100 Years of Special Effects

Too bad they put in the wrong Star Wars explosion. They used the new one, but it was supposed to be the original.

Movies are magic.

Nice, but one glaring omission kills it: The big gap between Mary Popins and Star Wars where 2001 should be. The effects at the time for 2001 were light years beyond anything that had been done previously. Many of those who worked on 2001 later worked on Star Wars, which in many was an equal to 2001 in effects, but did not exceed it. (I'm talking about the original 1977 release and not the CGI violation Lucas did later.) Compare the effects in 2001 to any of the George Pal scifi films (Conquest of Space comes to mind) and you can understand the massive technical leap that 2001 made. It's kind of like the huge leap in effects made with computer graphics in films like Abyss, T2, and Jurassic Park. (And no, Tron and Last Starfighter are too crude to count.)

dorkhero's right. What the guys did with 2001 was amazing, and it wasn't done on a computer, but in a freakin airplane hangar!

That's "Visual Effects" Not "Special Effects"
Special effects are in-camera effects like explosions or costumes/makeup. Visual Effects are post work including rotoscoping, paint models shop work, stop-motion or modern CG animation.

neat. reminds me a lot of jaw droppings when i was a kid ;)

Yeah, there were gaps, especially with 2001. And the wrong Star Wars explosion - they weren't doing that in the 70's.

Where's The Matrix? Probably the most innovative fx in the last 10 years.