Review of “Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible” (2010)

The history of ILM with a focus on digitization. Industry landmarks include the tornado in The Wizard of Oz (1939), the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), the Star Wars (1977) franchise, the titular ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the planet-buster in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the all-3D-CG André and Wally B. (1984), the integrated church-window knight in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), smooth metamorphoses in Willow (1988), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Abyss (1989), the first central character reliant on digital effects in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the fulcrum of Jurassic Park (1993) and the similarly significant inconspicuousness of the effects in Forrest Gump (1994).

Additional examples used to illustrate the more stable state that resulted from ILM’s early successes include Jumanji (1995), Twister (1996) which was pitched on the basis of an SFX proof-of-concept, mass historical photorealism in Pearl Harbor (2001), and various later films made unremarkable by the revolution.