10 Movie Innovations That Happened Earlier Than You Think

2. Digital De-Aging - Waterworld (1995)

One of the most emergent filmmaking techniques in recent years has been digital de-aging: the ability for filmmakers with big enough budgets to make actors look markedly younger through CGI, typically for the sake of flashback scenes.

This has been memorably used in the likes of Tron: Legacy, a ton of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and most recently, The Irishman and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

The effect is largely accepted to have debuted in X-Men: The Last Stand, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen having decades shaved off their faces to play young versions of Professor X and Magneto.

But a more subtle and basic equivalent of digital de-aging was first employed in the 1995 blockbuster dud Waterworld, where star Kevin Costner reportedly ordered the film's VFX team to "fix" his receding hairline.

It certainly vibes with the consensus that Costner was an ego-maniac on the set of Waterworld, but at least he inadvertently helped blaze the trail for Hollywood to take digital touch-ups so much further in the future.