10 Special Effects Movie Milestones That Came After Star Wars

9. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (1982)

Directed by: Nicholas Meyer The first Star Trek film was released in 1979, and after those three films mentioned that paved the way for both science fiction films and visual effects in general - Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Superman: The Movie - it's pretty obvious that the effects team on Star Trek: The Motion Picture deemed it necessary to cram as many "cool" effects as possible into the thing, essentially turning it into a laser show. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, arguably a better movie in general, managed more cohesive visual effects on the whole. But most importantly, Wrath of Khan famously featured the first entirely computer-generated film sequence in history. In the film, the macguffin of the Genesis Device, which can alter an entire planet, is used by way of demonstration on a barren moon. The Lucasfilm Computer Graphics group provided the sixty-second sequence, which featured an incredibly detailed shot that exceeded the scope of traditional animation, and the group would later leave Lucasfilm and form a tiny little company called Pixar. Influenced: Not long after that single scene in Wrath of Khan, feature-length films would be entirely computer-generated. And not long from now, computers will make movies without even asking for permission from the humans.