'Light & Magic' Review: When Visual Effects Dazzled

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, the Disney Plus documentary series pays tribute to the artists and craftspeople who have created marvels of sound and vision for decades.

Now Streaming: One Saturday afternoon in 1977, my friend Steven and I rode a bus into Westwood, California, waited 3½ hours in an incredibly long line that wound back and forth through a large parking lot, and finally gained admission to see Star Wars on its fourth day of general release, barely squeaking into two seats in the back of the Avco Cinema Center theater. 

Our friend R. had cut school to see it two days before us, and slammed it for its unsatisfactory finale, which left the primary villain's fate unknown. We went anyway. We loved science fiction in all its many forms, but recent cinematic expressions that we'd seen left us inspired. 

The movie began. The crowd roared. The opening shot, featuring the Star Destroyer as it slowly filled the entire screen, and then kept going, and going, and going, caused the crowd the roar again. Steven and I turned to each other and just silently nodded. Then we turned our eyes back to the screen, which commanded our attention through the finale, which left us filled with possibilities, not disappointments. 

We watched all the names crawl through the closing credits, and wondered what they all did. Light & Magic, a new documentary series, explains. 

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who first gained notice as the credited co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back and the sole scenarist of Raiders of the Lost Ark, both based on stories by George Lucas, constructs his first documentary series as a tribute to the visual effects studio that was born from the fertile imagination of George Lucas. 

Though that description might make the six-hour series sound like one long hosanna to Lucas, it's actually structured more like a fictional narrative, in that characters are often introduced with little preamble, and their eventual roles at Industrial Light & Magic are only revealed after they are established as individuals. This makes for an unusually compelling "behind the scenes" docu-series, even if the viewer is not particularly drawn to visual effects. 

The first two episodes are devoted to Star Wars and the initial days of the visual effects studio, which was located in a warehouse less then 10 minutes from my childhood home in Van Nuys, California. (On Valjean Avenue, near the airport.) Flush off the success of American Graffiti (1973), George Lucas wrote a script that gained the approval of studio chief Alan Ladd, Jr., who gave the project the green light. 

Lucas met John Dykstra, who'd already gained experience in the visual effects field, and seemed to know everyone else in the relatively small group of people who shared his enthusiasm. Dykstra put together the team that created the effects, invented the systems, and built the many machines that were needed in order to realize Lucas' vision. 

From there, the series follows the ups, downs, and sideways turns of the key players in the company over the next few decades. The details may become exhausting for some, but anyone who loves the type of movies that are enhanced by visual effects will find the series endlessly fascinating, as I did. Recommended. [Disney Plus]