Top 10 VFX Films of the 2000s
Digital Domain sets up camp in the Uncanny Valley, according to David Fincher, with its amazing CG human that ages backwards. With advancements in skin sim and lighting, Brad Pitt was transformed into a young old man and aged to his youthful looking self from earlier films like Thelma & Louise. The effect was startling and impressive. The entire film's success rested on the success of these visual effects. With an Oscar win for Best Visual Effects and a nomination for Best Picture, its success on a technical and emotional level was rewarded.
When you think of the visual effects accomplishments of the Lord of the Rings series, the first one that comes to mind of Gollum. Weta Digital made the first great performance capture leap with Gollum, transforming Peter Jackson's imaginative adaptation of Tolkien. The visual effects artists also made captivating worlds all across Middle-Earth. From the first film to the last, the production combined old school film tricks with cutting-edge digital filmmaking to make normal-sized actors appear Hobbit sized and put real humors and digital creations seamlessly into the frame together like never before.
James Cameron's epic sci-fi adventure closed out the 2000s as the industry game changer. Right from its release, it revolutionized virtual production and stereoscopic spectacle, thanks in part to Rob Legato and Weta Digital. Visual effects allow filmmakers to take viewers to worlds they have never seen. In Avatar, Pandora is a world like no other and each element is flawlessly integrated breaking away any need for suspension of disbelief. And you can forget about the Uncanny Valley after Zoe Saldana's remarkable performance as Neytiri.
Rick DeMott is the director of content for Animation World Network, VFXWorld and AWNtv. Additionally, he's the creator of the movie review site, Rick's Flicks Picks, which was recently named one of the 100 best movie blogs by The Daily Reviewer. He has written for TV series, such as Discovery Kids' Growing Up Creepie and Cartoon Network's Pet Alien, the animation history book Animation Art, and the humor, absurdist and surrealist website Unloosen. Previously, he held various production and management positions in the entertainment industry.
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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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