10 Best CGI Movie Characters Ever

8. The Shark - The Shallows

Lord of the Rings Gollum
Columbia Pictures

The majority of the characters featured in this article have some sort of human element behind them – be that a vocal performance or motion capture work – yet this entry is based around an entirely computer-delivered character. That character, of course, is The Shallows’ shark that was created by SFX guru Scott E. Anderson and his team.

What makes the shark from The Shallows so notable is that it was a CGI character that legit had people wondering how on earth the production had managed to get a real shark to perform in the picture. Logic dictated that the creature had to be a CGI creation, yet the toothy beast genuinely looked like a living, breathing shark as it stalked poor Blake Lively.

Jaume Collet-Serra’s 2016 offering was a small, intimate film that was headed up by two performances – Lively and her circling foe – and key to maintaining the tension and menace of the picture was making sure that the shark looked good and was utilised in the right way. Luckily for fans of the shark movie subgenre, The Shallows knocked it out of the park on this front.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.