How did one small VFX company created for Star Wars change all of cinema?

The answer

George Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) on May 26, 1975, in a Van Nuys, California warehouse, hiring college students, artists, and engineers because no existing VFX company could realize his vision for Star Wars. What began as a temporary production house became the most influential visual effects studio in history. ILM pioneered the first fully computer-generated character sequence in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), created the groundbreaking water tentacle in The Abyss (1989), the liquid metal T-1000 in Terminator 2 (1991), and the first photorealistic digital creatures in Jurassic Park (1993). Between 1980 and 1992, ILM won the Best Visual Effects Oscar nearly every year. As of 2025, the studio has earned 15 Academy Awards and worked on films grossing over $40 billion combined.