The original Star Wars was groundbreaking for many reasons, most of all because of its special effects. It even earned an Academy Award for five people at Industrial Light & Magic (George Lucas’ special effects company). Yet, one of those five, who was the main special effects supervisor, was not invited back to work on the sequel. Here’s the furious reason why he was left behind.
First of all, I should explain that all of this is revealed in the highly overlooked 2022 Disney Plus docuseries Light & Magic, which I decided to write frequently about in the coming weeks since it has many reveals about the Star Wars franchise.
Earlier this month, I explained that while in the middle of filming the special effects for Star Wars, George Lucas wanted to fire the main supervisor, John Dykstra. This was originally because — one year before the film was to be released — the team had just two shots. Lucas was so infuriated that it led to a heated argument between him and Dykstra in the offices offices of ILM. However, after Dykstra and the team explained to Lucas that they had to build all the models and even some of the computers to film those models, as well as explain the detailed process of filming the required special effects, Lucas had a change of heart.
He eventually realized how important Dykstra was to the special effects department and kept him on.
Even so, when Lucas moved ILM to San Francisco to start work on The Empire Strikes Back, he had to choose who to invite back. Dykstra was not one of them, but it had nothing to do with his actual work on Star Wars.
Lucas explained about Dykstra, “He did a great job but he was in a very difficult position when he was making the movie. He was under a lot of pressure. He was, I think, in over his head. So when changes would happen, he would get very angry.”
Dykstra himself, after struggling to come up with the right answer for those filming the docuseries, finally simply said, “I probably was just too young and volatile.”
Lorne Peterson, special effects extraordinaire at ILM who would later win an Oscar for his work on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, said that when Dykstra learned that he was not invited back for the Star Wars sequel, he was understandably angry. “John Dykstra called me into the office and he was really angry. He actually took his desk and he lifted it up about four inches and he slammed it down.”
Peterson goes on to explain that everything on the desk was thrown off of it by Dykstra’s adrenaline-led lifting. Dykstra’s fury, which denied him a job on Empire, was on full display after that denial.
Harrison Ellenshaw, matte artist at ILM, explained it best. “Let’s face it, you win an Oscar and then you get left at the station. How does that make sense? I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that must have hurt really badly.”
Despite the drama, John Dykstra continued his special effects career and reflects on his time on Star Wars very fondly. He also has a much healthier way of looking at it these days, saying, “Am I disappointed that I wasn’t invited (back)? Of course, but we got to break a lot of ground.”
Regardless of what happened thereafter, Dykstra and the original ILM crew will forever be celebrated for their masterful work on Star Wars. It’s also a lesson that being as angry as Darth Vader won’t even get you invited to work on a Star Wars film.