VOTD: See The Marvel Cinematic Universe Without Visual Effects

Over the years, we've featured plenty of visual effects breakdowns for blockbusters movies. Many of the most impressive displays come from Marvel Studios, especially when it comes to creating entire environments from scratch, turning blue screen covered streets and scaffolds into a completely different location. Entire characters are created using a mix of visual effects and motion capture technology. It's movie magic at its finest, and now a new video takes a look back at the years of outstanding Marvel movie visual effects by showing us what the film's scenes looked like without them.

No matter how many times these visual effects breakdown the many layers that go into a single shot from the various Marvel Studios movies, I'm always impressed as hell. For example, look at the sequence from Avengers: Infinity War where Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Bruce Banner and Wong confront Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian in New York City just outside of the Sanctum Santorum. There was never any thought in my mind that sequence wasn't shot on a real city block. But all of the city buildings surrounding the characters was created digitally. That's unbelievable.

When it comes to characters created entirely in a computer, that's something even more awe-inspiring. The layers underneath what we see with our own eyes are mind-blowing. The fact that there are digital bones, muscles and other body parts moving inside Rocket Raccoon in any given scene from Guardians of the Galaxy (and its sequel) is a level of detail that you might not expect, especially since we never need to see inside that character's body in the movie.

On top of that, the visual effects artists behind Marvel Studios movies even have to replace entire actors with visual effects. Most of Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland is covered with digital effects thanks to the Iron Man and Spider-Man suits they wear.  The same can be said for the Black Panther suit worn by Chadwick Boseman. Every single bit of their movement must be tracked, covered and made to look realistic. Admittedly, that doesn't always look the best, with the head sometimes feeling slightly detached from the digital body, but most of the time, it's done extremely well.

As the years have gone on, the Marvel movie visual effects have only gotten better, and they'll continue to improve and wow us in the years ahead. We can't wait to see what other fantastical and out of this world elements are created on the big screen to bring more Marvel Comics to life.