10 Epic Movie Moments You Won't Believe Used No CGI
10. The Levitating Truck - Thor: The Dark World
The movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are so damn immersive that you take the use of CGI as a given, something you tend to do with all superhero films. Whilst a significant amount of their budgets are put into the hands of the guys at the computers, some MCU directors have preferred to take a more practical approach.
The scene in which a bunch of kids wander into an abandoned warehouse and find a cement truck slowly rotating in mid air would have been relatively easy to achieve using CGI, with todays special effects teams banging out that kind of thing in their sleep. Director Alan Taylor was apparently ready to let them do their magic until the practical effects team stepped in and convinced him they were the guys for the job.
Instead of a digital truck, we see an actual cement mixer on a kind of giant spit-roast, being rotated mechanically via remote control, turning a bog standard scene into something much cooler. In fact, that wasnt the only time Taylor opted to put away the green screen, taking his cast to the Icelandic wilderness to shoot those remote battle scenes.