Light & Magic – Season 2 | Disney+ Original Review
Lucasfilm’s behind-the-scenes documentary series, “Light & Magic” is back for a second season and follows Lucasfilm’s visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, as it enters its most challenging and revolutionary period: the dawn of digital. From creating the first fully realized CG character to solving the challenge of digital water, it is an era that finds ILM scaling new heights of innovation despite dramatic setbacks.
This new season consists of three episodes. Each episode is about an hour long and features lots of behind-the-scenes footage, along with interviews with the creators behind these special effects. The majority of the season focuses on how they created the prequel Star Wars trilogy, with other interesting stories from other movies that ILM worked on throughout that period.
The first episode mainly focuses on the making of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”, highlighting how George Lucas waited years until ILM’s technology was good enough to pull off the vision he had in mind for a new Star Wars movie, especially the creation of Jar Jar. The documentary goes into a lot of detail about how they created Jar Jar, along with the special effects of the pod-racing.
The second episode deals with the critical response to Jar Jar Binks and how the Star Wars franchise is aimed at 12-year-olds. It also deals with the backlash to Jar Jar Binks, with claims of racism and hatred towards the actor. Ahmed Best, who played Jar Jar, reveals how he struggled with the response to the backlash, and he reveals how he almost committed throwing himself off a bridge in New York at one point because of how low he felt after the movie came out. It’s interesting to see how, over twenty years later, Star Wars still splits audiences as adults and critics struggle with elements aimed at kids.
One interesting story is how George Lucas explained that in 20 years’ time, fans were going to love the prequel trilogies and Jar Jar, which was then shown to be true with footage from the Star Wars Celebration with Ahmed Best getting a massive positive reaction from fans. However, it also highlights to me that Star Wars keeps repeating history with Star Wars.
Another major technical upgrade made during the making of the prequel Star Wars movies was the shift to digital filming, which is explained in the second episode. It might not mean much to most people, but for film lovers, these stories are going to be very interesting.
The third episode shares some details on how they worked on “Pirates Of The Caribbean” movies and a little focus on “Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith.” But more importantly, the episode deals with Industrial Light & Magic’s move to a new studio, selling off its model hop, and the impact of competition from other studios like Weta, such as how the other special effects companies tried poaching ILM staff.
One of the things I do enjoy with this series is that while Industrial Light & Magic is owned by Lucasfilm and is most well known for its work on the Star Wars films, I like that this show highlights its work on other significant movies like “Jurassic Park”, “The Mask”, “Casper”, “Rango”, “War Of The Worlds”, “The Perfect Storm”, and “Twister”
Overall: “Light & Magic” Season 2 is a must-watch for anyone who wants to learn a little more about how movies are made and how they create the special effects that bring these worlds to life. No doubt that Star Wars fans are probably going to get the most out of this series, but adding in stories about other movies helps keep the series a little more fresh.
Rating: 4 Out Of 5
All three episodes of the second season of “Light & Magic” are going to be coming to Disney+ on Friday 18th April 2025.
Are you looking forward to watching “Light & Magic”? Let me know on social media!
Roger Palmer
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