Best special effects in movies?

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Danja

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I was watching Starship Troopers last night and something about the Arachnids struck me: They look completely real. Even now, in 2010, even the best of Sci-fi CGI looks completely fake to me...

But Starship Troopers, a movie from about a decade ago, has aliens that look completely real. I have no idea how they did it, but the Arachnids from Starship Troopers look more believable than the Navi from Avatar. It's the only time when CGI actually allowed me to maintain suspension of disbelief, rather than just distracting me.

So there's my vote, what movies do you think have the best special effects?
 
Dont be a nubcake

Dont be a nubcake

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Big-Al said:
'98 :)
Aliens is the best movie ever made.
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I would have to agree. I loved Predators because to me it was like the "Aliens" of that franchise. They even used the "old school" style of Stan Winston Preds in the movie. Suprisingly the script is over 15 years old.:eek:

As far as the CG stuff goes. I was pretty impressed with Star Trek (2009).

Then there's Spawn:)
 
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Jackal

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Just reading the title, my first thought was "I'll bust up in here with Starship Troopers".

For me, Starship Troopers has the best effects hands down. Even to this day. The ships were very real and believeable, as were the arachnids. I know they made some of the legs and stuff for props etc, but still, when they were in space and stuff, the ships, even to this day look amazing.

Also mentioned was the new 2009 Star Trek and District 9. Both to which I'll agree with looked real. Real enough to say "hey, that looks real".

Also Jurassic Park is another one that I think the CGI proved itself if given time and the proper people behind it. Same goes for the Lord of the Rings triliogy. While some parts looked off, others were amazing. LOTR was a hit and miss in CGI with some of the creatures.

On the flip side, you could toss millions of dollars and have the CGI look like crap... Avatar, the "newer" Star Wars all looked terrible to me. They favored CGI over actual models which is where they messed up I think.

Notable mentions: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (for lulz of course)
 
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Danja

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Jackal said:
Just reading the title, my first thought was "I'll bust up in here with Starship Troopers".

For me, Starship Troopers has the best effects hands down. Even to this day. The ships were very real and believeable, as were the arachnids. I know they made some of the legs and stuff for props etc, but still, when they were in space and stuff, the ships, even to this day look amazing.

Also mentioned was the new 2009 Star Trek and District 9. Both to which I'll agree with looked real. Real enough to say "hey, that looks real".

Also Jurassic Park is another one that I think the CGI proved itself if given time and the proper people behind it. Same goes for the Lord of the Rings triliogy. While some parts looked off, others were amazing. LOTR was a hit and miss in CGI with some of the creatures.

On the flip side, you could toss millions of dollars and have the CGI look like crap... Avatar, the "newer" Star Wars all looked terrible to me. They favored CGI over actual models which is where they messed up I think.

Notable mentions: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (for lulz of course)
Click to expand...

I agree with the new Star Wars trilogy, but I think the whole thing should have been animated. The locales and planets always had really interesting and dynamic art directions, but because they looked so fake seeing live actors walking around in them threw me off.

If the movies were the exact same, but every actor was replaced with similarly cartoony CGI characters, I think the trilogy would have been much more visually impressive.
 
theabyss

theabyss

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TWO WEEKS!

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SleepyHe4d

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Big Red Button said:
I was watching Starship Troopers last night and something about the Arachnids struck me: They look completely real. Even now, in 2010, even the best of Sci-fi CGI looks completely fake to me...

But Starship Troopers, a movie from about a decade ago, has aliens that look completely real. I have no idea how they did it, but the Arachnids from Starship Troopers look more believable than the Navi from Avatar. It's the only time when CGI actually allowed me to maintain suspension of disbelief, rather than just distracting me.

So there's my vote, what movies do you think have the best special effects?
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How they did it? The same way Jurassic park and plenty of other movies before CGI became popular did it. Animatronics. If done right, they all looked amazing. I'm not sure why CGI is favored over that these days, especially for organic monsters. For humanoids and other objects you need CGI though.

Oh, and before anyone says anything, yes they used CGI too, but what made it great was the use of animatronics.

Jackal said:
On the flip side, you could toss millions of dollars and have the CGI look like crap... Avatar, ...... They favored CGI over actual models which is where they messed up I think.
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You must be joking. The characters and world would have looked retarded as **** with any other technique. They looked unbelievably amazing the way they did it and it is easily the best special effects to date. I also call bull**** on you thinking they looked like crap. I bet if you didn't know, you would have thought it was actors wearing make up and only using special effects to change the eyes/nose or something. :p

Also, the monsters in Avatar was the first time afaik where organic monsters looked better in CGI than they would have with animatronics.
 
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Darkdrium

Darkdrium

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Jackal said:
On the flip side, you could toss millions of dollars and have the CGI look like crap... Avatar, the "newer" Star Wars all looked terrible to me. They favored CGI over actual models which is where they messed up I think.
Click to expand...
I disagree about Avatar, I thought the CGI was pretty good and the image processing used didn't make the real actors stand out as much as in Star Wars. I agree about the new trilogy of Star Wars though, if they had done a Beowulf type thing it could've been better. Beowulf was pretty good but still looked a little too fake in some places for the style they were going for in my opinion.
 
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DeathBooger

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You guys are talking about compositing quality, not CGI. All films are digitally composted these days, but the most talented people can take CG characters and composite them into a film and have them make perfectly with everything else in the scene.
 
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