Popular Mechanics has published a list of their Top 10 VFX scenes in cinema of 2009, with the list beginning with the massive antimatter bomb explosion from “Angels & Demons” and going through 2012, Transformers, Terminator Salvation, and winding up with (what else) Avatar and District 9.

In the year of the great recession, Hollywood blockbusters went bigger. There were taller Transformers, wider tidal waves, and, in the case of Avatar, more dimensions with which to pummel your brain. The running times were bigger, too—of the ten movies we selected for their landmark visual-effects (VFX) scenes, five were more than two-and-a-half hours long. Call it the year of the VFX epic, or maybe the year of the director’s cut. We watched every bloated minute of it, arguably more on-screen carnage than any other year at the movies. And after crawling out from under the digital wreckage of one antimatter bomb, two destroyed aircraft carriers, countless leveled cities and no less than three planets painstakingly torn apart, we’re happy to report that CGI can sometimes conjure up some swell-looking alien faces, too. Here are the best VFX scenes of 2009 (about half of which are spoilers, so consider yourself alerted).

Get the whole list on a single page with the Print Version.

via Top Movies Visual Effects of 2009 – Top 10 VFX Scenes of 2009 – Popular Mechanics.