valinkrai said:
I don't understand how I would in anyway be unqualified just because I don't care about ILM history when watching Star Wars for fun...
...so I'm just using the crawl. The rest is completely non Star Wars, since save for the use of go-motion, I didn't really think they did anything worth talking about...
See, you've basically answered this question for yourself - it's not about your preferred version, it's the lack of knowledge about the VFX in the original breakthrough version - the crawl is probably the least impressive VFX achievement there is in SW, since that kind of thing was being done since like the 1920s and the technology used to do it was pretty much the same. The real breakthrough achievement in VFX technology was the use of motion control cameras with detailed models and improving the blue screen optical compositing and all that on a very tight schedule, under a very low budget and on an unprecedented number of shots, most of which are either completely replaced by CGI in the SE versions or at least digitally tweaked in some way. And go-motion wasn't used in the original Star Wars film at all btw.
But it seems like your presentation wasn't really about the history of ILM, as much as history of CGI, because the thing is that while ILM definitely is connected with the rise of CGI, it also has a long rich history of optical visual effects before that - and those are not just some obscure beginnings either - those are solid 15 years of amazing work.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm not taking a shot at you or anything, I'm really just expressing my sadness over the fact that Lucas' attempt at erasing history seems to be working. May I ask how old you are?