What Movies Look Like Without Visual Effects (36 Photos)

Whether watching a movie at the theater or at home, it’s easy to forget that what appears on screen isn’t real, but the result of painstaking work by dozens of visual effects artists. These seamless digital effects make the impossible look completely authentic. But what would these blockbusters look like if they had been filmed without all that CGI?

We’ve gathered side-by-side comparisons of movie scenes enhanced with computer graphics alongside behind-the-scenes shots before the visual effects were added.







A still from Life of Pi, with a boy and a Bengal tiger adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.





And the scene on set before visual effects were applied.



A still from Gravity starring Sandra Bullock.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



A shot from The Wolf of Wall Street.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



A shot from The Great Gatsby depicting 1920s New York.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



Superman taking flight in Man of Steel.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



Remember Tony Stark in full armor in Iron Man 3?



Here is the scene on set before visual effects were added.



Optimus Prime commanding the big screen in Transformers.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



A frame from the movie adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.



The very same frame from Alice in Wonderland without visual effects.



When James Franco travels through the magical realm in Oz the Great and Powerful…



…he was actually walking on nothing more than a short strip of yellow brick road.



The digital versions of the buildings and landscapes were modeled and rendered in post-production.



Scenes from Pacific Rim.



In real life, however, things look far less glamorous.



A still from the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



A still from the spectacular finale of The Lone Ranger.



It turns out this was also filmed in front of a blue screen.



A scene from The Hunger Games.



Shot using flat sets, green screens, and 3D motion-tracking markers.



This sequence from The Avengers looks incredibly lifelike.



In reality, most of these scenes are brought to life through tightly choreographed action against a green screen.



The Avengers was not actually filmed in New York City.



In fact, it was shot about 10 kilometers away from New York.



So when Scarlett Johansson was soaring through the sky in The Avengers, she was safe and sound on the ground.



And the scene on set before visual effects were added.



There weren't actually 80,000 fans filling the stadium in The Dark Knight.



The crew filmed small groups of extras and digitally replicated them across the entire stadium to make the stands appear packed.