Top 10 VFX Films of the 2000s
Starting in the 1990s, the Star Wars prequels harkened in the age of digital cinema. George Lucas and ILM elevated the hybrid film with groundbreaking character animation and virtual environments even more with Episode II and III. Just watching the improvements from Clones to Sith shows the leaps and bounds the industry made in the 2000s. From Yoda to General Grievous to R2-D2, the animators created believable digital creations alongside human actors. And the opening space battle in Sith still stands as one of cinema's most thrilling start.
The Harry Potter series is one of the defining series of the 2000s. Each entry broke ground in different areas. The Chamber of Secrets brought Dobby to the world, a big step forward in CG character acting. The Prisoner of Azkaban made Dementors a frightening sight. The Goblet of Fire changed the way fire effects were done and also breathed life into cinema's best dragons. Moreover, the series single-handedly transformed the London VFX industry with state-of-the-art character animation and virtual environments.
King Kong made us cry. Peter Jackson and Weta took performance capture to the next level with Kong while expanding their virtual sandbox. Combining performance capture and character animation, the giant ape became a character we cared about. The film set the groundwork for other films to dare to put a digital creation at the center of their emotional story. And the vfx artists put Kong in beautifully constructed environments on Skull Island and 1930s New York City.
The Pirates of the Caribbean series brought new landmark cinematic wonders with each installment. In The Curse of the Black Pearl, the moonlight revealed skeleton pirate crewmembers. ILM had its own performance capture wonder in Davy Jones, right in the middle of the action with a small footprint, thanks to Imocap, in The Dead Man's Chest. And don't forget The Maelstrom, which raised water simulation beyond Poseidon, in At World's End.
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Davy Jones and his crew looked more real than the Navi people in Avatar. They all seemed animated to me. Never did I belived them to be real creatures. Jones and his crew were also allways placed in real enviroment and not in a farytale computerised world like Pandora. Hence the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy should have been on the top of this list.
Interesting list but I would have thought there would have been more on it. The graphics in films seemed to take on a brand new direction in the 2000s and the beginning of 2010 shows that there are going to be more. casino online
More George Lucas haters here too I see? Boy, can't get away from these types! ILM is a relic of the 20th Century? Guess who it was that helped jump-start WETA? That's right, ILM.
The list compiled here seems very complete. I cannot think of anything else to add, except maybe Robert Zemeckis' performance capture. Many will not agree his films are "successes", but they are technical achievements nonetheless. If there was no Polar Express, there would be no performance capture technology to be improved in Avatar.
Also, I think Benjamin Button should have been number 1 on the list because it was the only film here that actually, like the article says, "set up camp in the Uncanny Valley." The realism was outstanding. Avatar and Gollum are great too, but they didn't really bridge the uncanny valley because theh CG characters were not remotely human.
King Kong is here, but not 2012? Funny...
"Visual effects allow filmmakers to take viewers to worlds they have never seen."
You mean, the way they've been doing ever sine Melies took viewers to the moon? I remember taking a journey to the center of the earth, visiting the domed world of Logan's Run, going to Jupiter and beyond the infinite, being deposited into a world inside a computer, and (though it was traditional animation, not VFX) being with a talking pride of lions on the savannahs of Africa ... all LONG before Weta and James Cameron supposedly blew the lid off of visual effects.
I think "Avatar" is a splendid, spectacular movie, but I remember Alfred Hitchcock placing Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint on the face of Mount Rushmore -- as much an impossibility as exploring Pandora -- more than a half-century ago.
So, please, please don't get caught up in the hype that "Avatar" is a "game-changer." It's not. It's a fantastic, amazing, wonderful, rich, astonishing movie. And it follows in the footsteps of OTHER films that took us places we could never have imagined (such as in a tiny capsule floating through the inside of a human body, or in a capsized luxury liner) long, long before 3-D CGI had been "perfected."
I think you sell yourselves and your industry a bit short by jumping on to the "Avatar" hype bandwagon.
Say all you want about either of these movies, but in both cases the VFX wiped out the inherent story. These are classic style over substance movies, and a truly worthy VFX film should use the VFX to enhance the story, not overpower it. There's not a believable, identifiably human moment in either film and in the case of Kong, the dinosaur sequence was SO bad that it should have taken this film off the list permanently. Besides, George Lucas and ILM are overvalued, overhyped and relics of the 20th century.
How does King Kong get into any kind of special effects top list? The picture of the woman composited into King Kong's hand was visibly 2D (like a piece of paper), the smoke of the ship was always flying in the same direction, although the camera was changing angles, and the night scenes of New York was visibly on an indoor set. This was a sloppy work.
This list has one massive missing element within it:
The Matrix Trilogy
Despite the debate on the merits of the scripts or the anticipation bubble preceding Reloaded, the effects innovations are unlike any films which had existed previously and have impacted literally hundreds since, not to mention many alternate content platform extensions.
The advent and following explosion in "Virtual Cinematography", "Image Based" Rending, and design methodologies will set the stage for decades to come for feature film, interactive media and even VR.
While every film on this list is deserving, remarkable and cinema changing in it's own way, a number of them owe certain inspiration and directional influence to ideas and people whom built the Matrix universe.
My question is, which way will "cinema" really go in 10, 20 or 30 years. How will we really see the impact of the last decade impact then?
Respectfully Offered
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