Watch this amazing supercut of every Oscar winner for Visual Effects since 1977

From Star Wars to this year's nominations - it's worth fullscreen

The term ‘special effects’ can be a bit of a slur when used in cinema reviews, but this montage of every Oscar winner for Best Visual Effects is a beautiful tribute to the varied powers of CGI and its predecessors.

The five-minute supercut has been put together by Nelson Carvajal and is set to Hans Zimmer’s ‘Time’, one of the themes from Inception (itself a recipient of the award in 2010).

The video starts with the original Star Wars film from 1977 (though this used mainly motion control photography – using models and slow moving cameras – to create its visual effects) and ends with last year’s winner, Life of Pi (despite its menagerie of animals there was only ever a single hyena on set).

From the creeping unease of Alien’s Gieger-inspired body-horror to the majestic vistas of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (taking home the award three years running), most clips in the sequence are instantly recognisable – proof of the films’ power over our imagination.

Fittingly, Carvajal’s montage ends with the 2013 crop of nominations for the award: Gravity, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Iron Man 3, The Lone Ranger, and Star Trek Into Darkness