The history of Star Wars is the history of visual effects. For decades, Lucasfilm and its effects division Industrial Light & Magic have—through innovations in camera technology, miniature techniques, practical effects, and computer-generated imagery—charted the course of Hollywood film production, establishing a visual canon that resonates so strongly with its fans that many of them idolize a guy who hacked up a bunch of younglings with a laser sword purely because of how cool his armor looks.
To celebrate that legacy of cutting-edge craftsmanship, former ILM chief creative officer and current senior vice president of creative innovation at Lucasfilm Rob Bredow got on a TED stage in April to share a vision of what he called "a new era of technology" (via 404 Media). That vision was a two-minute AI-generated video of blue lions and chimpanzees with zebra stripes, not to mention the ungodly outcome of snail and peacock interbreeding.
