The 80s saw a massive leap forward in visual effects with movies like Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Blade Runner featured a beautiful futuristic city with flying cars, floating advertisements and more. Everything you’d expect to see in a futuristic city, right? The movie took place in 2019, so we’re about four years away, hopefully we’ll get our flying cars soon!
Ray Harryhousen also showed off more of his considerable skill with Clash of the Titans which features some amazing stop-motion work.
Beyond these great movies of the 80s, there were actually even larger advancements that lead to what visual effects are today. The 80s introduced the first computer generated images in a movie. Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan was the initial film to feature a completely computer-generated scene. Right after Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, and the first CGI elements in a movie, Tron took this a step further and featured extensive sequences created entirely by the computer.
After that, more and more movies in the 80s featured various CGI elements like The Last Starfighter which featured detailed 3D models, whereas before this type of spaceship was created with miniature models, like in Star Wars. The first ever 3D animated short film was released in 1984 with the title, The Adventures of André and Wally B. If you’re familiar with the history of Pixar you may recognize this as one of the original things created by John Lasseter and his team.