Best VFX movies of the 21st century: 9 films to study

Best VFX Movies of the 21st Century: 9 Films to Study

Here are nine of the best VFX movies of the 21st century. Our other list covers ten films that changed VFX, from T2 to Dune. This one covers nine more. We left those ten out so you get new names.

For each film we looked at three things: who did the work, what was shot for real, and what was added later. They’re listed oldest first.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Weta Digital did the effects. Jim Rygiel and Joe Letteri are both credited as supervisors. The film has 1,489 VFX shots.

The Pelennor Fields battle shows how a plan grows. It started at about 60 shots and ended at 250. The number of digital characters planned for the battle went from 50,000 to 200,000. The crowd software recorded 450 motions for the digital horses.

Not everything was digital. Weta also built a Minas Tirith miniature at 1:72 scale. It stood 7 metres high. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

2. Inception (2010)

Double Negative, now DNEG, did the effects under Paul Franklin. The film has about 500 VFX shots. That’s low for a film this size, because Christopher Nolan pushed for practical work.

The rotating hallway was a real set, built on rings turned by electric motors. It was planned at 40 ft and ended up at 100 ft. The folding Paris street was digital. The team shot about 250,000 photographs and LiDAR scans of the city to build it. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

3. Ex Machina (2014)

The budget was $15 million. DNEG did the effects under Andrew Whitehurst. The film has about 800 VFX shots, and roughly 350 of them are robot shots.

There was no motion capture. Alicia Vikander wore a grey suit and played every take. Her face, hands, feet, shoulders and armpits stayed in the shot. The team replaced her arms, legs, back of head and neck with CG, because the robot’s body is see-through there. Some shots ran up to 1,600 frames, so tracking took the most effort. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

4. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Weta Digital did the effects. Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Keith Miller and Erik Winquist are credited as supervisors.

The apes were captured on location, in forests and at dams, not only on a stage. That meant new suits and wireless cameras. Caesar has more than 820,000 fur strands. One tank shot ran over 1,000 frames and needed 740 render passes. Four compositors worked on it for three months. The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

5. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

John Nelson was the overall VFX supervisor. DNEG, Framestore, UPP, Buf, Rodeo, Atomic Fiction and MPC all worked on it. The finished film has 1,190 VFX shots.

Las Vegas is fully CG, built by Framestore with design input from Syd Mead. The young Rachael was a digital head replacement by MPC. It used a life cast of Sean Young at age 28 and facial capture. Another actor, Loren Peta, performed the scene on set. Joi was filmed separately, then composited with a CG shell. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

6. First Man (2018)

DNEG did about 430 shots under Paul Lambert. The team skipped green screen. Instead they used a huge LED wall, about 60 by 35 ft, wrapped around the set. It showed pre-rendered images while the cockpit simulators moved.

They also built miniatures. The Saturn V was 1/30 scale and about 14 ft tall. The moon surface was a full-size set in a quarry near Atlanta. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. It was the film’s only win.

7. Tenet (2020)

The film has about 300 VFX shots. That’s fewer than many romantic comedies, as Nolan joked. DNEG did the work under Andrew Jackson.

The production used no green or blue screen. It shot on 65mm and IMAX film. Nolan reportedly decided that buying a real Boeing 747 was cheaper than building miniatures and adding VFX. The plane was crashed into buildings made to be destroyed. The order of preference was simple: in-camera first, practical composites second, CG last. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

8. Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Shirogumi did the effects. Takashi Yamazaki wrote, directed and supervised the VFX. The team was about 35 artists in one open-plan room. They made about 610 shots in roughly eight months. Reported budgets run between $10 million and $15 million.

The ocean was the hardest part. Digital waves had to match footage of real boats shot at a different scale. The 1947 Ginza street was a parking lot and a few storefronts. The rest was digital. It was the first non-English-language film to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

9. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Wētā FX did the work, with Joe Letteri as senior supervisor. The final film has 3,289 shots. Water appears in 2,225 of them. Only two shots have no VFX at all. The project produced about 18.5 petabytes of data.

Water was simulated with a framework called Loki. It uses separate solvers for waves, splashes, bubbles and currents. Capturing actors underwater took about a year and a half to develop. Water absorbs infrared light, so the system used ultraviolet instead. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

What these nine tell you

Look at what they share:

  1. Real work sits under the CG. Ex Machina kept Vikander’s face. Tenet crashed a real plane.
  2. Money doesn’t decide the result. Ex Machina cost $15 million. Godzilla Minus One used about 35 artists.
  3. A clear plan beats a big shot count. Tenet has about 300 shots and Inception has about 500.

If you’re planning a project and want a second opinion on what to shoot and what to build, see our work or get in touch. Happy to talk it through.

Which film would you add? Let us know.

Sources and references

  1. Wikipedia: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Inception, Ex Machina (film), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner 2049, First Man (film), Tenet (film), Godzilla Minus One, Avatar: The Way of Water.
  2. Weta FX: filmography pages for The Return of the King and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and “Our work on Avatar: The Way of Water” (wetafx.co.nz).
  3. fxguide: “Ex Machina: the making of Ava” and “Ape acting”.
  4. Art of VFX: Blade Runner 2049, John Nelson interview.
  5. VFX Voice: “First Man: an effects odyssey” and “In-camera magic helps Tenet slip the bonds of time”.
  6. AWN: “Godzilla Minus One breathes new life into an iconic kaiju”.
  7. befores & afters: “Why the CG water in The Way of Water looks so good”.