I’ve got this beaten-up VHS copy of The Terminator that I grabbed from a garage sale maybe ten years ago. The case is cracked, the tape probably has about three more viewings left in it before it gives up completely, but I keep going back to it. There’s something about watching Schwarzenegger’s endoskeleton reveal that just hits different than anything I see in theaters these days. And yeah, I know how that sounds—like some old guy complaining about how things were better back in his day. Except I’m 29 and wasn’t even alive when most of these movies came out.
The thing is, when I’m sitting there watching that metal skeleton emerge from fake flesh, I’m seeing something that actually existed. Someone built that thing. Someone figured out how to make it move, how to make it look terrifying, how to sell the illusion that this unstoppable killing machine was really standing there in front of the camera. No computer rendering, no motion capture, just pure craftsmanship and probably way too much coffee.
I spend my days testing games, finding bugs in digital worlds that exist only as code, so I’ve got a pretty good relationship with what computers can and can’t do. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not anti-CGI. Some of my favorite games wouldn’t exist without incredible digital artistry, and movies like Gravity or Avatar showcase technical achievements that genuinely blow me away. But there’s something about those 80s practical effects that modern blockbusters keep trying to recapture and somehow never quite manage.
Take Blade Runner, which I probably watch at least twice a year. Ridley Scott and his team created this impossibly detailed vision of future Los Angeles using miniatures, matte paintings, and good old-fashioned movie magic tricks. Every time I watch it, I notice some new detail in the background—a flickering neon sign, steam rising from a street vent, the way light reflects off wet pavement. It’s all fake, obviously, but it feels lived-in because people actually built it, lit it, and filmed it. There’s a weight to everything you see on screen.
Compare that to most modern sci-fi movies where entire cityscapes get generated by computers. Sure, they’re technically more realistic, but they often feel sterile. Like someone designed them in a program rather than imagining what it would actually be like to walk those streets. I’m not saying practical effects are automatically better—that’s the kind of nostalgic thinking that drives me crazy when I see it in gaming communities. But there’s definitely something lost when everything becomes pixels.
The puppet work in E.T. still amazes me. I saw the original animatronic at a museum exhibit a few years ago, and honestly, it was kind of disappointing. Just this mechanical thing with visible servos and worn foam latex skin. But somehow, when you see it on screen, it becomes this completely believable character. The puppeteers managing to coordinate all those movements, making this artificial creature seem genuinely alive and emotional—that’s not just technical skill, that’s artistry.
My girlfriend and I were rewatching The Empire Strikes Back recently, and she made this observation about Yoda that stuck with me. She said he feels more like a real person than most human characters in the prequel trilogy. And she’s right! Frank Oz performing that puppet, giving it personality through voice and movement, creates this sense of presence that the digital Yoda in later films never quite matched. Even with all the technological advances, something got lost in translation.
The space battles in the original Star Wars trilogy still get my heart racing in ways that most modern space combat scenes don’t. Those model ships, painstakingly detailed and filmed against star fields, feel like they have actual mass and momentum. When an X-wing gets blown up, there’s real fire and debris because they actually blew up a model. It’s immediate and visceral in a way that computer explosions, no matter how sophisticated, rarely manage to be.
I tried making my own stop-motion film back in college using techniques I’d learned from watching Ray Harryhausen documentaries. Spent about three weeks animating maybe thirty seconds of footage featuring clay dinosaurs I’d sculpted myself. It was absolutely terrible, but the experience gave me massive respect for what Harryhausen accomplished working essentially alone on films like Jason and the Argonauts. Every single frame of those skeleton warrior battles represents hours of meticulous work, moving tiny figures incrementally and shooting frame by frame.
That skeleton fight scene still holds up today, by the way. It’s obviously not realistic in any literal sense, but it has this kinetic energy that makes you believe these bone warriors are actually threatening the heroes. Harryhausen understood that the goal wasn’t photorealism—it was creating a convincing illusion that served the story. Modern filmmakers sometimes get so caught up in making things look real that they forget to make them feel real.
The constraints of practical effects forced filmmakers to be creative in ways that unlimited CGI budgets don’t. When you can’t just fix it in post, you have to solve problems practically. You have to figure out how to make a spaceship look massive using forced perspective, or how to create an alien creature using puppetry and clever camera work. Those limitations often led to more interesting solutions than simply rendering whatever you can imagine.
I’m seeing some modern filmmakers rediscover this approach, and it gives me hope. The Mandalorian uses puppetry for Grogu (yes, I still call him Baby Yoda, deal with it) combined with digital enhancement, and it works beautifully. He has that same tangible presence that made the original Yoda so memorable. You can tell the actors are actually interacting with something real, not just reacting to a tennis ball on a stick.
Working in game testing has taught me that technical perfection isn’t always the goal. Some of my favorite games have rough edges, visual glitches, or mechanical quirks that would be considered flaws but actually add character. The same principle applies to practical effects. Those rubber monster suits might not look exactly like real creatures, but their imperfections make them feel more human somehow. There’s personality in the flaws.
The unfortunate thing about today’s blockbuster culture is how risk-averse everything has become. Practical effects require upfront commitment—you have to build the thing and make it work, you can’t just iterate in post-production until it looks right. That means more potential for failure, but also more potential for creating something genuinely surprising. When everything can be fixed with computers, nothing feels particularly special anymore.
I’m not advocating for abandoning digital effects entirely. That would be stupid and nostalgic in the worst way. But I think the best modern films find ways to combine practical and digital techniques, using each approach where it works best. Mad Max: Fury Road is probably the perfect example—real vehicles, real stunts, real explosions, enhanced with digital effects where necessary. The result feels both grounded and spectacular.
What bothers me about a lot of modern sci-fi is how clean everything looks. Even dystopian futures tend to have this polished, digital sheen that makes them feel artificial. The practical effects era understood that futuristic doesn’t mean perfect—it means different. Those miniature cityscapes had grime and wear, the creature suits had visible seams and imperfect movement. These “flaws” made the fictional worlds feel more believable, not less.
I keep that old Terminator VHS around not just for nostalgia, but as a reminder of what’s possible when craftspeople are given the time and resources to create movie magic the hard way. Every time I watch it, I’m seeing the work of model makers, puppeteers, makeup artists, and special effects technicians who had to solve problems with creativity rather than computing power. That human element is something no amount of processing power can replace.
The best sci-fi has always been about imagination made manifest, about showing audiences things they’ve never seen before. Practical effects, at their best, made the impossible feel tangible. That’s a kind of magic worth preserving, even in our digital age.
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