5 Movies Whose 'Groundbreaking' Special Effects Now Look Like A PS2 Cutscene

Independence Day Won An Oscar For These Effects — Now Half Of Them Look Like A Screensaver

When Independence Day hit theaters in 1996, critics fell over themselves praising the alien-ship destruction sequences, and the film walked away with the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Decades later, fans still argue about it online — some insist the miniature work holds up beautifully, while others admit the CGI aliens and blue-screen seams now scream '90s blockbuster.' Even at the time, not everyone was sold: Variety's Todd McCarthy dinged the film's budget-conscious effects as occasionally 'cheesy.'

The Mummy Returns' Scorpion King Was Supposed To Be Epic. It Became A Meme Instead.

The 1999 Mummy was praised for effects so good Universal doubled down for the sequel, but The Mummy Returns' CGI finale turning Dwayne Johnson into a giant scorpion is now cited as one of the worst visual effects shots ever put on film. The film's own VFX supervisor, John Berton Jr., later admitted he stumbled onto an internet post calling it the worst VFX shot in history. The team simply didn't have proper facial reference of Johnson, who was busy with WWE, so his digital double came out looking like an uncanny-valley video game boss.

Spider-Man's Web-Swinging Blew Minds In 2002 — Now It Looks Like A Rubber Ball Bouncing

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was hailed as a visual breakthrough for making a hero swing convincingly through Manhattan, but even Roger Ebert wrote at the time that Spider-Man 'looks like a video game figure, not like a person having an amazing experience.' Rewatch it now and the fully-CGI Spidey and Green Goblin sequences are widely described as looking like a dated video game cutscene, with a noticeably rubbery, weightless quality compared to the practical shots.

Twister's Flying Cow Was Cutting-Edge CGI In 1996 — Now It's Just Funny

Twister earned an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects and was celebrated for its digitally-rendered tornadoes, built from a particle system its own effects team compared to scooping ice cream. Nearly 30 years later, reviewers consistently note the tornado work holds up better than expected, but single out the CGI flying cow as the moment that now gets an unintentional laugh, even as critics still say it's a movie that 'blows most of them away.'

The Phantom Menace's CGI Was 'The Future Of Movies' — Now Even Podracing Fans Cringe

The Phantom Menace arrived in 1999 as a showcase for how much of a blockbuster could be built entirely in a computer, from Jar Jar Binks to the podrace to a CGI battle droid army. Contemporary reviews were already lukewarm on the technology, and looking back, one retrospective bluntly noted that the effects 'seemed groundbreaking at the time,' but now some sequences look downright cartoonish next to the human actors. The infamous Battle of Naboo CGI sequence in particular has since been called out as looking more like 'a video game cutscene' than a landmark cinematic moment.