10 Movie Innovations That Happened Earlier Than You Think

6. 3D CGI - Futureworld (1976)

If you ask most people what the first movie to use 3D CGI effects was, most will tell you that it was 1982's undeniably groundbreaking VFX feast Tron.

But in actuality, 3D CGI made its small-but-significant debut six years prior in the Westworld sequel Futureworld.

Though the film itself was largely panned by critics, Futureworld is nevertheless an important milestone in the development of contemporary CGI, given that it was the first movie to feature 3D visual effects, with the film's clone creation sequence showing off digitally-created 3D images of hands and faces being cloned.

It's a brief scene, yet allowed early CGI pioneer Ed Catmull - who eventually became the president of Pixar - to throw the gauntlet down to the rest of Hollywood.

Without Futureworld's breakthrough, the likes of Star Wars, Tron, The Abyss, and so many other VFX trailblazers simply wouldn't have been possible.