2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
In an age before CGI, its hard to believe that Stanley Kubrick and his team on 2001: A Space Odyssey could have pulled off such amazing zero gravity sequences like the ones seen throughout the film including a stewardess walking up the wall of a space shuttle and an astronaut doctor (Gary Lockwood) jogging around the walls of the Discovery One but in fact all of them were created without any post-production special effects whatsoever. All it took was an enormous spinning wheel, rather like a hamsters wheel, which was fitted into the set to allow the actors to stay in one place, whilst everything else rotated around them. Its a simple, yet mind-bogglingly effective technique akin to Adam West and Burt Ward walking up the side of a building in the comical Batman TV series but in Kubricks hands it was so convincing, even the actors couldnt believe they werent really in space. 2001: A Space Odyssey revolutionized the science fiction genre and paved the way for Star Wars a few years later, largely thanks to its special effects.