Best Visual Effects: Avatar (2010)

The limits of visual effects continue to be pushed, as the technology for it keeps evolving and progressing. No other film best exemplified that than James Cameron’s Avatar. With the film, the acclaimed director brought about revolutionary new technology to not only refine motion-capture performances, but streamline 3D filming as well. 3D films came back in fashion in a big way, but while it became a gimmick for most films, the 3D technology was meant to enhance the visual effects. And those effects are still impressive to this day, with some of the closest photo-realistic CG characters produced to date, thanks to the work led by Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones. Though the rest of the decade produced visually stunning work, the creation of an entire world in Pandora set the bar for what was to follow and stands as the best of this past decade.