There's a sequence in "Return of the King" that I always reference in conversations about which films have the best special effects. It's the fight between Samwise and a gigantic spider named Shelob. It's a perfect special effects scene, I think, because it looks completely authentic, like Peter Jackson somehow found a huge spider and trained it to fight Sean Astin.

That's what great special effects do. You forget you're watching CGI and give yourself away to the spectacle. Some films seem to get this and some don't. The "Lord of the Rings" films had far better special effects than those awful new "Star Wars" movies because authenticity mattered. They were dirty and grainy big-screen battles that actually looked like armies of orcs were fighting men and hobbits. "Episode 1" and the other new Star Wars flicks were hideous because it was so completely obvious you were watching digital effects.

"Forrest Gump" has better special effects than "Revenge of the Sith."

The "Pirates" sequels are the same way: overdone and ugly. The original, though, had a classic sequence in which Jack Sparrow and Barbosa are sword fighting and moving in and out of light from the moon. Every time a moon beam hits them, they turn into skeletons. It was produced just enough, unlike the big, stupid water wheel fight in Part 2.

"Jurassic Park" had better special effects than either of its sequels because it wasn't so heavy on the CGI, and didn't overproduce the raptors or T-Rex.

Until the "Lord of the Rings" movies, I'd always thought "T2" had the best secial effects of all time, because it wasn't overdone like "Terminator 3," which had the processed look of most modern summer blockbusters. Everything's too shiny and cleaned up. In "T2", every special effects sequence has a purpose, and none of it feels like showing off.

"X-Men 2" deserves a lot of credit for using its special effects to maximize the potential of its characters and their superpowers. Director Brian Singer clearly wanted his opening scene, in which Nightcrawler teleports all over the White House looking to attack the President, to look as authentic as possible. "X-Men 3" abandons this idea of authenticity. When the mutants jump at each other for the ballyhooed Last Stand, it looks ridiculous. Kelsey Grammar should have run away with a Razzie for his idiotic Beast fight. Singer would have never included it.

Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" is also worth noting for its opening scene. I don't know if I've ever been so engrossed in a special effects sequence as when the aliens first break out of the ground and start mowing down humans with their lasers. It could not have felt more real (the movie never hits that high point again, sadly. The scene with the aliens in the basement is at the opposite end of this discussion - it's not only fake-looking, but serves no purpose.)

This is important too: Do a movie's special effects acually serve its plot?

They do in "Transformers." This is a movie about 30-foot tall robots beating the snot out of each other. It looks, no joke, like there are actual living robots as tall as buildings who are agile enough to battle like ninjas. There are moments during the final scene, which will go down as an all-time great, where I just stopped and thought "Oh my God, that was amazing." I'm not exagerating.

But it's still not quite as realistic as the gritty FX scenes in "Terminator 2," which would still, 16 years after it was first released, be my pick for the best special effects film of all time. "Lord of the Rings," "Jurassic Park," "The Matrix," "Transformers," and "X2" belong in this discussion as well.

What do you think? What's the greastest special effects film or scene of all time?

Posted by Phil Parker at 09:52 AM | Permalink