Film Milestones in Visual and Special Effects from 1990 to 2004

Film Title/Year and Description of Visual-Special Effects	Screenshots
Jumanji (1995) This fantasy movie featured an amazing stampede scene with dozens of elephants, rhinos, zebras and pelicans - all computer-generated by ILM, during a rampage through town. The special-effects company also created the first computer-generated (CG), synthetic, photo-realistic hair and fur for the digital lion and bright-orange-colored monkeys (in the chaotic kitchen scene) in this film.
Toy Story (1995) This was the first feature-length film made entirely by computer animation, also fully 3-D, with a collaboration between Pixar (its debut film) and Disney Studios. Followed by an equally-successful sequel Toy Story 2 in 1999.
Waterworld (1995) This film contained the first photo-realistic CG water effects.
Dragonheart (1996) This 10th century fantasy fable, Oscar-nominated for Best Visual Effects, featured the first use of CARIcature software for the state-of-the-art digital animation seen in the film. It was used to create a very complex CG film character - a talking dragon, named Draco (with realistic facial animation and expressions, and voice provided by Sean Connery), an 18 ft. tall, 43 foot long creature, that helped knight Bowen (Dennis Quaid) to defeat an evil tyrant. The dragon was expertly produced by Industrial Light and Magic (Phil Tippett and others) as a 3D digital character, using CARI software that allowed animators to animate a fast-rendered version of the model, instead of animating to wire-frame models. See below - Mars Attacks! (1996) which used the same process.
Independence Day (1996) This blockbuster disaster film was the winner in the Academy Award race for Best Achievement in Visual Effects (defeating Twister (1996) and Dragonheart (1996)). A remake, unofficially, of the original The War of the Worlds (1953), this world doomsday film displayed a monstrous, asteroid-sized UFO that entered Earth's atmosphere, and a spectacular, well-publicized scene of the destruction of the White House (a 1/12th model), filmed with 9 cameras. $75 million was spent on models and miniatures (the film had more miniature model work than any other film up to its time). CGI work included the depiction of F-18 Hornets, debris, alien attackers, missiles, and light balls.
Mars Attacks! (1996) The highly-realistic aliens in Tim Burton's science-fiction comedy were all-digital, CGI animated creations, rather than stop-motion puppets. They were produced with the same CARI software used in Dragonheart (1996), courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The CG aliens were then composited (and integrated) into miniatures of the interiors of spaceships.
Space Jam (1996) This Warner Bros.' film combined traditionally-animated Looney Tunes characters (such as Daffy Duck) within a live-action film. The film was inspired by a series of Nike commercials featuring Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan. [The iconic characters would later star with Brendan Fraser in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).]
Twister (1996) Although nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, along with Dragonheart (1996), both were defeated by Independence Day (1996). This was a phenomenal special-effects film with incredible atmospheric FX (digital tornadoes, such as the film's 200 foot tower of wind) produced by ILM, including many hand-held camera shots taken through windshields at composited CGI animated tornadoes.
Contact (1997) Robert Zemeckis' film contained, reportedly, the longest ever, continuous single digital FX shot created - the opening shot (Powers of Ten). It began with an image of the Earth, and then the virtual camera slowly pulled back to reveal the Moon, the rest of the solar system, various layers of nebula and stellar debris, and the Milky Way. The shot moved deeper into space to reveal hundreds of other galaxies...and then pulled back to reveal that the light from all of these stars was actually the highlight in a young girl's eye. The color of the girl's eyes were digitally altered to match the eye-color of actress Jodie Foster (who portrayed the girl as an adult).
Conceiving Ada (1997) This was the first film with 2D all-CGI backgrounds (virtual sets) before which live actors performed. The filmmakers used a new bluescreen filming process in which a number of photographs, taken in Victorian bed and breakfasts in the San Francisco Bay area, were placed into the main protagonist's world as backgrounds - they were composited or inserted into the film in real time (not in post-production), so that the actors could see their interactions with the background on set.
The Fifth Element (1997) There were an extra-ordinary amount of individual FXs in this film, including a futuristic New York City skyline, a regeneration sequence during the creation of Leeloo (Mila Jovovich) in which a sophisticated machine built her skeleton, and strapped muscle tissue onto the bones, and its most celebrated sequence - the cab chase with flying cars. The cars were created both as motion-control models and CGI versions. The immense 2000 foot long pleasure cruiser - the Fhlostin Paradise - was a motion-control model. [The film also referenced Heavy Metal (1981).]
Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension (1997) This 12 minute Warner Bros. film was the first computer-animated CG film that was to be viewed with 3-D glasses. It combined the experience of watching a fully CGI film with polarized/anaglyphic glasses, and was a feature of the Warner Bros.' theme park "Movie World" in Australia.
Red Corner (1997) Digital visual effects allowed the production to appear to have been completely shot in actual Chinese locations, but that was in fact disallowed by the Chinese government. Many of the landscape and Beijing city shots were comprised of 2D and 3D matte paintings based on still photographs of the Chinese city.
Spawn (1997) The flowing, dark red cape of the title character in this comic-book adaptation was impressively created as a CGI effect by ILM - it was first designed as a wireframe model and then fully rendered and placed on top of the live-action background.