Forrest Gump was placed into many historical benchmarks .
His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects , including the early use of the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage in Back to the Future Part II ( 1989 ) , placing Forrest Gump into many historical benchmarks and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express ( 2004 ) , Beowulf ( 2007 ) and A Christmas Carol ( 2009 ) .