| Starship Troopers - Say what you want about how stupid it was that giant bugs from lightyears away could use bug farts to bombard our planet with asteroids, Starship Troopers is my favorite FX film of all time. Ressurecting the giant bug movies of the 50's with a vengeance, this tour-de-force delivers some amazing optics. Lumbering spacecraft and graphic battle scenes are in joyful abundance. Phil Tippet and others bring visuals so frightening that even the bravest of souls flinched and jumped as the giant insectoids attacked. In fact, this is the only movie where every single person who saw that killer shot of the swarming bugs attacking the abandoned outpost, gave the exact same, audible 'gasp'. Every one of the 500+ FX shots are jawdroppers. Forget the plot, the acting, the ryhme and reason, and the first 45 minuts, and you have one hell of a roller coaster ride for your eyeballs. |
| The Thing - John Carpenter's remake of the 1956 classic is one cool slimy monster after another. Makeup man Rob Bottin nearly lost his mind trying to complete the fantastic, gruesome effects on time and budget. One look at any of the sequences will tell you why. Imagination runs wild and blood, guts, and slime are flowing free. Not for the weak or squeamish. The toothed chest, arm munching, neck stretching, walking spider head sequences is one of the best ever. |
| Star Wars - Impossible not to appear on such a list. Gave birth to Industrial Light and Magic, motion control photography, and finally made miniatures a somewhat acceptable form of special effect. Finally, spacecraft have some zip and pizzazz to them. The Special Edition clearly helps define this movie as one of the greatest. Can you think of a cooler weapon than a light saber? |
| Titanic - You know what really bugged me? Everyone who saw Titanic, when asked how it was, said "It was pretty good, but you could tell that the ship was fake sometimes". Computer grahics has spoiled moviegoers to the point that we find pride in ourselves in being clever enough to spot them. Why doesn't anyone say "Hey, that looked a hell of a lot better than the plastic models they've been using for the last hundred years of film". For all the eagle-eyes who noted the CG ship effects in the film, not one of them noticed the graphics used to simulate steam in the actor's breaths, or the CG water, or the CG stuntmen. Although the FX shots seemed scarce, there is actually a lot happening here visually, and it's all done well. The irony of the FX business is that if no one notices your work, then it's done well. Plus, for $200,000,000 it better look damn good! I defy someone to name a more realistic sinking of a ship in all of film history. Well? I didn't think so. |
| Hollow Man - Yet another Verhouven FX spectacle void of logic, plot and originality but still containing some awesome visuals that are sure to make even David Copperfield envious. Invisibility sight gags in movies have all been done before, and the technique is actually simple, but the extreme that it's taken to in Hollow Man just about classifies it as real art. Too bad the movie wasn't as good as the trailer. Still, it demands your attention as a marvelous effects film. |
| 10 Greatest FX film had you asked me 10 years ago |
| Jason and the Argonauts King Kong Dawn of the Dead The Thing Star Wars |
| Poltergeist Who Framed Roger Rabbit The Abyss The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad The Empire Strikes Back |
| Jason and the Argonauts - Ray Harryhausen was a stop motion animator who set the standard in his field for over 25 years. A student of Willis O'Brian (of King Kong fame), Harryhausen delivered the vastest array of movie monsters in all of film history. Minotaurs, Cyclops, Gorgons, Pegasus, dragons and dinosaurs, giant crabs and squids and monkeys and birds and bees and snakes and scorpions and six armed-bladed-statue warriors, just to name a few. Ray was the first one to show us the aliens destroying a famous American landmark (the White House in 1956's Earth Vs. Flying Saucers), a practice so beloved by today's filmmakers, they wouldn't dream of depriving the audience of it. But Ray's ultimate achievment and claim to fame would have to be the fantastic battle scene that climaxed 1963's Jason and the Argonauts, where Jason and three of his men do battle with 7 skeleton warriors resurrected from the teeth of the slain 7 headed Hydra (cool concept, eh?). For this scene alone (light years ahead of it's time), this film finds a place in my humble list of greatest FX films. Where would movies be today without the great FX pioneers of yesteryear who set the highest standard for their art that was limited by technology, but never by imagination. I choose not to ponder such a horrid thought. |
| Jurassic Park - Taking computer graphics (and film making along with it) into the next era. Say good-bye to stop motion animation. Finally film-lovers were able to see the closest thing to an actual living, breathing, dinosaur without it being a claymation model or some dude in a zippered rubber suit. Ray Harryhausen must have cried as he saw stop motion animation become extinct as a Stegosaurus. Thanks Uncle Steve, you did it again. |
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| King Kong - In 1933, audiences were wowed by the greatest movie monster of all time. Willis O'Brian, the first real special effects pioneer, brought to life the giant ape that goes bananas over Fay Wray (still the greateset screamer of all) and it all became the stuff of movie legend. To watch it today is indeed laughable, but will give a reality slap to all those neo-filmgoers who take computer graphics for granted. The pain staking amount of work that went into animating Kong by hand took more time and energy than any mouse potato effects artist would even consider expending today. Not to include King Kong as one of the greatest effects film of all time would be not only a disservice to the film, but to the art itself. |
| Toy Story 2 - Wow, this whole movie is one big great special effect. Anyone who is not completely mesmerized by the beauty and wonder of such marvelous technology has to be brain dead. Even better than the original, the graphics are razor sharp and full of life. Of course, it has a wonderful story to go along with it, but even that aside, it is still remarkable to me the amazing amount of detail and effort that goes into a film that targets an audience so young that they could never really fully appreciate it.. But I'm sure within the next year or so, this flick will be booted from the list and replaced by something even more amazing. We are in the midst of a CG revoloution. Be patient and wait through the transitional periods, the best is yet to come. |
| Star Wars Episode 1- The Phantom Menace - Sorry, got to do it. The visuals speak for themselves. My advice? Kill the sound and leave your brain somewhere far, far away. 'Nuff said. |
| And lastly, as I bow my head in shame. . . |
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