How many visual effects shots are in a modern blockbuster?

How to get close to this number

Count shots, not scenes. A two-hour film contains a couple of thousand shots in total, and in a heavily effects-driven blockbuster the majority of them have been altered. So the answer is close to the total shot count of the film rather than a subset of it.

The invisible category in the explanation is the part people miss: even films with no obvious effects use hundreds of shots, for removing modern signage, fixing weather, erasing rigging and adjusting backgrounds. Most visual effects work is designed not to be noticed, so the visible effects are a small fraction of the total.

That changes what the number means. A shot count of two thousand does not describe spectacle; it describes an industry where digital alteration is the default state of a frame. The question is no longer which shots have effects but which shots do not, and in a modern blockbuster the answer is very few.