Star Wars wasn't the first movie to feature complex visual effects. Nor were the special effects seen in Star Wars the very best that cinema had seen at the time. But that's not the point. What ILM did was something much more novel; through ground-breaking methods, creative shooting techniques and no short order of hard graft, Star Wars took the audience to a complete and immersive new world. It was this movie-spanning commitment that elevated Star Wars to a hitherto unexperienced level. Even though the entire mythology Lucas crafted made for a pretty high-reaching story, it was the sight of dozens of spaceships whizzing past each other and monsters from another world that really captured the imagination. It's no surprise that breakthroughs in visual effects are often one of the main praises of Star Wars' impact, and in a general sense it was positive development; more and more limitations on what could be shown on screen were getting broken. But when special effects become so much the focus, everything else took a backseat; the story needs only to be an in to the visuals. That's why we've seen Star Wars' take on the hero's journey regurgitated over and over again in the decades since. And while it worked for Lucas as he was so heavily inspired by The Hidden Fortress and Flash Gordon, when it's subsequently done out of ease it looks lazy. The one area of special effects Star Wars didn't have a big, direct impact on was CGI. It featured computer effects at various points (the Death Star plans in Star Wars), but it was only afterwards, in the late eighties and early nineties, where the big leaps were made. However, the strive for better, more immersive visuals that led James Cameron and Steven Spielberg to make their Ts 1000 and Rex respectively is ingrained in what Lucas kickstarted.
