It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Superman or Snow White, CGI is an important part of the modern blockbuster. Trivia nerds know that CGI has been a part of movies since computers were used to help make the opening titles of 1958’s Vertigo. But when most people think of the beginning of CGI in cinema, they think of the 1990s—and often at its worst, a la the goofy virtual worlds of The Lawnmower Man or the ugly hellscapes of Spawn. However, there are a surprising amount of movies that still look pretty great, even decades later.Whether it’s just the initial explosion of technical innovation or the understanding that sometimes restraint is better than excess, the visual effects artists on these movies helped create images that stood the test of time.Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)Leave it to James Cameron to do it right. For as much as people like to chide the obviously fake head used in the repair scene from The Terminator, every single effect in (the much more expensive) Terminator 2 still holds up today. In fact, it looks so great that the liquid metal shapeshifting of the T-1000 remains a gold (silver?) standard for genre movies.In what will become a theme on this list, part of the movie’s success comes from Cameron knowing when to use practical effects and when to use computers. He used make-up and props whenever possible, including creating a prosthetic for Robert Patrick to wear as the bullet-riddled T-1000. But that shouldn’t take away from the care that Cameron and ILM brought to the actual CG, making the T-1000’s shifts feel like real (and really terrifying) parts of this world.Beauty and the Beast (1991)When talking about computer graphics and ’90s animation, most immediately go to 1995’s Toy Story, the first fully-CG animated feature film. But even the most diehard Woody’s Roundup watcher has to admit that the visuals of Toy Story look pretty iffy today. The same cannot be said of Beauty and the Beast and its sweeping CG ballroom sequence.For most of Beauty and the Beast, directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise use hand-drawn animation. But for the standout ballroom dance sequence, which features the beautiful title ballad, Trousdale and Wise called upon the CG supervisor Jim Hillin to push the Pixar-developed Computer Animation Production System further than it had been before. The result is something grand and magical, a single scene that fully sells the romantic change of heart for Belle and the Beast.Death Becomes Her (1992)On one hand, Death Becomes Her is an anomaly in the filmography of Robert Zemeckis. The story of two women (Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn) whose bodies get transformed as they battle for the affections of a doofy plastic surgeon (Bruce Willis) feels more at home on Broadway (where there’s currently a smash musical adaptation of the film) than it does alongside Zemeckis’ Boomer classics Back to the Future and Forrest Gump.With that said, the incredible effects in Death Becomes Her certainly are the work of a tech-obsessed filmmaker. Zemeckis takes the cartoon-logic lessons he learned while making 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and applies them to actual people. The image of Streep with her head twisted about, or Hawn with hole in her stomach, should be the stuff of nightmares, but Death Becomes Her makes them camp movie magic.Jurassic Park (1993)According to behind-the-scenes legends, when stop-motion animator Phil Tippett saw the digital dinosaurs ILM was making for Jurassic Park, he told Dennis Muren, “We’re extinct.” Thankfully Tippett continues to work (you may have seen his animation in a season one episode of Poker Face), but his worries were justified. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park still look amazing, sometimes better than beasties in later Jurassic World entries. The introduction of the dinosaurs also stands as one of Steven Spielberg’s most awe-inspiring moments, even within a filmography filled with awe.Of course Jurassic Park also succeeds in part because of how much Steven Spielberg relies on Stan Winston’s puppetry. Not only did Winston, Tippett, and the crew figure out the weight and movement of the dinos, but they also created animatronic puppets to interact with the actors as much as possible. Jurassic Park understood how far restraint can take you, something that those who followed too often forgot.Forrest Gump (1994)In the three decades since its triumphant Academy Award-winning run, Forrest Gump has only gone down in public opinion. Modern viewers may question its conservative politics and Boomer nostalgia-baiting, but no one can take exception with Forrest Gump‘s special effects.The trick of putting Tom Hanks‘ idiot savant into news reels with Richard Nixon and John Lennon means nothing in an age of deep-fakes, but it still works pretty seamlessly to the modern eye. Even better is everything involving Lieutenant Dan, for which Ken Ralston and his team at ILM digitally removed Gary Sinise’s legs to make the actor appear paraplegic. Thanks to their work, Forrest Gump keeps its gaze set on the past without distracting viewers with futuristic razzle-dazzle.The Mask (1994)Like Jurassic Park, The Mask uses much less CGI than one would expect. Unlike Jurassic Park, most of those non-CG effects are all the work of one man, Jim Carrey and his incredible face. Still, Carrey’s rubber-faced tour de force shouldn’t distract from how well ILM animation director Wes Takahashi and his team turned Carrey into a proper cartoon.Unlike so many of the entries on this list, the effects in The Mask do not look realistic, but that’s the point. The abilities that Carrey’s mousey Stanley Ipkiss gets when he dons the titular mask are supposed to feel weird, and The Mask still feels like we’re watching a Tex Avery cartoon invade the real world.Babe (1995)According to the special effects folks at Pixar, it’s much easier to animate non-human things, including animals, than it is to animate humans, because we viewers know too well what humans should look like. But as ’90s hits such as Anaconda and Jumanji demonstrated, it can be pretty darn hard to make effective CG animals as well.Which is just one of many reasons that Babe, directed by Chris Noonan and co-written by George Miller, feels like such a miracle. The animals on Hoggett Farm look like actual pigs, dogs, and sheep, even when they speak with the voices of Christine Cavanaugh, Hugo Weaving, and Miriam Flynn. Thanks to the work of effects houses Rhythm & Hues Studios, Animal Logic, and (of course) Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Babe manages to imbue the animals with personality (unlike, say, modern Lion King movies), so that the creatures are actually delightful to watch.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Men in Black (1997)As in The Mask, the greatest special effect of Men in Black is not digital at all, but rather an actor’s performance: Vincent D’Onofrio as a bug that wears the skin of a farmer called Edgar. That said, D’Onofrio has room to stand out precisely because he’s surrounded by absurd images that fit right in within the world. Edgar is just one more oddity, alongside squid babies, coffee-obsessed creatures, and Tony Shalhoub regenerating his own head.Many of those elements stem from Rick Baker and his team, who first built puppets and maquettes based on input from director Barry Sonnenfeld and producer Steven Spielberg. From that basis in real objects, artists at ILM digitized and animated the creatures, allowing them to interact with Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K and Will Smith’s Agent J.Starship Troopers (1997)Speaking of alien bugs, if he wanted to Dutch director Paul Verhoeven could have scrimped on the effects of his Robert Heinlein adaptation, Starship Troopers. After all, part of the movie’s satirical anti-fascist message rests on the fact that the alien Arachnids are marked for extermination precisely because they don’t look like us.Instead Verhoeven put such priority on the visual effects that they took up half of the movie’s approximately $110 million budget and required the help of several effects houses, including Phil Tippett’s studio, Sony Pictures Imageworks, ILM, Amalgamated Dynamics, and more. Today it’s clear that the money and effort was worth it. Not only are scenes of the Arachnids decimating human soldiers appropriately upsetting, but the creatures also have a clear intelligence and personality that helps reinforce the movie’s subversive themes.Titanic (1997)Given his Aguirre-esque determination, one suspects that James Cameron’s first plan was to just rebuild the Titanic and drive it into an iceberg. Since that wasn’t an option, Cameron did the next best thing, creating incredible models of the ill-fated ship. The scenes of the ship’s sinking and splitting look incredible, and all of the attention is focused on the boat itself—which only works because of the digital effects that Cameron employs.Like hair and fur, water is famously a difficult thing to animate well. Working with Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images, Cameron not only continued to push forward the water effects he developed on The Abyss but also used CG to ground the spectacle in real emotions. Cameron and his team scanned the faces of actors to create digital models, so we could get the sense of real people falling and drowning as the ship went down. Thanks to these efforts, Titanic is a spectacular epic and also a very human drama.The Matrix (1999)When most people think of special effects in The Matrix, their minds immediately go to bullet time, the dynamic slow motion process that designer John Gaeta innovated for the film. Believe it or not, with the exception of some computer pre-visualization, most bullet time sequences were done practically, in-camera. Yet CG was used for many of the movie’s other standout sequences, sequences that continue to amaze viewers.Images of Keanu Reeves losing his mouth as Neo, or getting enveloped by a mirror, are not as flawless today as they were in 1999. Yet they remain incredibly effective for signaling Neo’s recognition that the world is not what he thought it was, as do the sequences in the film’s actual reality, those of humans being turned into batteries and the menacing sentinels.Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)Even the most ardent prequel defender has trouble fully endorsing the effects in The Phantom Menace. So much of the lead up to the movie’s release hyped the digital worlds that George Lucas created with ILM, and so much of the movie’s wooden dialogue was blamed on those same artificial sets. Yet even the biggest prequel hater has to admit that, whatever the movie’s flaws, The Phantom Menace looks incredible.It’s not just the pod racing sequence or the climactic lightsaber duel that hold up—even though they both certainly do. It’s also the quieter elements, the seascape that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn traverse while visiting the Gungans, the palace where Amidala rules Naboo. All of these elements still impress, even if The Phantom Menace itself remains divisive.Stuart Little (1999)Given all the groundbreaking, high-concept movies on this list, it might feel like a bit of a letdown to end with a gentle children’s movie about a mouse adopted by a human family. However, anyone who watches Stuart Little today will find that works perfectly. Like Babe, Stuart Little had to bring animals to life, namely the titular mouse and the various cats he encounters. Also like Babe, the effects had to be good enough to prevent the intended audience of children from being distracted from the story.Effects artist Rob Bredow and his team at ILM painstakingly found new methods to create fur and animal expressions that managed to both look realistic and convey emotions. Their efforts were rewarded with an Oscar nomination for best visual effects (losing out to The Matrix) and, more importantly, by the joy experienced by young viewers who never even realized that they weren’t looking at a real mouse.The post 1990s CGI Movies That Still Hold Up Today appeared first on Den of Geek.