CLOUDPUNK IGN REVIEW SERIES

Getting to see what first inspired them to pursue their passions and how they made their early creative marks warms up the technical focus of what they were doing back in the day. These intimate asides are some of the strongest elements of the whole series.

They’re contextualized via a treasure trove of personal photos and delightful 8mm movies they made as kids building into more mature projects from college. Throughout the first four episodes of Light & Magic, Kasdan breaks up the granular stories of the individual challenges in making the original Star Wars trilogy effects by giving key creatives from ILM’s early years breakout personal biographies that allow us to get to know these people outside of their jobs. And there’s also the necessary guideposts of understanding exactly what wasn’t possible at the time, and how the people in the trenches of ILM bypassed existing roadblocks to use every technique at their disposal to solve the problems. Documented with a wealth of incredible archival film from those days and interspersed with talking-head interviews with the players today, Kasdan captures a palpable sense of history and perspective with everyone looking back at essentially their younger selves enthusiastically throwing themselves into the job. Within a hot warehouse in Van Nuys, Calif., they were given a $1 million budget to literally invent new hardware and techniques to bring Lucas’ vision of Star Wars to life. They collected a group of young artists and tech geeks with varied backgrounds, including now legends Richard Edlund, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, and Dennis Muren. Lucasfilm producer Gary Kurtz and Dykstra set out to headhunt the best talent they could find. John Dykstra was recommended by special effects legend Douglas Trumbull ( Close Encounters of the Third Kind) to supervise the start of Industrial Light & Magic. The first episode, “Gang of Outsiders,” starts with archival footage of Lucas explaining why he had to start a visual effects company for Star Wars: there weren't any existing shops that could handle the depth and breadth of shots that he envisioned. Where it stumbles is in its pacing, frontloading episodes with a micro focus on Star Wars and then in the later episodes, rushing through 30 years of VFX innovation to end on what feels like a very sanitized, underwhelming corporate sizzle reel. As a series, it works best when it focuses on the incredible talent who launched the company and have since become legends in their field.

CLOUDPUNK IGN REVIEW SERIES

Like those magazines of old, the series goes deep, especially with the original Star Wars trilogy, in regards to how ILM became synonymous with creating modern special effects and visual effects. And it’s his ground level perspective that provides the necessary insider’s point of view in telling how Lucas’ special effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, came to be in the new six-part Disney+ docuseries, Light & Magic. Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan was smack in the middle of that creative whirlwind, working with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as a screenwriter on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. And for those interested in the making of the movies, like me, they were a virtual master class in technique and innovation. Starlog, Cinefantastique, Fangoria, and Cinefex, just to name a few, specialized in revealing the below-the-line creative people who brought the spectacle to life.

If you grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s and loved movies, that was a magical time for film magazines.

Light & Magic premieres on Disney+ on July 27, 2022.

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