13.The Fountain
A massively ambitious film, Darren Aronofsky's troubled passion project suffered from a difficult production that affected the quality of the final product. The budget was cut in half, stars dropped out, and the script was rewritten, but the one thing that wasn't harmed was the visuals. The Fountain tells three separate story lines where Hugh Jackman and Rachel Wiesz play characters involved in an epic story spanning thousands of years. Due to budget cuts, the visual effects team for the Fountain tried to use as little computer generated effects as possible, instead relying on creative alternatives. One option was filming the reaction of different chemicals over several weeks and then using said reactions as part of the scenes set in space. Due to the non-conventional methods, The Fountain looks remarkably unique and many of the crew members who worked on the film say that it might look better than it would have if the film had received a bigger budget.