In the 1990s, special effects continued to dominate the film world. Special effects were used heavily to create the spectacular action that was demanded of every movie studio's most important film of the year: the summer blockbuster. Jurassic Park (1993), based on a novel of the same name by Michael Crichton (1942–), set the standard for the decade with its realistic computer-generated dinosaurs that munched on people. Many other movies offered thrills of their own. Whether those thrills came from space, as in Independence Day (1996) or Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999), or from nature, as in Twister (1996) with its terrifying tornadoes, filmmakers relied on special effects to give their stories impact. Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace had the distinction of featuring the first digitally generated principal character in a movie: Jar Jar Binks.

Of course, not all films used special effects to...