2. Stargate - 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
While we're on the subject, I think it as good a time as any to look at what I consider to be the most dazzling scene in all of
2001: A Space Odyssey, the one in which Bowman finds himself racing through space at high speeds. Director Stanley Kubrick famously put off
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence for as long as he did because of a long-held desire to see David played not by a child, but a real robot. With this in mind, it makes sense that his movies would favor traditional effects over computer generated ones, a preference that becomes quite clear when one watches
2001. From the models serving as spaceships, to the humans playing primates, Kubrick did an impeccable job of creating a film that could hold up over time, the look of the film impressive even by today's standards.
Possibly the most inventive effect of the whole movie was Kubrick's idea for how to show Bowman's trip through space as he sees it. He managed this effect by using slit-scan photography of high-contrast images, ranging from op-paintings to architectural drawings, the number of images used totaling in the thousands. It's thanks to this creative technique, Kubrick was successfully able to convey to the viewer the unbelievable sensory overload that Bowman experiences as he hurtles through space.
