10 CGI Movie Shots You Never Noticed
2. Tony Stark At The Beach - Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 memorably ends with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) tossing his now-unnecessary arc reactor into the sea before confirming that, yes, he is still Iron Man.
While you might assume that Robert Downey Jr. simply shot the scene on a soundstage and the cliff edge was digitally added later - a very reasonable assumption, indeed - there's a jaw-droppingly impressive invisible effect right in front of your very face.
The film's VFX supervisor, Chris Townsend, revealed shortly after Iron Man 3's release that because Robert Downey Jr. was recovering from an ankle injury when this scene was supposed to be shot, it had to be filmed without him.
Basically, a body double filmed the scene in-person, and then a digital scan of Downey's face was pasted over the double's own.
Though some folk online have retroactively claimed that the scene always looked a little off, let's be honest, if they hadn't flat-out told you it was CGI, would you ever have been able to tell?