There was a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror: “What happened to the Star Wars that I used to know?”
The year was 1997, 20 years after Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, Han, and Darth Vader first appeared in cinemas. Star Wars redefined what it meant to be a blockbuster—after its initial release in 1977 it was shown in some cinemas continuously for more than a year; adjusted for inflation, it is still the second-highest grossing film the world had ever seen. The epic took home six Academy Awards; 20th Century Fox dubbed the iconic lightsaber the best weapon in film history; and “May the Force be with you” became one of the most quoted lines in cinema.
To celebrate Star Wars’ 20th anniversary, the trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi—were rereleased as special editions, digitally remastered and with new footage added. Fans flocked to movie theaters to see the updated versions of the cinematic classics, and the Guinness Book of World Records announced A New Hope had the biggest opening weekend ever for a rereleased film.
Many of the edits were applauded. Others were derided—Han no longer shot first? But, according to Tom Hutchinson, BS ‘84 (fine and applied arts), they very much served a purpose. George Lucas, the franchise’s creator, wanted to add the flourishes that 1970s technology wouldn’t let him originally include, and he wanted the classic films to have the same aesthetic as the upcoming entry, The Phantom Menace.
And Hutchinson would know. After all, he was one of Industrial Light and Magic’s computer graphics supervisors, and helped bring Lucas’ vision to life.
Hutchinson grew up a Star Wars fan. When the first film opened in his home town of Portland in 1977, he queued to get in and sit in the front row of the cinema, and still recalls the awe he felt watching the star destroyer fly overhead following the iconic opening crawl.
After initially enrolling at Whitman College, Hutchinson transferred to the University of Oregon to study computer graphics, only to find the UO did not offer it as a major. Undeterred, he found a solution even more straightforward than bull’s-eyeing womp rats in a T-16—he worked with an advisor to put together what served as a computer science degree masquerading as a bachelor of science in fine and applied arts.
“I had done a lot of fine art, and some programming, and had a science background,” he said. “It kind of fit, and I got together with a couple of professors at the University of Oregon, and really made something from it.
“I took fine art classes, and I took a couple of programming classes. I remember I made a basic student film on my Apple IIe at the time. My time at the University of Oregon felt like the very beginning of the industry, in a sense. So it was pretty exciting, and it was kind of fun. It was really cool to find something that I enjoyed, that possibly was going to be a new career direction.”
After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he went to Ohio State University for his master’s in computer graphics. While at Ohio State, he worked for a production company based in Columbus, and when the company relocated to Los Angeles he went with it, and soon found himself working on digital effects for the original Total Recall.
That turned into a job at Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects company George Lucas had created to handle the effects on Star Wars. When Hutchinson joined ILM, the company was gearing up to work on the Steven Spielberg blockbuster that would revolutionize digital effects in movies—Jurassic Park.
Prior to Jurassic Park, visual effects tended to largely be stop-motion animation, and computer-generated graphics had never been used to create a living, breathing creature. But Spielberg wanted his dinosaurs to be as real as possible, and challenged ILM to produce something that had never before been seen on the screen.
The dinosaurs were sketched out on paper to get the dimensions correct, built at a 1:1 scale, and then scanned into computers with lasers, a process ILM animator Steve Williams described as the complete opposite of 3-D printing. Animators then figured out how to make the digital dinosaurs move naturally, before Hutchinson and his department took over and made them look realistic, applying virtual skin and making sure the behemoths looked like they belonged within each scene. From there, Hutchinson and his team began the painstakingly slow process of digitally inserting the dinosaurs into the movie—one scene alone could take up to four months to render.
A scene from Jurassic Park being designed on an ILM computer, and the finished product. (Images from YouTube)
ILM’s creativity and patience were handsomely rewarded. One of the highest-grossing films in history, earning more than $1 billion at the box office, Jurassic Park was called a “movie milestone, presenting awe- and fear-inspiring feats on the screen” by the New York Times; Roger Ebert added that the dinosaurs were “a triumph of special effects artistry.” It claimed the best special effects title at the 65th Academy Awards and the BAFTA Awards ceremonies, and the T. rex took home “Best Villain” honors at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards.
“That caught us all by surprise,” Hutchinson said. “We didn’t know we were able to utilize the technology until we dug into it and started working with it. It was like, we’d do a couple shots, and then by the end of the movie we were even amazing ourselves with what we were able to accomplish. That was a turning point in a lot of our careers as well as the industry as a whole.”
Hutchinson then went to work on Twister and Mission: Impossible before news broke that took him right back to that high school sitting in the front row of a Portland movie theater.
Star Wars was returning to the big screen.
Buoyed by ILM’s Jurassic Park triumph, George Lucas decided to make a trilogy covering the first three episodes in the saga set in a galaxy far, far away, using the latest special effects. Before his three new episodes could be unveiled, though, he wanted the original trio to be updated—and Hutchinson was the computer graphics supervisor called in to work on the project.
“I have great memories of seeing those movies as a kid, so that was really exciting,” Hutchinson said. “I felt that was a great opportunity to work on the Star Wars special editions. George was prepping the world for his new movie, which was The Phantom Menace, which came out a few years later.”
ILM built up its infrastructure ahead of the project, developing new software and increasing the size of the rendering farm—the additional computing power required to handle the complexity of the new level of work. Then came the painstaking work of updating six hours’ worth of footage to ensure scenes shot in the late 1970s and early 1980s looked just as pristine in high definition as those shot in the late 1990s.
“We took the original trilogy, scanned all the different elements into the computer that had been done practically, basically digitizing everything we could. Then all the layers were recomposited together digitally. We went through and added a handful of effects to several sequences, enhancing them. Basically, we brought the movie up to the standards of what he wished he had done at the time.”
In all, Hutchinson worked on four different Star Wars films: The Empire Strikes Back (special version), Return of the Jedi (special version), The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones. His contributions included giving the Sarlacc the tentacles and sharp beak it used to eagerly swallow bounty hunter Boba Fett whole during Return of the Jedi; adding a more intense sunset and more buildings to Cloud City to welcome Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and C-3P0 as they approached in the Millennium Falcon looking for Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back; and bringing to life Gunga City and the Battle of Naboo in The Phantom Menace.
Luke Skywalker stands above the Sarlacc in the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi (left), and above the version with tentacles and beak added in the 1997 special version (right). (Images from dvdactive.com)
“It was very intense,” Hutchinson said. “That was one of the times where we were really curious whether the technology had gotten to the point where George could accomplish what he was hoping to accomplish. In the end, I feel we were able to achieve what he was looking for.”
Public reaction to the special versions was mixed, with many fans feeling some of the changes were unnecessary—opinions shared by Hutchinson and his peers.
“On The Empire Strikes Back, one of the things we spent a fair amount of time on was expanding the original sets on Cloud City, where we added extra windows and hallways to help us feel we are in a larger city,” he said. “That was a great example of making it more interesting and opening up the feel of the sets. The new technology helped us give audiences a better feeling of what we were thinking Cloud City might look like.
“Whereas with Return of the Jedi, one of the things our crew was responsible for was the giant beak on the Sarlacc in all the sand shots. I remember sitting back and thinking, ‘I don’t know, I kind of liked it the way it was.’ There’s always that push and pull, when you take something that’s so classic and add things or change things.
“When reworking a classic movie like Star Wars, it’s easy to question whether the changes add to the story. Without judging the reason for George Lucas’s changes, I believe we were able to finally address most of the effects he was hoping to add to his films.”
With ILM, Hutchison helped to create some of the biggest recent blockbusters: Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake, Iron Man, Pacific Rim, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Solo: A Star Wars Story and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom open this summer. Two of the year’s biggest blockbusters will inhabit worlds Hutchinson helped create. However, his name won’t be found in the credits of either film.
After a more than 20-year career at ILM, Hutchinson left to work for Atomic Fiction, where he contributed to the effects seen in Deadpool and Ghost in the Shell. He then moved to the small screen to work on Game of Thrones’ season five finale, “Mother’s Mercy”—better known as the episode where Cersei is punished with the walk of “shame” and Jon Snow is assassinated by his brothers in the Night’s Watch.
He is currently the senior technical director at Tippett Studios, where he works alongside Phil Tippett, the special effects artist who took home Academy Awards for his visual effects work on Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park. One of the Tippett projects he was involved with this year took him back to the fictional island of Isla Nublar, when he worked on Jeep’s Super Bowl LII commercial that showed Jeff Goldblum reprising his Jurassic Park role as Dr. Ian Malcolm to chase a Tyrannosaurus rex while driving a jeep.
“Disney has become one of the leading studios to continue to build and add on to its older content,” said Hutchinson. “It’s great to see all new generations get to enjoy the worlds we got to love so much, and it’s certainly helping the bottom line for the studios.
“As an artist who was fortunate enough to have worked on the originals, I find it a bit unsettling seeing all the old worlds being revisited. But, as a fan of the Star Wars series, I’m glad I’m getting a chance to enjoy the last couple of Star Wars movies without knowing what going to happen ahead of time. One thing I’ve come to realize in this business is the technology behind the movies of the future will outpace most of our imaginations. I’m fairly certain our children’s children will be enjoying these stories in a completely different way.”