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.

Titanic (1997)

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, defeating Starship Troopers (1997) and The Lost World (1997).

The most expensive film ever made - up to its time, at approximately $200 million. With stunning digital effects in a historical epic/drama - the passengers on the ship's deck, the ship's launch, the Titanic's engine room, the helicopter fly-bys, the transition shot of the two lovers at the front of the ship transformed to an underwater shot -- even Kate Winslet's iris that was digitally inserted and morphed into one of Gloria Stuart's eyes. Both CG and miniature models were used to portray the ocean-liner as it tilted, split in two, and sank in the tragic finale.

Mighty Joe Young (1998)

The creation of groundbreaking "hair, fur and feathers" technology for the CGI gorilla.

What Dreams May Come (1998)

This Oscar winner for Best Achievement in Visual Effects defeated the disaster film Armageddon (1998) and Mighty Joe Young (1998).

It depicted an imaginative and impressionistic visuals and landscapes of the after-life world, especially the "paint world" in which the entire world was an expressionistic landscape literally made of paint.

Fight Club (1999)

With extensive and revolutionary use of photogrammetry, a CGI first-person image-based modeling technique. Wire-frame 3-D models were created from photographs or real, still objects. The photos were then reemployed as texture maps, augmented with additional paint work. This allowed for high-speed photo-realistic camera movements around (or inside and through) objects - and other seemingly impossible feats. Examples can be seen in the gunshot, also in the pull-back tour of the wastepaper basket and its contents, and in the sequence of the kitchen explosion when the connection between the gas leak on the stove's burner to the spark on the refrigerator compressor was visualized. Also used in The Cell (2000) and Godzilla (1998).

The Matrix (1999)

This kinetic, action-oriented, sci-fi virtual reality film combined many innovative visual and special effects elements. It came from the directorial writing team of the Wachowski brothers, and included incredible Oscar-winning visual-effects (defeating Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) and Stuart Little (1999)).

It made reference to prototypical elements of the 21st century high-tech culture, such as hacking and virtual reality, and included bullet-dodging (digital effects dubbed "flow-mo" and "bullet time" were created with suspending actors on wires, and filming segments with multiple still cameras from multiple angles), cyber-punk chic, time-freezing, shoot-outs, wall-scaling, virtual backgrounds, and airborne kung fu. These tremendous visual effects were combined with Eastern world-denying philosophy, metaphysical Zen statements, Japanese anime, neo-Cartesian plot twists, film noir, and Lewis Carroll references.

The Mummy (1999)

This film had the most realistic digital human character ever seen in film, with totally computer-generated layers of muscles, sinew and tissue.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

This film undoubtedly contained more computer animation and special effects than any previous film - over 90%. It also featured a completely CGI-generated (all digital), fully-articulated main humanoid character named Jar Jar Binks (voice of Ahmed Best), a widely-derided aspect of the feature film. Jar Jar was a "Gungan", an alien indigenous to the planet Naboo.

[The annoying character was reprised in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002).]

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

This was the first feature film to be entirely color-corrected by digital means ("digital intermediate technology"), giving the film a washed-out, sepia-tinted tone, to invoke the feeling of old or antique photographs. In particular, green colors were selectively eliminated or desaturated.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

In this adventure/disaster film, the monster wave scene used computer-generated imaging from ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) to approximate the look of a stormy sea with 80 foot waves. In another incredible aerial shot, the camera plunged into the spiraling clouds of Hurricane Grace and into the Atlantic Ocean below.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

This science-fiction tale by director Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of the interactive video game that inspired this film) took four years to make. It advertised itself as "Fantasy Becomes Reality".

It was the first hyper-real, computer-generated (CGI) feature-length film based entirely on original designs - no real locations, people, vehicles, or props were used. The film was hailed for having photo-realistic, life-like images - the amount of detail rendered into hair, clothing, skin texture, eyes, and movement was astounding and impressive. Characters' faces and skin included such detail as liver spots, wrinkles, veins in a clenched hand, individual hair strands, and so forth.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)

First CGI feature length film (an animated comedy) -- produced by Nickelodeon and made by DNA Productions of Dallas, Texas, using off-the-shelf hardware and software (NewTek's LightWave 3D® animation software) to create, model, render and texture the film. It was the first computer-generated feature film from a major studio to be created solely with off-the-shelf software that any consumer could buy.