10 Groundbreaking Movie Special Effects (That Aged TERRIBLY)

Even though CGI was considered to be potentially gimmicky at first, everything changed in 1999. After the release of The Matrix, The Phantom Menace, and The Mummy that year, moviegoers finally understood this groundbreaking technology was here to stay.

However, people forget the superhero flick, Spawn, predates all those movies. Released in 1997, Todd MacFarlane's comic book adaptation was one of the first films with fully computer-generated characters. Although critics loathed it, the special effects were regarded as Spawn's only positive quality.

But when you watch it now, it seems inconceivable that anyone thought these visuals looked good. And it's not just one specific visual. ALL the CGI is terrible! Spawn's billowing cape is so appallingly rendered, you wonder why the crew didn't just make a real one. Because the actors can't see the cape, they have no reference point while looking at Spawn, making the visual even less believable.

But that's not all. 22 digital companies worked for 11 months to design the Hell dimension, and yet, it looks like it was cobbled together in five, maybe six minutes.

But the worst aspect of the film's VFX has to be Hell's ruler, Malebolgia. This demon looks so incomplete because... he is. The visual team ran out of time before fine-tuning Malebolgia's design, so they didn't get a chance to make his mouth move when he talks.