10 KEY EFFECTS FILMS IN CINEMA HISTORY

2001 (1968) and STAR WARS EPISODE 4: A NEW HOPE (1977)
It all began right here. These films set the standard and the stage for visual effects until TERMINATOR 2 showed up on the scene. These are the films that provided the biggest influence on filmmakers, making them believe that there is a way to make any vision they put to paper, look believable on the screen.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) and THE FRIGHTENERS (1996)
T2 was the first film that made substantial use of CGI. Building on a technique from the water tentacle scene in THE ABYSS, the T-1000’s ability to morph was consistently something to behold. THE FRIGHTENERS was Peter Jackson’s first CGI epic. It built off of and improved on Cameron and Spielberg’s techniques and his seamless meld of the real world with the ghost world paved the way for Middle Earth in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (1998) and THE MATRIX (1999)
With these two films, the effects extended beyond action into art. Whether the beautiful painted landscapes of DREAMS or the revolutionary bullet time in MATRIX. And if you think I’m stretching here to connect the two think about such poetic moments in THE MATRIX as the elevator door that dances in the explosion, or Neo rescuing Trinity from a falling helicopter. Effects were never polished to such a high sheen.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) and JURASSIC PARK (1993)
D-Day and the T-Rex attack. Two events not even slightly related, but in both instances, Steven Spielberg put his audience right in the center of the action. Had you ever seen a battle scene even REMOTELY as realistic and as frightening as the Normandy invasion before RYAN came out? And JURASSIC was the first dinosaur movie where you could actually believe everything you were looking at. With both movies, the effects are helped by great cinematography, flawless editing and sounds effects that sent bullets whizzing right past your ears and had dinos breathing down your neck.

TWISTER (1996) and INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996):
Two big dumb, loud movies that made a ton of cash through mastery of the “trailer shot”. Everybody remembers that image of the White House blowing up in ID4. For TWISTER it was a shot of a tire bouncing in the road and crashing through a front windshield, taking out the camera. And the shots not even in the movie. Set the standard for other mediocre “trailer shot” films like THE PERFECT STORM.