25 years later, the first digital dino from 'Jurassic Park' still awes and inspires

In the 25 years since "Jurassic Park" hit theaters on June 11, 1993, and wowed audiences with its digitally created dinosaurs, CGI effects have been the new hotness, the industry standard, the foregone conclusion and, even, old and busted. (Remember when J.J. Abrams couldn't stop touting how many practical, in-camera effects were used in 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"?)

It has become popular among movie fans to say that few films in those ensuing 25 years have equaled "Jurassic Park" in the visual effects department, a testament not only to visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, whose team at Industrial Light & Magic created the first photorealistic digital creatures, but also to the late Stan Winston, whose full-size animatronic T. rex lends tactile credibility to the film's illusions. That's a popular thing to say because it's true - Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) running away from that T. rex is just as scary now as it was at Ridge Cinemas in Arlington Heights back when I was 14.

Our memories of the scares are the most visceral, but the true revelation of "Jurassic Park," rather fittingly, continues to be our protagonists' first encounter with a towering, computer-generated Brachiosaur. No one had seen anything like that in a movie, just as Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) had never seen a dinosaur in real life. John Williams' music swells, Grant's knees buckle, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) welcomes us to his park, and then - in the scene's masterstroke - Grant looks to a lake far in the distance and sees multiple dinosaurs drinking from and frolicking in it. That's the shot that made me weep with joy and awe in 1993.

I'd argue that's among the most important, memorable scenes in movie history, a breathtaking reminder of the transportive power film can wield. I don't expect this weekend's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" to capture any of that magic, but I'd sure love to be proven wrong.

<h3 class="briefHead">Other modern VFX milestones</h3>

Six years later, Chicago's Wachowski siblings brought the imaginative visuals of anime and comic books to shocking life in <b>"The Matrix,"</b> earning visual effects supervisor John Gaeta an Oscar over a field that included "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." Gaeta's swooping slow-motion camera moves, known as "Bullet Time," were copied by everything from TV commercials to "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo."

"The Phantom Menace" introduced us to motion-capture via Jar Jar Binks, but WETA Digital and Andy Serkis set the standard in 2002's <b>"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,"</b> in which Serkis' on-set performance as the two-faced Gollum was transformed into a convincing, empathetic digital creature for the final product. Serkis has become the patron saint of mo-cap, disappearing into the role of rebellious ape Caesar in the recent "Planet of the Apes" remake trilogy.

In 2008, director David Fincher took a detour from serial killers for the grown-up fairy tale <b>"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,"</b> in which Cate Blanchett engages in a doomed romance with Brad Pitt who ages in reverse. The combination of makeup and digital trickery made Pitt's "progression" from ancient to infant believable, laying the groundwork for later aging trickery by Marvel - check out how young a 65-year-old Kurt Russell looks in the opening scenes of "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2."

What will the next frontier of effects be? <b>"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"</b> may point the way with its close-but-no-cigar digital reincarnation of Peter Cushing, who died 22 years before that film's 2016 release - let's just hope Abrams doesn't have any crazy ideas about doing the same for Carrie Fisher in "Star Wars: Episode IX."

<i> Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.</i>