History SpecialEffectFailure / LiveActionFilm

** Internet humor writer Seanbaby [[http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=22122 points out]] exactly one glorious aversion: in one of the movie's [[EngagingChevrons several]] [[TrainingMontage training montages]], Turkish Luke kicks a rock so hard it hits a wall and ''explodes''. Slow-mo replay reveals that the "rock" is actually a ''live grenade'', thrown at a wall so a cameraman standing just outside the blast radius can film it. Solving SFX problems with MoreDakka? We salute you, Turkish George Lucas!

* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}''. The monster king's movies have featured quite a few notable special effects... flaws. But it's notable that wires holding up puppets, like Mothra, are all but invisible in most movies. Then came ''Film/GodzillaVsMegaguirus''. The villainous monster, Megaguirus, is a spectacularly menacing-looking monster. Except that in the big reveal scene, Megaguirus takes off, she is held up by incredibly obvious strings. And this is in a movie made in the year '''2000'''. It is very jarring.
** It can partially be blamed on Sony's handling of the film. When they put it on DVD, they used a brighter version of the print. The strings weren't visible in Japanese prints as those particular shots were too dark for the strings to be visible.

** The King Kong suit from ''Film/KingKongVsGodzilla'' is just horrid. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gefKUfcG0-Q&feature=related Take a good look.]] The one in ''Film/KingKongEscapes'' is a lot better, but still strange looking in the eyes and mouth.
** The suit in ''Film/GodzillaVsGigan'' is the Soshingeki-Goji suit (from ''Kaiju Soshingeki'' or ''Film/DestroyAllMonsters''). In the '70s, Toho stopped spending money on making a new Godzilla costume for every movie, so the 1968 suit ended up getting used for THREE MORE MOVIES. The suit would be falling apart anyway, since it's made of rubber, but all the fights it went through only adds to this, so Godzilla's skin is slowly falling off over the course of the film.
*** If you thought the Goji suit was bad in Gigan, wait until you hear this. At one point, Gigan is rampaging across Tokyo. You see the inside of the building that is going to be crushed by the monster in mere seconds. Inside stand two Kelly dolls, just staring at each other, and are soon crushed by the monster's claw. Now they probably were intended to be store mannequins, but the place does not exactly look like a store, and why they would even bother including them is not known. What's even worse is that they stand there for well over a second, as if the camera is focusing on them.

*** At one point in ''Film/GodzillaVsGigan'', a bright orange subcompact car is blown up by the bad guys. In the later ''Film/TerrorOfMechagodzilla'', the hero drives a bright orange muscle car. When it's blown up, they use the subcompact footage from ''Gigan.'' No muscle cars were harmed in the making of this movie.
*** ''Film/TerrorOfMechagodzilla'' has surprisingly good effects for a 70s Godzilla movie. Except for one part. It only appears for a few seconds, but an alien machine is clearly made from Lego blocks.
** The full CGI Godzilla swimming in ''Film/{{Godzilla2000}}'' looks pretty bad, considering it was made 2 years after the American remake. The movie also offers ''tons'' of badly composited ChromaKey shots, along with, to be fair, some well made ones.

** The 1967 suit used for ''Film/SonOfGodzilla'' is widely considered to be the worst suit in the entire series. It's abnormally long neck, googly-eyes, and wide-mouth frog-like face makes it considered by most fans to be the worst suit used in the franchise.
*** The painted backgrounds are also jarring, as there are thin black vertical lines running down the "sky" in virtually every shot that wasn't filmed on-location. You don't have to squint to see them, they're so blatant.

*** Anguirus, oddly enough, is supposed to be a ''subversion''. While his back armor is split down the middle and flops about making it look like a poor costume design, [[AllThereInTheManual a comic based on the film shows that it's]] ''[[AllThereInTheManual supposed]]'' [[AllThereInTheManual to be this way.]]
** In the 1991 film, ''Film/GodzillaVsKingGhidorah'', they don't even bother making Ghidorah's wings flap (they hardly flap at all, in fact) when he first appears. Odd, considering that they were able to make a Ghidorah with flapping wings in the 1960s.
*** Speaking of Ghidorah's wings, by 1972's ''Film/GodzillaVsGigan'', Ghidorah's costume, used since 1964, was in such poor shape, a new model had to be quickly built for the flying scenes, resulting a non-articulate toy with glowing eyes. Ghidorah's costume was still used however, but due to its poor shape, lots of Stock footage ended up being used for his action oriented scenes, as he otherwise did nothing.
** 1994's ''Film/GodzillaVsSpaceGodzilla'' has okay effects, but one scene featuring Spacegodzilla and a giant robot battling in an asteroid field is just awful. For one, the asteroids barely move. Also, they are clearly made from Styrofoam, and appear as if they are in a space themed kid's bedroom. Even worse is that this was 14 years after ''The Empire Strikes Back's'' fantastic asteroid field scene.
** The entire Heisei-era was a huge step-up in terms of SFX, so the failures listed here are ones that ''really'' stand out. Some infamous goofs occurring in ''Film/GodzillaAndMothraTheBattleForEarth'' are Mothra's bouncy rubber legs, the wires holding her up being visible (as they are focused on by bright studio lights), and during his first fight with Mothra, Godzilla's tail being a separate prop with a warped base. In ''Film/GodzillaVsSpaceGodzilla'' the tip of Godzilla's tail even breaks off on-screen.

* The entire Showa {{Gamera}} franchise has some pretty poor effects, often even worse than Godzilla films can pull, due to their low budgets.

* ''TheDayAfterTomorrow'': The CG wolves. At ''[[WordofGod a million dollars a wolf]]'', they could have gotten some trained ''real'' wolves.

* An awful lot of the CGI work in ''VanHelsing'' is shockingly bad. The 'swing on a rope' scenes where they just veer off to the side for no reason. The 'Anna falls on the roof' scene. Way too many of the monsters. And what was in this film except CGI (and HughJackman in too many clothes)?

* ''ClashOfTheTitans'' has some impressive [[HarryhausenMovie stop motion monsters]]... and some downright terrible bluescreen effects. Particular offenders are the scenes with Poseidon [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu_9fdp0EFk#t=8m12s RELEASING THE KRAKEN!]] and any time Bubo flies.

* For the most part, ''TheFrighteners'' has excellent special effects that hold up well. The Director's Cut DVD, however, reinserts a few deleted scenes. These are pretty well done and look as good as anything from the theatrical version, but one scene has Frank and Judge in the car together, with Frank driving like a madman. There's a reaction shot of Judge looking terrified, and the composite makes him look extremely flat and unconvincing compared to the other ghost effects in the film.

* The green screen effects from ''TheRoom'' are pretty bad, though compared to the rest of the film, they are almost passable.

** In ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', during the shootout between Bane's mercenaries and the GCPD SWAT team in the alley, one of the SWAT members has obvious squibs wired across his back to simulate being shot.

* ''{{Hancock}}'' has the scene where the protagonist [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmyzaZuJjzw throws a whale]] back in the ocean.

* ''{{Waterworld}}'' has a couple of moments of blatant rear projection and some rather wonky physics in the model work. Compared to most of the stuff on this list, it actually looks decent enough. So what makes it worthy of being here? The final budget: '''175 million dollars'''.

** In ''TheDarkKnightRises'', during the shootout between Bane's mercenaries and the GCPD SWAT team in the alley, one of the SWAT members has obvious squibs wired across his back to simulate being shot.

* Here is a quick example of Creator/EdWood's nudie flick ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWo_9CKbSXE One Million AC/DC]]''. (censored nudity, but still likely NSFW) (Note that the dinosaur in this is the same puppet pictured above.)

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* The ''Shark Attack'' TV movie series are examples of the aforementioned junk ''Jaws'' rip-offs, especially ''SharkAttack3Megalodon''. Awful rubber sharks and ludicrous green-screen-meshed-with-stock-footage [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nzd0R_OeOc appears]].

* ''AttackOfTheEyeCreatures'' had so many failures that when it was featured on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', Joel and the 'Bots catalogued a thorough list of them as evidence that the filmmakers ''[[TheyJustDidntCare "just didn't care!"]]'' Not the least of which was a night scene that was clearly filmed in broad daylight. As Tom Servo put it, "You couldn't have picked a ''nicer'' day to film a night sequence!"

* ''SantaClausConquersTheMartians'' had lots to complain about in this area, but what stood out the most was the "polar bear" that was obviously a man in a cheap costume.

* ''The FinalDestination'' uses CG deaths for a lot of the kills, and for all of the premonitions. Whereas the prosthetics and physical special effects are on the whole convincing, the cartoon blood, organs and other kibble are more reminiscent of a mid-90's video game cut scene.
* ''TheMummyReturns'' has two instances. DwayneJohnson's CGI form as the Scorpion King looks like something out of a videogame cinematic, and when the armies of Anubis attack, many of the jackal soldiers in the background phase through the actors, or die without having been attacked.

** In the series' next installment, ''TheMummyTombOfTheDragonEmperor'', JetLi, along with his entire army, vomits up clay which covers him then fires itself, resulting in the Terra Cotta Army. The quality of the sequence is just atrocious.

* KurtRussell's surfing scene in ''EscapeFromLA''. JohnCarpenter made us used to cheap effects, but this one was especially ambience-breaking.

** The previous year's ''TheAmazingColossalMan'' (and its sequel the year after) had both the double-exposure issue and the prop hand problem. The hand was especially noticeable near the end of the first movie, where Glenn, in a state of delirium and rage, is supposedly holding up his fiancee as she screams at him to put her down. Thanks to the editing of his hand, his fiancee, and his head, he looks more like he's holding his right fist up to the side of his head much like one would hold a phone while he stares intently off into the distance.
* The crash of the eponymous aircraft in ''AirForceOne''. The 1997 CGI looks like something out of a video game from that same year. Which is too bad because the effects so far had been fine against the night background, and only become obvious when the sun rose in the movie.

* ''Film/TheMatrix Reloaded'' also had numerous instances where Neo was clearly not in the scene and the entirety of his body was computer-generated. While not necessarily a Special Effects Failure, it didn't look very convincing, and the fact that the film cut to slow motion every five seconds only served to drive the point home.

* In the 1970s horror movie ''KingdomOfTheSpiders'' (starring WilliamShatner), the heroes board themselves inside a building to keep themselves safe from the killer arachnids. At the very end, they uncover one of the windows to look outside... Only to see that the building they're in, as well as the entire town, has been covered in spider webs. The scene would be genuinely scary... If the webbed-up town wasn't a cheap-looking matte painting. What makes matters worse is, is it's not even like they showed it briefly and then moved on. They show the painting and freeze on it, keeping it up ''through the entire ending credits''.

* Not a specific instance, but this trope is what caused Creator/CSLewis to forbid any non-animation movie from being made of ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. He believed that it was simply impossible for special effects to match up with the fantastic world in his stories, and it wasn't until recently that anyone was able to convince his estate that doing so was now, in fact, possible.

** The entire Heisei-era was a huge step-up in terms of SFX, so the failures listed here are ones that ''really'' stand out. Some infamous goofs occurring in ''Film/GodzillaAndMothraTheBattleForEarth'' are Mothra's bouncy rubber legs, the wires holding her up being visible (as they are focused on by bright studio lights), and the tip of Godzilla's tail simply breaking off on-screen.

** The appallingly bad effects in ''SupermanIV''.
* In ''Altered States'', (early '80s) director Ken Russell films some wildly effective, vicarious hallucinatory experiences that the main character undergoes as he searches for a greater truth within himself, but then [[spoiler: when William Hurt de-evolves into a primitive hominid from combining mushroom trips with sensory deprivation tank studies]], the ridiculous fur suit he's wearing nearly ruins the film.
* In ''ManosTheHandsOfFate'' Torgo was supposed to be a satyr, but this failed rather spectacularly because he was wearing the leg construction ''backwards''. It made him look like he just had huge knees.

** ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' posited that it looked like he was wearing Depends.

** ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock'', ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'', and ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'' contracted the special effects to Industrial Light and Magic. ''Star Trek V'' fell victim to ILM being booked up. With a writer's strike on, it was never going to get the extra time in post it needed before being punted out to starving theatres.

** ''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'' has its own effects problems. Many of the visuals featuring the Enterprise look like the film was made for TV, and a couple of shots are just plain awful. In particular, the pan across the ship as Chang recites Shakespeare, and the "slowly warping through space" shot after the Kirk / Spock chat in his quarters.
** Worthy of mention here: ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'' stole the Klingon ship effects from The Undiscovered Country. Not necessarily a SpecialEffectsFailure, as they are good effects, but definitely an uncharacteristically cheap decision.
*** Made more jarring by the fact that Riker ''clearly'' orders a full spread of torpedoes to be fired because "we'll only get one shot." When the Klingon ship begins to decloak, the Enterprise only fires a single torpedo despite his order, because only one was used in ''Star Trek VI''.

* ''{{Godzilla}}''. The monster king's movies have featured quite a few notable special effects... flaws. But it's notable that wires holding up puppets, like Mothra, are all but invisible in most movies. Then came ''Godzilla vs. Megaguirus''. The villainous monster, Megaguirus, is a spectacularly menacing-looking monster. Except that in the big reveal scene, Megaguirus takes off, she is held up by incredibly obvious strings. And this is in a movie made in the year '''2000'''. It is very jarring.

** On a non-monster note, one scene in ''Destroy All Monsters'' features a Kilaak-controlled man jumping out of a window to his death. However, the actual fall is portrayed by a stiff-legged dummy with its arms firmly at its sides, as if someone's accidentally dropped a well-dressed mannequin.
** The King Kong suit from ''King Kong vs. Godzilla'' is just horrid. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gefKUfcG0-Q&feature=related Take a good look.]] The one in ''KingKongEscapes'' is a lot better, but still strange looking in the eyes and mouth.
** The suit in ''Godzilla vs. Gigan'' is the Soshingeki-Goji suit (from ''Kaiju Soshingeki'' or ''Destroy All Monsters''). In the '70s, Toho stopped spending money on making a new Godzilla costume for every movie, so the 1968 suit ended up getting used for THREE MORE MOVIES. The suit would be falling apart anyway, since it's made of rubber, but all the fights it went through only adds to this, so Godzilla's skin is slowly falling off over the course of the film.

*** At one point in ''Godzilla vs. Gigan,'' a bright orange subcompact car is blown up by the bad guys. In the later ''Terror of Mechagodzilla,'' the hero drives a bright orange muscle car. When it's blown up, they use the subcompact footage from ''Gigan.'' No muscle cars were harmed in the making of this movie.
*** ''Terror of Mechagodzilla'' has surprisingly good effects for a 70s Godzilla movie. Except for one part. It only appears for a few seconds, but an alien machine is clearly made from Lego blocks.
** The full CGI Godzilla swimming in ''Godzilla 2000'' looks pretty bad, considering it was made 2 years after the American remake.

** The 1967 suit used for ''Son Of Godzilla'' is widely considered to be the worst suit in the entire series. It's abnormally long neck, googly-eyes, and wide-mouth frog-like face makes it considered by most fans to be the worst suit used in the franchise.
** The 1955 film ''Godzilla Raids Again'' uses a poorly-made hand-puppet for close-up shots of Godzilla, who suddenly has ''very'' crooked teeth for some reason.

** In the 1991 film, ''Godzilla VS King Ghidorah'', they don't even bother making Ghidorah's wings flap (they hardly flap at all, in fact) when he first appears. Odd, considering that they were able to make a Ghidorah with flapping wings in the 1960s.
*** Speaking of Ghidorah's wings, by 1972's ''Godzilla vs. Gigan'', Ghidorah's costume, used since 1964, was in such poor shape, a new model had to be quickly built for the flying scenes, resulting a non-articulate toy with glowing eyes. Ghidorah's costume was still used however, but due to its poor shape, lots of Stock footage ended up being used for his action oriented scenes, as he otherwise did nothing.
** 1994's ''Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla'' has okay effects, but one scene featuring Spacegodzilla and a giant robot battling in an asteroid field is just awful. For one, the asteroids barely move. Also, they are clearly made from Styrofoam, and appear as if they are in a space themed kid's bedroom. Even worse is that this was 14 years after ''The Empire Strikes Back's'' fantastic asteroid field scene.

* ''JohnCarpenter's Vampires'' features some of the worst "burning vampire" effects ever committed to film. Vampires pulled into sunlight don't burst into flame, but instead appear to light Roman candles up their coat sleeves. Seriously, that's it. This is especially pathetic in light of the fact that filmmakers had been setting stuntpeople on fire for decades, to the point that there are stunt performers who specialize in being on fire.

* Part of the infamous blood-test scene in ''Film/TheThing1982'', where the [[spoiler: Palmer-Thing splits its own head open and uses the halves to grab Windows' head. Windows' body is clearly a dummy - it looks much lighter and smaller than Windows. Also, Palmer's clothing briefly changes from a denim vest to a green t-shirt. ]]

* Part of the infamous blood-test scene in ''Film/TheThing'', where the [[spoiler: Palmer-Thing splits its own head open and uses the halves to grab Windows' head. Windows' body is clearly a dummy - it looks much lighter and smaller than Windows. Also, Palmer's clothing briefly changes from a denim vest to a green t-shirt. ]]

* ''MarvelsTheAvengers'' has a small moment of this that is accidental FridgeBrilliance -- the light from Stark's arc reactor is not shining through his shirt in several shots during the scene after [[spoiler: Coulson's death]]. It almost gives the impression that his heart has been snuffed out by grief.

** In the eighth movie's "19 years later" epilogue, the makeup and costuming used to make the characters look older... left a lot to be desired, at least to some fans. Hermione looked almost the same, while Draco looked middle-aged. But the scene is a major TearJerker, so a broad majority of viewers weren't bothered by it too much.

* The 1976 movie ''LogansRun'' has some of the worst miniature work ever. The 'domed city' looks like a tabletop diorama made by school children.

** Anybody who's seen Jaws 3D knows that being filmed in 3D doesn't guarantee good effects work.
* ''JawsTheRevenge'' suffers heavily from this. There are some spots in which you can see the mechanisms controlling the shark.

* WristcuttersALoveStory seems to have had a special effects budget of whatever loose change the filmmakers found under their dashboard.

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