fit or fat as the filmmaker desires. If the making young of Jeff Bridges for TRON: Legacy is anything to go off of however, that might be a somewhat optimistic statement, since it's clear there's still a ways to go, but I'm sure that'll change as technology advances. With this in mind, it's understandable why so many directors would embrace CGI, and why so few would stick it out using more traditional means. It's faster and it's cheaper. Plus, the more tech advances, the faster and cheaper it will become. What could go wrong, then, with such a transition? For one, it is often used as a shortcut with quality sacrificed in favor of expediency, the end result looking like something out of a mockbuster. Second of all, and most importantly, some of film's most well-known and well-respected effects were realized without the crippling crutch that is CGI. That's exactly what this article is about, filmmakers whose effects put others to shame without having to resort to technological wizardry to accomplish them.