What older movies made a good use of either side stepping special effects or have effects that somehow still hold up today? Why are they good movies?
Would Aliens be acceptable here?.The practical effects were incredibly well done as were the matte paintings.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a masterpiece of clever tricks, superb acting, and professional animation.
The Thing still has the best practical movie monster effects I have ever seen. And the most upsetting.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a breathtaking film that uses wirework choreography to transport you into a storybook fantasy.
+1 who framed Roger rabbit. The performance and eye contact is unreal. Watch Disney new vfx remakes, no one can match that.
The original Jurassic Park. Crazy to think that movie came out in 1993, over 32 years ago.
2001 a space odyssey’s effects are completely practical, which make sense since it came out before the first moon landing. it’s all physical models and cut-out photographs being moved in stop-motion, or huge rotating sets to simulate centrifugal gravity, or colored film being spun over a set of rollers.
personally i think it’s worth it to watch it for the effects alone, which is just as well because its influence is such that it has been eclipsed story-wise by things that came after it and so feels a bit shallow.
Kubrick was in charge of faking the moon landing, but he insisted on shooting it on location.
I tried watching this movie but couldn’t get further than 20-30min. I was just bored out of my mind. None of the sci-fi or story elements were interesting enough to keep me engaged.
It might be a good movie but I think it’s just not for meTotally understandable, even to someone who counts this film as a favorite. It is very slow moving.
it’s very slow and esoteric, it was criticised for it even at the time. if you approach it as a demonstration of pre-digital film techniques, and try to figure out how things were done, it may hold your attention longer. if you’re into that sort of thing.
Matrix 1. Other than some CGI, it doesn’t have so much special effects as much as it has special camera tricks.
How dare you, matrix does not qualify for old movie yet. Right? Right???
Anything before the year 2000 is old. Ask any Gen Z/Alpha.
Alien,
the original 1979 one.Imo it really aged well,
recently rewatched it and was amazed by how good the special effects looked, especially for that time.It’s also a really good movie,
scores 8.5/10 on IMDB,
kept me on the tip of my chair for the full 2 houra.Lord of the Rings effects still hold up, in my opinion at least. The Balrog uses a lot of “hidden” information with the use of blackness to cover up bad cgi. Horse charges are zoomed out far enough to disguise how few horses are actually there. Most of the movies use practical effects though.
There is an enormous amount of CGI in Lord of the Rings that you don’t really notice. Yes they used lots of miniatures and other practical effects, but that only takes you so far. The extended DVDs are full of some of the really cool ways they combined digital and practical. They show PJ “filming” at one point with a block of wood with a mocap ball on it.
They invented an entire new software just to make the huge battle scenes good. That software, Massive, is still used today to simulate giant crowds.
Gollum hasn’t aged perfectly, but pretty well for an entirely CGI character from the early 2000s.
Yeah, I was racking my brain to find a major movie filmed in the last decade without digital effects so that I could induce a recognition of the passage of time, and I couldn’t manage it. Covid started more than half a decade ago, and modern movies rarely use solely practical effects
Fury Road was almost all practical effects
There is a LOT of CGI in Fury Road.
They did lots of practical stunts, yeah, but each of those shots is then supplemented with CGI. Extra vehicles and scenery and whatnot.
There’s this weird thing where filmmakers like to pretend they don’t use CGI and it makes us as viewers think that CGI is somehow worse.
Edit: Bonus, check out the episode of It Was a Shit Show about Fury Road. It’s fascinating.
Tron. Vector graphics and filters gave a better effect than any of the weak sequels.
Forever underappreciated. They were hiring research professors at universities to do that stuff. It was so cutting edge that it was actually experimental.
And they got disqualified from the Oscars “because they cheated” – the following year there was a brand new nomination category for computer generated effects…
Jurassic Park
The Princess Bride
The flames are real flames! The R.O.U.S. is a tiny guy in a suit! The giant is… Andre the Giant!
Yeah, the behind the scenes stuff for that movie is wild.
They had to keep reshooting the fire swamp scene, because Cary Elwes (Westley/Dread Pirate Roberts) kept panicking every time Robin Wright (Princess Buttercup) got lit on fire.
The R.O.U.S. scene had to be delayed, because they had to go bail the dude in the rat suit out of jail. He had apparently gotten too drunk the night before, and was in the drunk tank on the morning that they were supposed to shoot the R.O.U.S. scene.
Not as old as some mentioned, but I love Gondry’s use of practical effects in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Also want to drop in Fx: Murder by Illusion, just 'cause I loved the movie when I first saw it many decades ago…
You want old movies? How about Royal Wedding (1951). It has a scene where Fred Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling. There’s no cgi or special effects, it was just done with a simple camera trick.
Reading through I see no one has yet mentioned dark crystal which I think is hensens magnus opus.
The Thing, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Alien(s), ET - just from top of my head. The Thing would be my favorite out of the bunch. No CGI, just pure and hardcore man-made effects.
12 angry men.
