The 37 best CGI movie moments of all time

A scene from Dune, one of the best CGI movies

(Image credit: Legendary Pictures)

Page 1 of 3:

Page 1

The best CGI movie moments have brought the seemingly impossible to the big screen, transporting us to fantasy worlds and presenting astounding characters. Such visual effects in movies have evolved dramatically since they started to become commonplace in the 1980s, and the art of creating realistic looking environments, monsters, creatures and buildings continues to evolve.

Many 2D and 3D movies rely on the creative talent of special effects companies like Industrial Light & Magic and Weta to enhance their stories with stunning VFX. In this article, we've rounded up our pick of the best CGI movie moments in movies old and new. Did your favourite make the cut?

Released in 2021, Denis Villeneuve's Dune wasn't the first time Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic was brought to the big screen, but it was a lot more convincing than David Lynch's poorly received production. Of course, that wasn't only due to CGI, but great GCI did play a part. It made the landscape of Arrakis feel real, from small details to the very big sandworm. We can't wait for the next installment.

This fascinating exploration of space travel and the effects of time dilation features some beautiful effects work, including some truly realistic spaceship scenes (mainly done with miniatures) and a scientifically accurate CG representation of the supermassive black hole, Gargantua. But no one expected the final reel, in which astronaut Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) enters the ‘tesseract’, a four-dimensional construct of interlinked timelines, where he communicates with his daughter, Murph, in the far distant past.

VFX supervisor, Paul Franklin, told Art of VFX that the concept was based on a three-dimensional extension of slitscan photography (used to great effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey). All the elements of Murph’s bedroom were scanned at high-res and used to create a digital version, and from this they generated the multiple extruded timelines. The 3D team had to come up with clever ways of handling the huge data load so they could render it using Houdini’s Mantra. This digital model was used to extend the physical tesseract set to infinity… and beyond.

Watch it for the incredibly lifelike apes, of course. We could have included any of the three films, but with War for the Planet of the Apes, Weta Digital really nailed it, taking the levels of realism to new heights. There’s one scene where we see Caesar caged in the Alpha-Omega military base. Through the bars we see Woody Harrelson and his men, alongside a servile gorilla, and in the background is another cage full of apes. It’s night-time, it’s raining, the ape fur is wet and clumpy, and CG characters stand shoulder-to-shoulder with real actors… Despite being a compositor’s nightmare, it’s all totally seamless and utterly believable.

The New Zealand-based VFX house surpassed itself, not only with the incredible fidelity of the ape recreations, but also with entirely digital environments, water, weather and battle scenes. To do so it employed a range of in-house tools – Facets for facial performance capture; Tissue for muscle and skin; Wig for fur; Lumberjack for vegetation; Synapse for smoke and fire; Manuka for physically-based rendering – and the results speak for themselves.

Watch The Walk to experience, at first hand, Philippe Petit’s vertiginous high-wire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. With the destruction of the towers in 2001, every aspect of the buildings had to be recreated in CG – along with the city of New York stretching off to the horizon. The task fell to three vendors: Atomic Fiction handled the wire walk; RodeoFX saw to the creation of ground-level shots of the towers; and Czech Republic-based UPP contributed a number of shots, including digital recreations of Paris plus head replacements, swapping the face of a real wire walker for that of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Overall, the work is stylishly convincing, and the climactic walk – which in reality took place 1,368 ft above World Trade Center Plaza – is just as nerve-jangling and heart-in-mouth as you’d expect. Only the top corner section of the south tower was physically built, surrounded by acres of green screen. Everything else – towers, sky, clouds, cityscape, slack-jawed bystanders, precipitous drop to certain death – is all digital, which was lit in Katana and rendered using V-Ray.

Highlights include Digital Domain and Weta Digital’s brilliant work on Thanos, an entirely CG character who takes up an hour of screen time, plus ILM and Framestore sharing duties in bringing ‘Smart Hulk’ to life. For the climactic battles, ILM handled the assault on Wakanda, while Weta Digital was responsible for the spectacular final onslaught against Thanos and his massed armies – both of which were remarkable undertakings, pushing the possibilities of VFX to their limits.

Despite a cameo by David Beckham, Guy Ritchie’s retelling of the Arthurian Legends received a critical mauling and its five (five!?) sequels were immediately cancelled. However the good news is that the one sequence worth watching takes place right at the start of the film, as the massed forces of Mordred lay siege to Camelot, a huge stone fortress atop a rocky outcropping. The battle is a truly impressive spectacle with destruction on a massive scale, and featuring some of the most complex simulation work Framestore has ever done.

Not only is Paddington 2 a delightful, funny and heart-warming movie – garnering 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and becoming the site’s best-reviewed film of all time – it’s also a technical masterpiece. The titular hero looks photoreal in every single shot (all 1,100 of them) and is integrated with the live-action footage flawlessly; kudos to Framestore for pulling off this incredible achievement. Indeed, as a sign of the team’s dedication, one time-lapse shot of the prison canteen changing into a chintzy tea room – a combination of CG bear, CG props and live action – took nine months to complete.

For fans of the original, it’s heart-breaking that the sequel some of us waited 35 years for has been a box-office disappointment. But that’s not for want of trying: with a production budget of $185 million, it boasts some of the most amazing, beautiful and realistic visual effects ever to grace the silver screen. The entire film is mesmerising, but highlights include the work on Joi, Ryan Gosling’s holographic girlfriend, as she interacts with the real world, plus Framestore’s amazing visualisation of the vast junkyards of San Diego, which are utterly convincing.

ILM used a combination of software for the attack sequence, including AliasStudio, Maya, and Softimage for basic modelling, and employed its proprietary software, Zeno, for the many rigid body simulations. To comply with environmental rules, VFX supervisor Eric Brevig also had to write a new piece of software to create the amount of smoke plumes needed. So while it's a dreadful film, we can't help but applaud the truly brilliant CG effects.

The huge cyborg has one of the film's most intricate rigs. ILM used techniques originally developed for Transformers to provide animators with extra flexibility when choosing which parts to control. ILM also integrated an energy-conserving shader set in RenderMan to achieve more accurate lighting and cope with the extreme contrasts of desert conditions. The ensuing segment with the truck, Moto-terminators and a giant Transporter isn't bad either.

If you can ignore the script, the acting, the historical inaccuracies and the bizarre pseudo sci-fi ending, 10,000 BC is a pretty cool film, with some excellent FX work from MPC and Double Negative. The sweeping vistas over the Giza site are largely models built at 1:24 scale by Joachim Grueninger, constructed near the actual film set in Namibia, but they're enhanced with digital doubles, dust, and props.

George Clooney may be a looker, but his character in this film isn't very smart. He plays Billy Tyne, a fishing boat captain who ignores weather warnings, in a tale that's based on the true story of the Andrea Gail from 1991. The end sequence is a CGI stonker, featuring a huge 100ft wave that finally capsizes the ship. In total, the film featured 90 completely CG shots, all of which include water elements.

Thank you for reading 5 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access

Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1

*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription

Join now for unlimited access

Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1

Current page: Page 1

Next Page Page 2

The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson and Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.

The 37 best CGI movie moments of all time

The best CGI movie moments

01. Dune (2021)

02. The Irishman (2019)

03. Interstellar (2014)

04. War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

05. The Jungle Book (2016)

06. The Walk (2015)

07. Avengers: End Game (2019)

08. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

09. Paddington 2 (2017)

10. Doctor Strange (2016)

11. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

12. Rogue One (2016)

13. Pearl Harbour (2001)

14. Cloverfield (2008)

15. Terminator Salvation (2009)

16. 10,000 BC (2008)

17. The Perfect Storm (2000)

Related articles