Five Great Visual Effects Scenes that Didn’t Need CGI

The Ending – Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Steven Spielberg is truly one of the best visual storytellers America has ever produced, and every ounce of his innate ability to tell stories through the medium of film is on display in the final sequence of his early picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYCBgSRNjk0

If you haven’t seen it, shame on you, but this part of the movie resembles nothing so much as a live-action sequence from Disney’s Fantasia. It’s a science-fiction dance of light and color set to a brilliant musical score by John Williams:

While 20,000 Leagues obscures the problem areas of its VFX, and Blade Runner leans heavily on brilliant production design, Close Encounters sets its finale squarely on planet Earth — albeit at nighttime. Very little is left up to the imagination. Spielberg’s uncanny ability to direct special effect sequences is on full display here — the movie came out alongside Star Wars, and nearly matches that game-changer in terms of unbelievable images.

OH GOD, KILL IT! – The Thing

To take a break from the spaceship-type entries on this list, here’s another famous monster:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjIXwkX1e48

Just look at that… um, thing. How many movies have we seen, CG or not, where a dude’s head falls off his body and sprouts legs, while his stomach jumps up and hangs out on the ceiling? I’m gonna go ahead and say one, two at the most (I refuse to watch the new one).

Really, there’s not much to say about this scene that hasn’t probably been said a million times, but it is holy-crap awesome.

Assault on the Death Star – Return of the Jedi

I can almost guarantee that everybody who reads this article has seen this particular sequence at least five times… and most, like me, have seen it many more than that. No matter how often I return to it, though, I’m always struck by just what an achievement it really is.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNNE_9UsSLg

Look how many ships there are! Honestly, the only comparable space battle I can call to mind is the one above Coruscant at the opening of Revenge of the Sith. And honestly, I’m not sure that one even goes on as long as this one does. It really says something about the team behind this movie that, in the thirty years following it, I can’t even come up with a legitimate rival to this VFX extravaganza.

Not only does the scene look shockingly real — even today — not only is it a stunning eight minutes in length, but you can, at all times, follow the dynamics of the encounter with almost perfect clarity. The Rebel Alliance arrives, turns back, take the fight to the Star Destroyers, and finally flies down the gullet of the Death Star, and we’re with them every step of the way. That’s quite an accomplishment.

What about you? What great sans-CGI visual effects scenes are your favorites? Sound off in the comments.