It’s trendy these days to bemoan the overuse of CGI in big budget fantasy filmmaking, and romanticize the past of all-practical effects work in Hollywood films. But the truth of the matter is, without the use of CGI, we simply couldn’t have had things like Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter films, and, yes, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Part of the reason it took so many decades for characters like the Avengers and Spider-Man to even make it to the big screen was that most of these characters weren’t even possible without the use of computer generated imaging.
In the video above from the folks at Looper, they break down all the ways CGI was crucial to making the Marvel Studios films, and it’s not just in the obvious ways either. Much of 1940s Brooklyn cityscape in Captain America: The First Avenger was made possible by CGI for example, which most people didn’t realize at the time, as was Hayley Atwell’s aging into a nonagenarian Peggy Carter in The Winter Soldier (nope, that wasn’t practical make-up, kids; that was all CGI).
Of course, the effects house responsible for most of these amazing CGI shots from the Marvel films is none other than Industrial Light and Magic, the company George Lucas created over 40 years ago to create the effects for Star Wars, because there was no effects house in Hollywood that was good enough to execute his vision. Even though Lucas sold the company to Disney back in 2012, the video above shows that they are still the best of the best, and the best Marvel films wouldn’t be the same without them.
What do you make of Marvel’s visual effects work over the past 10 years? Let us know your thoughts down below in the comments.
Images: Marvel Studios
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- James Gunn confirms a Guardians of the Galaxy Easter egg
