Introduction: From even its earliest days, films have used visual magic ("smoke and mirrors") to produce illusions and trick effects that have startled audiences. In fact, the phenomenon of persistence of vision is the reason why the human eye sees individual frames of a movie as smooth, flowing action when projected.

Cel animation, scale modeling, claymation, digital compositing, animatronics, use of prosthetic makeup, morphing, and modern computer-generated or computer graphics imagery (CGI) are just some of the more modern techniques that are widely used for creating incredible special or visual effects.

(See this site's film terms glossary for definitions and examples, the History of Film by Decade, and an extensive timeline of other Milestones and Turning Points in Film History.)

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 100 Greatest Films.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: (2001-2003)

This was the three-time Oscar winner for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for three consecutive years. In each of the years of the award, this film series defeated Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), Pearl Harbor (2001), Spider-Man (2002), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).

In the first segment, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), there was an impressive stand-off fight between Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the fiery Balrog.

In the second part of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), CGI-imagery was combined with "motion capturing" (of the movements and expressions of actor Andy Serkis, who also served as the voice) to produce the barely-seen, supporting character of Gollum (originally known as Sméagol) - noted for saying: "Myyy PRECIOUSSS!" A motion capture suit recorded the actor's movements that were then applied to the digital character. A more laborious visual effects process digitally "painted out" Serkis's image and replaced it with Gollum's. [The same technique was repeated in I, Robot (2004), with Alan Tudyk as the robot Sonny.]

Also in The Two Towers (2002), AI-driven agents were first used to create the digital army scene.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

This film was most noted for the recreation of the infamous 1941 attack, with scenes digitally created, including hundreds of World War II era airplanes, ships and vehicles, along with the fire and smoke from dozens of explosions.

Winged Migration (2001, Fr.)

This bird documentary was famed for its almost complete lack of optical visual effects and some of the best camera work ever done in film history, especially the completely astounding sequence in which a moving camera followed a migratory tern for thousands of miles as it soared above the Earth in the clouds, and at one point panned more than 180 degrees around it. Filmmakers used several remote controlled and conventional planes, helicopters, hot-air balloons and gliders to film the awe-inspiring flying birds. [Director Jacques Perrin was also responsible for the landmark insect documentary MicroCosmos (1996), which used special cameras and lens to photograph insects up to the scale of humans.]

The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

The Matrix Reloaded introduced high-definition 'Universal Capture' (or U-cap) or image-based facial animation into the special effects lexicon -- i.e., the fight scene in Reloaded between Neo and 100 Agent Smiths used this technique. Five high-resolution digital cameras recorded the real Agent Smith's actions to produce data which was fed into a computer, where a complex algorithm calculated the actor’s appearance from every single angle the cameras had missed, and used them to generate digital or 'cloned' humans indistinguishable from real humans.

The Matrix Revolutions featured the first realistic, very close-up representation of detailed facial deformation on a synthetic human, during a face punch.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

This apocalyptic disaster film about global catastrophe used 50,000 scanned photos of a 13 block area of NYC to create a 3D, photorealistic model of the city - with that model (a digital backdrop), the downtown metropolis was destroyed by a giant digital wave and then frozen.

The film also featured the longest ever CG flyover shot for the opening ice shelf scene.

Immortel (Ad Vitam) (2004)

Like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) and Sin City (2005), this film seamlessly blended live actors with computer generated surroundings. It was one of the first films to use an entirely "digital backlot" (i.e. all of the actors were shot in front of blue- and green-screens with all the backgrounds added in post-production).

In addition, it also featured live actors interacting with semi photo-realistic CGI "humans".

The Polar Express (2004)

This Robert Zemeckis film further developed motion capture technology found in the pioneering Peter Jackson film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). It was marked by the first innovative use of the process of 'Performance Capture' -- a motion capture system by which an actor’s live performances were digitally captured by computerized cameras, and became a human blueprint for creating virtual, all-digital characters. Unlike existing motion-capture systems, Performance Capture simultaneously recorded 3-dimensional facial and body movements from multiple actors, using a system of digital cameras that provided 360 degree views. This allowed actor Tom Hanks to play many very different characters (the boy, the father, the conductor, the hobo, and Santa Claus) in the same film. Zemeckis went even further with this technique in his film Beowulf (2007).

King Kong (2005)

Peter Jackson's remake of the classic and tragic beauty-and-the-beast love story of the 1933 film featured a computer-generated Kong. Andy Serkis (who performed the role of the CGI character Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy) provided both on-set performance reference and motion-capture performance for the title character of King Kong. Its Oscar win defeated The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and War of the Worlds.

Elephants Dream (2006)

A computer-generated (or CGI) short film made primarily using open source applications, and the first to be released as open source -- meaning that all 3D models, animatics and software included on the DVD are free for anyone's use.

Happy Feet (2006)

Extensive motion capture was used to record the dancing of tap dance virtuoso Savion Glover for the soft-shoeing of young penguin Mumble in the CGI-animated tale. The hoofer wore a black bodysuit with 40 reflective sensors near his joints, to record his movements (as data) from the light reflectors - which was then turned into the bird's final performance by five motion editors and ten computer animators. However, all of the humans in the film were live action, not CGI.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

CGI imagery had reached the point of becoming so convincing that the completely computer-generated Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), a monstrously Octopus-faced-and-tentacled villainous under-sea creature, was so realistic that some critics in their reviews mistakenly thought Nighy was wearing prosthetic makeup. Visual effects artists at ILM used an instant (or on-the-spot) motion-capture-to-CG process, and an inventive technique called sub-surface scattering (to believably mimic the look of semi-translucent skin) to create the effect - they even used CGI for Jones' eyes. It won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects over Poseidon (2006) and Superman Returns (2006).

Superman Returns (2006)

This sequel used realistic, dramatic CGI, such as in the scene of a slow-motion bullet crushing itself against Superman's (Brandon Routh) eyeball, and the recreation of the role of Superman's biological father Jor-El (Marlon Brando) in the Fortress of Solitude sequence; the later used archival film footage from the first two films along with CGI interpolation, modeling and animation to create a three-dimensional image while he delivered new dialogue that existed previously only as vocal tracks; visual effects artists also created a realistic digital double of the title character with a digital cape.

Beowulf (2007)

This Robert Zemeckis-directed film, an adaptation of the Old English epic poem, used advanced motion-capture technology to transform live action into digital animation, resulting in a 100% CGI film. The technique was first used in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) for the character of Gollum (see above), and in Zemeckis' own The Polar Express (2004). The $150 million budgeted-film was released simultaneously in 2-D and non-IMAX 3D (called REAL D) versions, and had the biggest 3-D rollout of any film in history - opening on almost 1,000 digital 3-D screens and in 90 IMAX theaters.

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

The DreamWorks sci-fi spoof of 50s monster movies Monsters vs. Aliens was the first computer-animated feature film to be shot directly in stereoscopic 3-D -- dubbed the Ultimate 3-D. Previously, 3-D CGI films were made in a non 3-D version and then dimensionalized. Other 3-D computer animated films would also debut in the new format: 20th Century Fox's and James Cameron's Avatar (2009), Fox's Ice Age 3 (2009), Disney's motion-capture A Christmas Carol (2009), and Pixar's Toy Story 3 (2010).