Category: Best Visual Effects

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – 1980 (WINNER)

The Empire Strikes Back was the only film nominated for the Best Special Effects category in 1980, but I’d venture to say that even if it’d had some competition, it would have won anyway.  Its effects were far superior to any other space fantasy film that cropped up in the wake of the original Star Wars.  I happen to be a big fan of practical effects if they are done well, and George Lucas and the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, or ILM for short, really outdid themselves.

There were so many new technical innovations and an incredible amount of creativity that went into the special effects.  Many of the film’s most memorable effects, the AT-AT walkers during the battle on the ice planet, Hoth, as well as the tauntaun creatures, were created using stop-motion animation.  But the standard technique was improved by the invention of Go-Motion.  It was a way of adding motion blur to the frame-by-frame effect, making it look so much more natural to the eye than the choppy stop-motion effects audiences were used to!

Also, the way the miniature space ship models were filmed was incredible.  The chase scene in the asteroid field was phenomenal.  The Millennium Falcon, the four TIE fighters, and every single asteroid had to be filmed using a moving camera attached to a computer, making it possible to perfectly replicate the exact same shots as many times as they needed.  Multiple matching takes allowed them to composite all the different visual elements into seamless and realistic images.

And then there was Yoda.  Ok, so we all know he was only a glorified Muppet, but he was more complex and realistic than any other puppet that had ever been created.  His eyes moved like natural eyes.  His ears moved, and even his forehead muscles seemed to have independent motion.  All these detailed elements were combined, allowing the puppeteers to simulate a full range of emotions.  It was really incredible.  But the nearly immobile mouth really broke the illusion of reality for me.  Its stiff motion was better than that of a standard Muppet, but only a little.

But there were many other perfectly crafted effects that were amazing.  The rotoscoped light saber duel, which was pretty sedate in the first film, was kicked into overdrive here, becoming a fast-paced sword fight that was thrilling to watch.  There were fantastic matte-paintings that created new and visually stunning worlds, landscapes, and backgrounds.  There were brilliantly designed sets and insanely detailed miniature models that were a feast for the eyes.

Many consider this movie to be the best of film of the entire Star Wars franchise, and the fantastic special effects really went a long way to help elevate it to that status.  I think the effects were all the more impressive because they were practical effects, as opposed to the amazing CGI used in modern films.  Pretty awesome!

Star Trek The Motion Picture – 1979

Many people believe that the odd numbered Star Trek films are inferior to the even numbered ones.  For the older movies, there may be some truth to that belief, but I actually like the plot of the franchise’s first big-screen venture.  Star Trek The Motion Picture was not one of the better feature film in the franchise because it had pacing that made glaciers look fast.  But the special effects were not at fault.  The cinematography, the set design, and the aesthetics of the film were fantastic, with maybe the exception of the pajama-like costumes.

The original budget for the film was $15 million, but by the time the troubled production was completed, just days before its premier, the budget had ballooned to an incredible $46 million. This was mostly due to the special effects.  When the original optical effects team was unable to complete their tasks on time, Effects Supervisor Douglas Trumbull was allowed as much money as he needed to meet the film’s premier date.

But I have to say, the effects, slow as they were, were mostly pretty phenomenal.  Still, there were a few things that looked a little shoddy, and so I’ll quickly go over them.  In the beginning, there was a scene in which three Klingon ships are flying towards the camera.  The telltale black outlines that marked substandard compositing effects were completely visible.  Also, the giant Ilea Spock encounters on his space-walk looks like a badly computer-generated figure.  And lest I forget, the early-generation CGI wormhole through which they passed looked pretty ridiculous, though this one is forgivable since CGI was still in its infancy.  

And then there were the good effects, slow as most of them were.  The Enterprise has to fly into the massive interior of the mysterious space cloud known as V’Ger.  The glowing shapes and shadows are made to look humongous.  Unfortunately, though they looked fantastic, they were shown much too slowly.  It went a long way to portray the alien vessel’s size, but it also made for a long and dull sequence that brought the pacing of the film to a near halt.

There were photon torpedoes, alien obliteration weapons that spouted writhing lines of electricity like what you might see coming from a Tesla coil.  The electricity would seem to consume entire ships and space stations, starting at one end and moving to the other.  That was a pretty cool effect.  And the alien probe that looked like a religious pillar of fire also looked great.  And finally, there was the climactic and ethereal joining of V’Ger with its creator.  It all looked pretty unique and larger than life, transcending the original Star Trek TV show from whence it came.

My only complaint about the visuals of the film is a mild one.  They made the choice to make nearly every effect, except the orange wormhole, blue.  Almost the entire movie seemed to be filmed in shades of blue, black, and white.  There was really nothing wrong with this choice, except that the limited color pallet got a little boring after a while.  But blue or not, slow or not, the effects were visually stunning!

1941 – 1979

This movie was a lesson in chaos.  It was a fast-paced comedic romp with a well-known cast, all headed by a top-notch director, Stephen Spielberg.  Spielberg, who had just finished working on two popular successes, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was given permission to do anything he wanted.  Following in the same vein by having a special effects-heavy film, he created some pretty impressive visuals wrapped around a story that was a mix between a Saturday Night Live sketch and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World.  The result was, unfortunately, a flop at the theaters.

If you look online there is a page you can find that is specifically about the special effects for 1941, and there is also a documentary included on the DVD about the making of the film, so I had some good resources for research.  The movie’s special effects were based mostly on two things: miniature models and stunts, and they certainly did not disappoint.  There were plenty of both!

First let me comment on the miniatures.  The best special effects are the ones you don’t know are special effects.  While I was watching the film, it never once occurred to me that I was watching miniature models.  For example, when two fighter planes are speeding down Hollywood Boulevard, I thought they were skilled stunt pilots flying through a fake set, though the set didn’t look at all fake.  But no, all the buildings, the signs, and the lights were all done in miniature, and two miniature airplane models were suspended on thin cables to speed down the street.

The scene where a Ferris-wheel is blown from its housing, rolls down a pier, crashes into the Ocean, and sinks was amazing!  Never-mind the fact that if the wheel had been disconnected from its power source, its lights would have gone out.  But it looked better lit as it sank, so… suspension of disbelief!  But I was surprised to learn that the entire visible amusement park and the pier were also miniature models that were rigged for destruction.  And there was a tank that was charging down the street, running over cars, or anything else that got in its way.  I thought they had a real tank running over disposable cars, but no, the tank itself was also a miniature model, as were the cars and the buildings lining the street.

The stunts came in the form of a dance-hall brawl during a dance contest was a perfectly choreographed chaos.  It was a fast-paced, high energy, and very comedic sequence that was really fun to watch.  Once the brawl left the hall and became a riot in the streets, things got even more chaotic.  There were planes crashing to the street, and a crazy tank crew shooting everything in sight, trying to douse every light on Hollywood Boulevard to enforce a blackout.  It was a zany madcap romp that didn’t let up until the end of the film when Ned Beatty obliviously demolishes the remnants of his house.  The last effect of the film shows his home rolling off the side of a short cliff.   Sure, the film may have been a silly comedy, but the special effects were certainly no joke!

The Black Hole – 1979

I can completely understand why this movie didn’t win the Oscar for Best Special Effects.  Yes, it did have a lot of cool effects that looked great, but it also failed to believably execute effects that should have been simple.  The ones they got right looked fantastic, but the ones they got wrong were just so terrible and difficult to ignore!  If any movie is ripe and ready for a modern remake, it is this one.

It is important to note three things about the film before looking at the special effects too closely.  First is that this is a Disney film, and they went out of their way to provide a sense of family-friendly comedy or campiness to the film and its effects.  Second, techniques like rotoscoping to remove flying wires were still new and unperfected.  And third, they made a conscious decision to completely ignore things like science or even basic laws of physics.  And as an unqualified fourth, the filmmakers were all on LSD, especially when they wrote the movie’s bizarre hell and heaven ending.  It was probably one of the creepiest things in the whole movie.

Let’s start with the good effects.  The black hole, itself, looked really cool!  The effect was created by pouring viscous paint in a tank full of water that had a rotating fan at the bottom.  This created the whirlpool effect.  Then they played with things like color saturation, different exposures, the speed of the film, and multiple overlays.  The result was a completely unearthly and fascinating effect!  Next was the animated effects that looked more real than animated, things like the rocket thrusters on the various space ships, or the sparks being ejected from exploding robots.  And the ridiculous giant meteor, which preceded the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, that rolled down the Cygnus’s main corridor, looked great.

But aside from those few things and some awesome set designs, many of the most commonly used effects were just awful.  In order to create the illusion of people floating in zero gravity or flying robots, there was a lot of wire work.  Unfortunately, you could see all the wires!  Not only were they completely visible, but they even bunched up the clothes of the people being suspended, showing us exactly where they were attached.  You could also see the wires on the robots, and in one case, I could see the hook that fastened it to the robot’s shoulder.

And I hate to say it, but most of the blue-screening in the film was terrible.  The lighting was such that you could see a clear white halo around the actors whenever a matted background was used.  But then when they were showed them from a different angle, the halo vanished.  It drew my attention away from the story.

And finally, there was the weird ending.  The probe ship’s psychedelic journey through the wormhole in the center of the black hole, Dr. Rienhardt’s descent to a classic version of a fire and brimstone hell, his imprisonment inside his monster robot’s empty shell, and the heroes’ ascent through a mirrored passageway to heaven, was both haunting and beautiful.  A very strange but well-executed, though enigmatic sequence of special effects, indeed!

Alien – 1979 (WINNER)

OK, this was one seriously creepy movie.  It was a science fiction/horror movie.  Director Ridley Scott hired fantasy artist H.R. Giger to design the sets, and of course, the monster alien.  Producers almost rejected Giger’s work, saying that it would be too disturbing for audiences, but Scott persisted and got his way.  And thank goodness he did, because this movie spawned a huge franchise that has made billions of dollars.  So far there have been five sequels, two crossover films with Predator, novels, comic books, web series, board and video games, and eight short films directed by Ridley Scott, himself.  The alien has become an iconic figure in pop culture, synonymous with the sci-fi and horror genres. 

Everything was dark and misty, making everything creepier.  The enigmatic space ship on the alien planet was fantastic!  The mysterious Space Jockey with its chest torn open from the in-side-out, was a wonderful means of foreshadowing what was to come.  The scene where Kane enters the egg chamber, the opening of the egg, and the attack of the face-hugger were both frightening and exciting to watch!  And acid blood that ate through the metal flooring of the space ship was awesome!

And that brings us to probably the most iconic part of the film, the chest-bursting scene.  When Kane falls convulsing onto the table and his crewmates are trying to hold him down, I don’t think anyone saw what was coming.  But that single violent spout of blood that erupted from his chest made everyone freeze in fear.  Then the thrashing continued until the alien forced its way into the open air, and we got our first look at the horrifying little creature.  Blood splattered over all of the stunned people, and the alien glared at them with nothing but malice in its… well, it didn’t seem to have eyes.  Its teeth looked like thick metallic needles.  Its leathery little tail slithered through the blood of its victim.  Disgusting, but very cool!

It was amazingly done.  It was clearly a kind of animatronic creature, and at first, it didn’t need to look any more realistic than it did.  There is no basis for comparison to anything real.  But then the effect turned a little weird and lost some of its effectiveness.  After growling at the onlookers, it ran off the table.  But how did it run?  We never get to see its legs, but it slides across the table like an inanimate object connected to a mechanical track.  I understand that it would have been difficult to create a believable effect of moving legs or a running motion, but for me, the otherwise convincing creature illusion was broken.

After that, the monster grew at a literally impossible rate, so that with the space of a few hours, it was an eight-foot tall xenomorph.  Never-mind that in order to increase its mass, it would have to consume and metabolize at least an equal amount of mass.  But ok, suspension of disbelief.  And the addition of the tongue that seemed to be a second mouth was so creative!  Either way, the resulting massive creature, if it was real, would be terrifying beyond belief, which was the whole point.  Scott knew what he was doing and he did it well.  Great job everyone!

Superman – 1978 (WINNER)

This movie had some really good and innovative special effects. They made great use of new technologies and masterfully executed photography and camera angles to create the convincing illusion of the man in the red cape flying through the air. They used rotoscoping and other techniques to hide all the wires holding him up. They gave the world things they had never seen before and it was really amazing.

Let’s take a look at a few of those technical achievements that really stood out. They used blue-screens to put Superman in the sky and then painted out the wires on every frame. They also used wide angles in which the wires were imperceptible, and then used unique camera angles and zoom lenses to give the appearance of motion. I’ve always loved the scene where Superman saves Lois Lane from falling to her death from the top of a skyscraper. It was all very cleverly done!

And then they used a technique called front projection. Wikipedia does a great job of explaining how it was done. “In front projection, the background image is projected onto both the performer and a highly reflective background screen, with the result that the projected image is bounced off the screen and into the lens of a camera. This is achieved by having a screen made of a retroreflective material. The actor performs in front of the reflective screen with a movie camera pointing straight at them. Just in front of the camera is a two-way mirror angled at forty-five degrees. At ninety degrees to the camera is a projector which projects an image of the background onto the mirror, which reflects the image onto the performer and the reflective screen. The image is too faint to appear on the actor but shows up clearly on the screen. Thus, the actor becomes his own matte. The combined image is transmitted through the mirror and recorded by the camera.”

The beginning of the movie, which showed Superman’s origin on Krypton, had a really cool look. The clothes worn by the Kryptonians were made out of the same highly reflective material used for the front projection effect, giving their attire a very unique and alien look. And the destruction of the planet was awesome with great lighting effects, people falling in odd directions, and lots of flashy explosions.

And then there was the film’s climax which made use of some great scale models. An earthquake along the San Andreas Fault caused the destruction of the hoover dam, a major flood, and a landslide that buried Lois Lane alive. Add to that some stunts like a school bus almost toppling off a bridge, and you have some really exciting effects. And Superman had to fly into the molten mantle of the planet in an attempt to minimize the effects of the catastrophe caused by Lex Luthor. And as Superman flew so fast, he went back in time, all the destruction was played in reverse, putting everything back in order.

Again, this was a time when technology was really starting to elevate to a new level, giving audiences visuals that they had never seen before. It was really an exciting time for movies and their special effects!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1977

I’ll start by saying that this movie is among my top ten favorite movies of all time.  I’ll try not to be too biased, and ask forgiveness if I gush a little about the special effects.  They were incredible.  True, they didn’t win the Oscar for the category, but they were up against the Star Wars juggernaut.  And though I think this film gave Star Wars a run for its money, I agree with the Academy’s decision.

This was a movie about alien abduction, and first contact with an alien species.  It started off with simple things like distant lights mysteriously moving through the night sky, but quickly picked up the pace when the lead character is accosted on a deserted road.  It is a cool scene in which an impossibly bright light shines down on his truck and gravity seems to turn sideways.  It was a perfectly executed effect, simply accomplished by rotating both the truck and the camera together and allowing everything in the truck, including its passenger, to fall.  Later that night we are treated to a fantastic sequence of several oddly shaped alien crafts, glowing with bright and luminous colors, flying through the countryside.

Then the special effects seem to vanish for a while, until we reach the brief but super-creepy scene in which a little boy is aggressively and forcibly abducted, literally right out of his mother’s arms.  But after that, the effects once again take a back seat to the story for a while, until the movie’s climax.

And what a climax it was!  The U.S. government has set up a landing site for the aliens and they finally make their appearance.  Dozens of the glowing ships arrive and use musical tones as a form of rudimentary communication.  Then the amazing city-sized mother ship arrives and lands, allowing decades of abducted humans to return to the Earth.  Then the aliens themselves come out.  There were three kinds of aliens, a tall and spindly puppet that unfortunately looked pretty fake, a bunch of little girls in body suits, and an older-looking animatronic alien that exchanged sign-language hand signals with, and smiled at the government scientists.  He looked good, except that he seemed to be rooted to the spot.  His legs didn’t move at all.

In general, I loved all the glowing colors, all the thick and roiling clouds, and all the mysterious alien beings.  The film’s effects were a feast for the eyes and ears.  They were dazzling without being threatening or violent, except for maybe when the boy was taken from his mother.  The detailed miniature model used to create the movie’s crowning achievement, the mother-ship, is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. And of course, I have to make mention of some fantastic matte-paintings used to show things like a massive tramp steamer in the middle of the Mongolian desert.  I’d say that these effects, and all the other effects in the film, easily hold up to today’s standards.  Well done!

Star Wars – 1977 (WINNER)

I am going to unofficially call Star Wars the beginning of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.  While space fantasies were certainly nothing new, Star Wars was the one that really took the genre to a new level, and so many films that came after did their best to emulate the style, the aesthetics, and the special effects of this great movie.  Star Wars is a timeless film because it created a look that cannot be rooted to any specific era, and many of the great effects had never been seen before. 

Now, I have to mention that the only version of the film I am able to watch is the new, special edition, enhanced, remastered version.  That means that there were CGI effects that were added in 1997.  But all those additions aside, good and bad, I’ll comment on a few of the effects that really made Star Wars stand out against most of the sci-fi films that came before it.

For example, there were the lightsabers.  Who else had ever done anything like that?  They were bright, colorful, and flashy and looked awesome. But every now and then, when the tip of a laser-sword is pointed at the camera, it is possible to see the silver sticks with which the actors were actually dueling.  The glowing colors had to be rotoscoped onto the film.  Per Wikipedia, “Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action.”  Korean animator Nelson Shin was responsible for the effect.  Add to that the cool sound effects and the bright gold flashes whenever the lightsabers clashed together, and you have a wonderful, imaginative, and unique special effect that had never been seen before. 

Another thing that was pretty impressive was the space ships and the way they behaved in space.  In earlier films, space ships usually conformed to what we knew about realistic space travel.  They were generally slow moving and dull.  But the space ships in Star Wars behaved like highly maneuverable WWII fighter planes, allowing the effects artists to create fast-paced and exciting space battles.  Realistic? Maybe not, but Lucas sure knew how to make the action sequence more exciting!  And then there was the iconic Death Star itself!  It was gigantic and ominous, and beautifully designed.  And its multiple green lasers that combined to create a super-laser big enough to destroy an entire planet was so cool! 

And then there was the simple effect of the hand-held blasters that fired individual beams of destructive power like glowing bullets of light. Compare those effects to futuristic guns portrayed in one of the previous year’s Best Special Effects winners, Logan’s Run.  Once again, George Lucas simply did it better. 

That’s not to say that every effect was perfect.  Luke’s hovering landspeeder comes to mind as obvious example of a vehicle on a crane, because of the way it bounced when it was in motion. But even that was so much better and more exciting than anything the world had ever seen before.  Star Wars was truly a fantastic special effects fantasy extravaganza that really deserved its award!

Logan’s Run – 1976 (WINNER)

This movie and its counterpart had the distinction of having to share the Best Special Effects award at the Oscars with each other.  But I’ll be honest.  I thought Logan’s Run got gypped.  Its effects, its consistence of quality, far surpassed the other movie.  Unfortunately, King Kong was just such a spectacle that the Academy couldn’t ignore it.  But I’ll also say that Logan’s Run was a film that had a more campy feel to it, based solely on the fact that as the world was firmly moving towards the 80s, its aesthetics were solidly stuck in the 70s.

But that being said, the special effects, while not perfect, were certainly using new and innovative technologies that audiences had never seen before.  They were visually interesting and capture the imagination, even by today’s standards.  There were those things that were awesome, but there were also a few things that looked really bad, or worse, cheesy.  I’ll start off with them, since there are fewer of them and they are easily forgivable.

Special effects artists L.B. Abbott and Glen Robinson said that the most difficult part of the film to portray was the floating people in the “Carousel” sequence.  Maybe this scene was never meant to be viewed on an HD TV screen because I could see many of the wires holding the actors in the air.  And then there was the character of Box.  Again, good try, guys, but I could see the actor’s mouth moving inside the metallic robot mask.  Very poorly done, but still entertaining to watch.

But those were just two bad effects.  The good ones were pretty cool, and must have been awesome on the big screen in the 70s.  They used actual lasers, which were a pretty new concept that was brought to reality. They were in the scene where Logan goes to a plastic surgery center, and the spider-like contraption above the hospital bed used the laser beams like scalpels.  I don’t remember ever seeing anything like that in any other previous Best Special Effects nominee.

Next, I have to mention the use of the holograms in the pre-climactic scene near the end of the film.  It was the mid-70s!  How many people in the movie going public had ever actually seen a real three-dimensional hologram?  How many people even knew what they were?  The technology was all so new, and I was properly impressed!  In other words, this film was really on the cutting edge of the current technologies of the day, trying to give the viewers a glimpse of a futuristic society, in which these things would surely be commonplace.

And lest I forget, the matte-paintings were pretty darn good.  The great halls and vast futuristic city-scapes inside the dome, and the partially grown-over city of Washington D.C. were both very well placed and masterfully executed.  They tried to create a utopian society on the inside, and a dystopian wilderness on the outside, and I think they succeeded.  But I don’t think the film could ever be called timeless because it looked too much like a product of the 70s.  Honestly, I think this movie is due for a remake.

King Kong – 1976 (WINNER)

I can see exactly why this movie won for best special effects.  But let me tell you, the effects didn’t hold up well over time.  By today’s standards, some of the effects in this movie were laughably terrible.  But it was the mid-70s and King Kong did some innovative things that really wowed audiences of the day.  I liked the giant mechanical hand that held the beautiful Jessica Lang.  It looked pretty good and moved pretty smoothly, if slowly.  But it is difficult to focus on what they did well because it pales in comparison to what they got wrong.

Where to start?  Well, let’s start with Kong, himself.  The ape suit looked good enough, except that the actor in the suit, Rick Baker, moved not like a gorilla, but like a human.  In fact, King Kong was shaped like a man and not an ape.  Many of the green screening effects were done very well, while others had a clear black line around the subject.  Or the worst offender was a scene in which Jeff Bridges is hiding from Kong inside an alcove in the side of a cliff as the beast tries to grab him.  In the wide shots we can clearly see the angular cut-out around Jeff Bridges, and when he moved outside the edge of the cut-out, he disappeared.  Then we go to a close-up shot in which Kong’s giant hand is suddenly slow and undexterous.

Another bad effect showed up three times in the movie, once when the men fell from the log bridge, another time when Jessica Lang fell into Kong’s cell on the boat, and again when Kong fell from the top of the World Trade Center.  Oh my goodness, these looked awful!  The plummeting actors looked really fake against a backdrop that obviously didn’t belong behind them.  The motion of their falling looked slow and strangely clunky.  It is hard to describe. 

And then there was the giant snake which appeared ridiculously plastic and mechanical, not just in the way it looked, but in how it moved.  However, I will say that when Kong ripped its jaws apart, it looked pretty cool.  But then there was the forty-foot-tall robotic travesty.  They actually built a life-sized mechanical Kong, but it looked absolutely laughable.  It wasn’t shaped right at all, and it moved like a piece of heavy machinery, especially its arms.  The legs on which it stood were impossibly straight and immobile.  It was a very unconvincing illusion.

The climax could have been cool, except that when Kong was being shot to shreds by powerful machineguns mounted on helicopters.  For one thing, they couldn’t seem to figure out how big the helicopters were supposed to be, as they seemed to change sizes in separate shots.  And the way they moved through the sky whenever they shared the screen with Kong looked as if they were being filmed from another flying craft.  They didn’t move quite right behind the gorilla.  And once again, those pesky black lines around Kong gave away the green-screen effect.  I mean, they should have been able to hide them against the black sky, but they were clearly visible.  I remember really liking the effects in this film when I was a kid.  But now, I have to say, they look pretty shoddy.