I’d like to cast one vote for Aliens. I definitely understand skipping it for Alien since that movie defined the style and the look and T2 feels like the bigger Cameron spectacle but no characters have moved with such convincing lizard grace before or since.

How you could include “Goke”, a very mediocre movie and not include “Forbidden Planet” is beyond me. Planet was the first sci-fi movie to look smooth and clean and modern. Years ahead of everyone else. And what was new about “Entering the Void”? The editing software? Most of your choices were spot on, most of them.

When I was finishing design school, we had an alumni come to talk to the industrial design department about the entertainment side of the field. He had graduated 3 years prior and was working for ILM. After his presentation someone asked what recent film had impressed him most with it’s effects. At this point,…

Also check out the Visual Effects Society top 70 influential VFX films.  

The guy in the Alien suit was Nigerian, not Norwegian. Bolaji Badejo.

How did you manage to miss Forbidden Planet?

* There’s an apparent bias against musicals in this list. Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in Royal Wedding and Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh are one off scenes but movies like Singin’ In The Rain, American in Paris and especially Busby Berkeley’s Golddiggers films were innovative fx driven…

“Furthermore, not all once-remarkable effects achievements have retained their luster, which is why some of the biggest box office hits of all time are absent from our rundown. (Sorry Titanic stans.)“

No Terminator, Aliens, or The Abyss? GTFO with this trash list. 

In Faust how much did this shot remind you of the Stargate Rings Transporter?

What, no The Great Train Robbery? I hope that it’s actually true and not urban legend that the scene of the guy firing directly at the camera (audience) caused more than a couple of Code Browns...

Someone probably already posted this below but I’ll say it again; James Cameron’s TITANIC, hellooooooo?

Kind of surprised Titanic isn’t here for the sheer gall of destroying the ship not once, but twice. Those CGI folks on the deck aged pretty horribly, though.

You mention Star Wars, but the only thing you bring up is the miniatures, which had been done before on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why leave out the invention of the most important visual effects camera technique in the last fifty years: motion control? ILM invented motion control for this movie, and it’s the only thing…

No Interstellar?

The original King Kong attacking the elevated train is an effect still astonishing today....

Pretty sure Bolaji Badejo was Nigerian, not Norwegian. 

I did a quick little list before reading to see if my choices would be represented, and for the most part they were. TTT/Dawn are the two correct Andy Serkis showpieces. You got your obvious milestones (Metropolis, Kong, 2001, Star Wars, Alien, JP, Matrix, Gravity). I got the live-action/animation mash-up wrong - I…

Now do music videos! Seriously, through the 80s and 90s, that’s where a lot of effects were pioneered.

How is Videodrome not on this list?