It's no secret that Hollywood relies heavily on CGI to make their movies work. You would be hard-pressed to find a blockbuster movie within the past 20 years that did not use a single bit of computer-generated imagery. The problem is, nowadays, people want to be wowed beyond their own imagination. Unfortunately, when building universes that inherently involve science-fiction and fantasy, practical effects aren't often the answer.
Overall, using CGI is easy and efficient, and it sometimes can even trick the viewer into believing what they're seeing is real - which is the case with movies like a modern movie comes out on top with visually stunning practical effects. This list aims to cover some of those movies. So, in no particular order, here are 15 Modern Movie Special Effects That Didn't Use Any CGI.
15. Flame-throwing guitar - Mad Max: Fury Road
George Miller is a purist, someone who prides himself on going the full mile when making his films. That's why heavy reliance on practical effects versus excessive CGI.
One special effect in particular, the Doof Warrior's flame-throwing guitar, stood out amongst audiences, as well as the character's unusual getup and the dozens of amps behind him. The thing is, in a movie featuring a real car chase, why would a flame-spouting guitar be any different? It isn't; production designer Colin Gibson confirmed as much to MTV: "George — unfortunately — doesn't like things that don't work. I have in the past built him props that I thought were just supposed to be props, and then he goes, 'Okay, plug it in now.'"
14. Car Roll - Casino Royale
Longtime including the largest explosion ever on screen.
One of the first records achieved was in Craig's first Bond film, Casino Royale, directed by Martin Campbell, in which stuntman Adam Kirley broke the record for highest number of cannon rolls in one stunt: seven barrel rolls. According to the Guinness World Records, the Aston Martin DBS was retrofitted with a nitrogen cannon in order to assist with the necessary number of rotations. While the scene would have you believe it took place on a random street, it was, in fact, filmed at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Milton Keynes, UK.
13. Tray Catch - Spider-Man
Comic book movies require a hefty amount of CGI work in order to fully realize their vision; however, that doesn't mean they are completely devoid of practical visual effects. While Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy is known for using quite a few props in production, one scene in particular stuck out to audiences: the scene in which Peter Parker catches Mary Jane Watson - and all of the food on her lunch tray.
Instead of using CGI, the production design team plastered some form of superglue onto the tray, thus allowing Tobey Maguire to maintain hold of both Mary Jane and the tray. However, catching each item on the tray proved to be difficult; it took several attempts, but Maguire finally got everything right on the 156th take. Interestingly, due to production time constraints, the studio initially wanted Raimi to cut the scene; however, since Raimi, Maguire, and Kirsten Dunst were determined to film it, they shot the entire thing in one day instead of two.
12. Car implosion - The Matrix Reloaded
The Wachowskis' take the freeway chase scene in The Matrix Reloaded.
At one point in the sequence, one of the agents is seen jumping on the hood of a vehicle, which then implodes as he leaps off onto another vehicle. While the actor playing the agent was composited later in post-production to create the image we see on screen, the actual implosion of the car was real -- as was everything else in the scene. Special rigs, cannons, and ramps were used to create the scene, and were later removed using CGI.
11. The Orcs - Lord of the Rings
However, the result was not quite what fans had in mind.
One of the more prominent objections fans had with Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy most of it was created using real props and practical effects. For instance, in The Hobbit films, the orcs were created entirely using CGI, whereas, in The Lord of the Rings films, the actors wore full-body makeup and prosthetics - which is why the Lord of the Rings trilogy, arguably the greatest movie trilogy of all time, will stand the test-of-time moreso than The Hobbit trilogy.
10. TARS and CASE - Interstellar
Like a repurposed, anthropomorphic military machine who develops a special connection with Cooper.
Instead of developing a humanoid robot, Nolan conceived the idea for a quadrilateral machine, one that would be able to divide and subdivide into smaller blocks. While something like this would be perfect for CGI work, especially since the machine would be voiced by an actor, Nolan wanted the character to not only feel real but be real. Therefore, he thought the best version of the character would be a practical build that would be puppeteered, and in post-production, they'd remove the puppeteer using CGI. That is exactly what they did, and the results were exceptional.
9. Rey's bread - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
People have a favorite fictional universe for various reasons, but one of the many reasons audiences are enamored with Rey was forced to scavenge parts from a downed Imperial Destroyer and trade said parts with Unkar Plutt for Portion Bread.
The idea for the bread was conceived by director J.J. Abrams, who wanted to make the bread using practical effects instead of CGI - and the production design team made it work. Production designer Chris Corbould told MTV that it took three months of extensive work to create the instant bread, which is explained in-universe as being leftover Imperial supplies.
"It started off with the mechanics of getting the bread to rise and the liquid to disappear, but then there was the ongoing problem of what color should the bread be? What consistency should it be? Should it have cracks in it? Should it not have cracks in it?" Even though they made it work, and the fact that it could save millions of people a lot of time in the morning, it's not something people should really eat.
8. Xibalba - The Fountain
Of all the creative ways special effects were used in movies on this list, perhaps the most ingenious of them all are the visual effects in Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. The filmmaker originally intended to use the bulk of his film's $70 million production budget (whatever amount not previously allocated to acquiring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as leading stars) on the film's extensive visual effects work.
Unfortunately, shortly after Pitt dropped out of the project, production ceased and didn't resume until two years later, with a $35 million budget and Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz as the leading stars. To accommodate the halved production budget, Aronofsky turned to a revolutionary form of visual effects: macrophotography, or extremely magnified close-up photography.
The film's visual effects team hired macro photographer Peter Parks, who, in layman's , photographed chemical reactions that served as the film's psychedelic special effects in creating the nebula Xibalba. "When these images are projected on a big screen, you feel like you're looking at infinity," Parks once said in an interview with WIRED. "That's because the same forces at work in the water – gravitational effects, settlement, refractive indices – are happening in outer space."
7. Fire in New York - Independence Day
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's splash when it debuted in theaters in 1996. After all, the movie is often credited with modernizing the summer blockbuster - for better or worse. And that is mostly due to the movie's marketing strategy. One of the stark images of Independence Day's marketing campaign was seeing New York City engulfed in flames. That image alone might have attracted a certain number of moviegoers to see the movie on the big screen.
While Independence Day's visual effects are littered with CGI, one of the key components in the movie's marketing, as well as one of its more compelling scenes, is the aforementioned scene in which the aliens set fire to New York. Unlike the rest of the visual effects in the movie, that fire was real. The production team built a model city on a sound stage, installed pyrotechnics underneath, and flipped the city sideways while they lit it on fire.
6. Tom Cruise's Plane Ride - Mission Impossible 5
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, he clung to a side of a flying plane. The thing is, all of that was real. Tom Cruise did everything. For this list, though, we'll focus only on the last stunt.
There were several stunts in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation -- outdo himself with the next Mission: Impossible film.