You know when you see Daenerys Targaryen petting one of her dragons or the Avengers fighting Ultron? Well, unfortunately, most (all) of that isn’t real. It sure can look real, though. Visual effects have come a long way since 1933’s King Kong, where you could see animators’ thumbprints in Kong’s fur. Today, even city streets are created on green screen, with viewers none the wiser. Let’s take a look at some before and after shots and see how far we have come.

Here is Daenerys petting one of her dragons, when actually she was petting what looks like one of those wooden horse-on-a-stick toys kids used to play with.

Not only was there not a real racoon, but Bradley Cooper wasn’t even in the motion capture suit. While we have him to thank for Rocket’s voice, it’s Sean Gunn that provided us with his movements.

It turns out that Aaron Eckart’s Harvey Dent wasn’t supposed to become Two-Face in The Dark Knight. However, as you can see in this picture, his skin rash was so bad it was the only way they could continue filming (Update: it turns out that those are motion capture modules. Apologies.).

You can check out more pics in the gallery below, and the rest at Design You Trust‘s website here.

So what do you think? Do these before and after shots ruin the “movie magic” for you, or is your ability to suspend disbelief still intact? Let me know on Twitter or sound off in the comments below.

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HT: Design You Trust

IMAGES: Disney/Marvel; HBO; Warner Brothers; Disney; 20th Century Fox; Summit Entertainment