10. Baby Joel - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
If you're familiar with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, you're familiar with forced perspective, whether you know it or not. So much of the effects in those movies is accomplished through what amounts to optical illusions, up to and including when Gandalf and Frodo first meet. Maybe you thought Jackson shrunk Elijah Wood somehow, but it actually wasn't that simple. In fact, the process was surprisingly complicated, which you can see illustrated in the video below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDlxpnRxDJs As is almost always the case in Hollywood, there were imitators, putting Jackson's technique to use in their own films. Among the most noteworthy examples of this is
the scene in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where Jim Carrey's character is thrust back into his childhood. You would think, if you didn't know better, that it was simply some sort of CGI at work, but you'd be wrong. It, like a large portion of the film, eschews the more, shall we say, modern approaches in favor of the more crafty ones, in this case forced perspective. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II0er7TmkS8 For a movie so surreal, the fact that this scene, as well as many others, was done without the aid of CGI speaks wonders about it. Imagine the thought, time, and effort that went into creating what you see on your screen. Did you know that, for the scene involving two Joels, Jim Carrey merely ran back and forth, taking off or doffing his cap depending on which one he was portraying? With this in mind, it's hard not to be impressed. Would CGI have been less exhausting? Indeed it would have, especially in Carrey's case. But it's debatable whether it would have made it any better. All that matters, in the end, is that it worked, and quite wondrously at that.