When the big-budget action blockbuster Transformers came out this past summer, the Michael Bay FX extravaganza featured so many computer graphics that some of them weren't even visible to the human eye. Needless to say, the Autobots represented a few light years of growth from the primitive "light cycles" of Tron.

And the growth continues. Computer graphics in film will reach a new plateau with the upcoming release of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, one of the most ambitious special effects films of all time (every subtlety of the actors' faces are digitally captured and animated on top of stylized characters), directed by one of the medium's most cutting-edge filmmakers. Note how many times Zemeckis appears in our timeline as Premiere presents a brief history of CG, pixels and all.