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Special effects were kinda crappy till 1996 or so. Just randomly caught a bit of original Independence Day and big blow ups scenes in the first part are kinda bad. I think Jurassic Park was the turning point. Before that you had to get artsy to cover up FX limitations.
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But cf 2001: A Space Odyssey & Star Wars.... It took many years to get back to that level of solid realism in CGI special effects, and arguably we're still not there
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Though realism is not as much the point as artistic vision rather than tech being the bottleneck. Now bad effects can’t be blamed on tech. Like Michael Bay Transfornwes are just bad, but not because of unrealism because it’s not realist intent. It’s artistically I’ll-conceived
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I always thought Terminator 2 was the turning point, which pre-dates both movies, not sure how’s it aged though - it could be that the 90s were a transitionary decade for vfx and didn’t get consistently good until the late 90s/Matrix timeframe
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jurassic park predated independence day but yeah digital vfx sucked as a rule until the late 90s if you think about it, rendering would have been $$$$ and moreover take a long time on the calendar (just think toy story)
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I always thought it was Terminator 2 that was the turning point. Then again, that movie had a surprising number of practical effects.