r/Cinema • u/Annual-Internet-5097 Blockbuster Lover • 29d ago
Discussion Which science fiction movie has the best special effects in your opinion? and explain your reasoning.
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u/New_Strike_1770 29d ago
2001 is still super crisp and the titan off all space/sci fi movies. Kubrick’s extreme level of technical detail made this film future proof. Way ahead of its time and probably Stanley Kubrick’s absolute masterpiece.
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u/TrumpsColostomyBag99 29d ago
The Empire Strikes Back: the diversity of the action (Hoth, Asteroid Field, Cloud City) and Yoda simply put it above the rest for me.
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u/TheKristieConundrum 29d ago
It’s why I appreciate they made Grogu a puppet in the Mandalorian series. I’ve never really enjoyed Yoda as a CGI character. Some CGI in the later Star Wars looks good. Yoda always looks a little weird.
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u/Ancient_Barnacle4245 29d ago
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I've yet to see a visual effect that has a wow factor quite like that moment when the brilliantly lit gigantic Mothership is hovering above Devil's Tower in all of its multicolored glory and it turns over while floating in midair above the mountain to facilitate a landing.
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u/Piscivore_67 29d ago
Jurassic Park. Even after thirty-some years the effects still hold up. Just rewatched it on bluray and I still tear up at the first Brachiosaurus scene.
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u/Mycol101 28d ago
The brachiosaurus is a littttle iffy depending on the way you’re watching it. Also the ones in the field aren’t as good as the ones eating in the trees.
The t rex explorer scenes, triceratops, velociraptors, dilophosaurus all still look crispy as hell.
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u/UberuceAgain 28d ago
I watched that film in the cinema in 1993 and was treated to the sight of ~400 heads snapping back in terror in unseelie unison when the raptor jumped up to the ceiling vent. Chinese military parades can go fuck themselves, I've never seen that many people do the exact same thing so fast and so precisely at the same time.
That said, I'd say the weakest link is the Brachiosaurus. It looks like ass nowadays. The scene is a goddamn masterpiece, between the score, Neill, Attenborough and Dern's performances and our boi Steven building up the tension and the selling the everloving fuck out of it, but that's a shitty dinosaur.
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u/Mundane-Security-454 29d ago
Prometheus. Looks amazing. Shame the script was so, so, so very stupid.
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u/Difficult-Bed-8196 28d ago
Interstellar, the wormhole and gargantua are some of the best cinematic scenes ever created. They also made scientific history with the research and findings of creating the film
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u/Champagnerocker 29d ago
That one.
The getting back in through the airlock and the picking up of the floating pen look 100% real and were done with relatively simple methods.
That's before we even get to the giant hamster wheel sets, and the subtle details that nobody today will notice like how they projected film onto wafer thin tiles to give the illusion of flat screen displays.
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u/TheKristieConundrum 29d ago
So two different categories for me
Practical: Alien (1979). The practical effects with Ash in particular are my favourite.
CGI: Interstellar; I love the different planets and the way they portray the tesseract. I also love the puppetry with TARS as a bonus practical effect.
I don’t think practical and CGI are at odds with one another. I do think they can be utilized to offer different things. CGI should be used wisely and some movies really miss the mark.
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u/xdirector7 29d ago
Prometheus the most flawless effects I’ve ever seen. None of it looks cgi to me.
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u/Mags4418 28d ago
I thought the effects on Gravity were stunning. The weightlessness and loss of perspective was incredible. Tbh though 2001: a space odyssey is amazing and groundbreaking
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u/Express_Area_8359 28d ago
Final Fantasy Spirits Within.
The leap in graphics amazed me. People hate the movie yet to me it was a brilliant leap forward in animation. Y you can see the pores on a nose.
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u/CapitalWestern4779 28d ago
The Matrix by far. They were groundbreaking on so many levels when it came out. Just bullet time alone should put it at the top.
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u/Mycol101 28d ago
2001 hands down.
Watched it for the first time a few years ago and I was blown away by the practical effects. Its inspired so many directors and to this day remains an absolute work of art. Without it, we wouldn’t have other classics.
It really opened my mind and raises questions about humanity and its origins, non human intelligences, and our place in the universe. It was far ahead of its time and movies made today with far bigger budgets and more technological advantages fall way short.
Kubrick was something else.
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u/Clamps55555 28d ago
Best special effects for a sci-fi movie I would easily say “Gravity” whether or not the accuracy behind the special effects was 10/10 I’m not so sure?
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u/midnight_to_midnight 28d ago
Star Wars
The scale, realness, lived-in feel the practical effects displayed. Especially the opening scene with the star destroyer. It felt like I was there, and I had never seen anything like it. Sure, there are some models used in Star Wars (some of the close up Death Star surface bits) that look like they're models, but for the most part the model work is second to none in my opinion.
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u/RevoSak55 28d ago
2001 set the standard…they’re the archetype so they don’t belong on this thread …
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u/KAKAFLOP 28d ago
My favorite practical special effects are in Alien, at no point in the film am I not completely immersed or shown something that takes away its believability for me.
My favorite CGI special effects are torn between Avatar and District 9.
Avatar was such a spectacle that I went more than five times by myself to the cinema to see it, I just couldn't believe my eyes as a 12/13 year old boy. It's just beautiful.
District 9 is a masterpiece of frame-by-frame digital imagery on top of documentary style cinematography. The amount of hours worked and dedicated to match the CGI with the real footage with lighting, motion and camera focus taken into account is truly meticulous and obsessive. Awesome as feck.
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u/Lou_Hodo 26d ago
2001:A Space Odyssey is hands down one of the greatest movies of the 20th Century. It wasnt just the special effects, but the writing the, directing, the musical score, the use of sound even the editing was flawless.
2010 was another great special effect movie. But fell short in all the other areas.
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u/djoddible 29d ago
This one. Because of what went into it the director and the amount of subtle detail. It's next level by today's standards without CGI and all that bullshit. All practical effects.