The innovations of computer-generated imagery have brought us movie monsters for years, such as Smaug from “The Hobbit” and the infamous kraken from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Full CGI characters themselves, though, got started back in 1985 in the movie “Young Sherlock Holmes” by Amblin Entertainment.
The fully CGI character was a knight made out of a stained-glass window. The knight was actually not real even in the story, as it was the product of a deadly hallucination meant to lure victims to their deaths. The plot centers around the meeting of adolescent boys Sherlock Holmes, who is played by Nicholas Rowe, and John Watson, played by Alan Cox. They are joined on-screen by Sophie Ward as Holmes’ friend, Elizabeth, and Anthony Higgins as the main antagonist, Professor Rathe. Part of its production team included Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg.
This innovative movie is now streaming on Paramount+ on March 1, 2026. You can check out this first-ever dive into an ambitious fully CGI character meant to terrify both characters and viewers alike on the platform. The service costs $8.99 a month for its basic plan. While there, you can also check out Jeff Bridges’ acclaimed “Hell or High Water.”
How the CGI knight was created
The first live action movie to even use CGI was “Westworld” in 1973, over a decade before we saw the knight. The CGI character in “Young Sherlock Holmes” needed to look convincing, even for a hallucination. So, executive producer Steven Spielberg worked with Industrial Light & Magic for this, the very same company founded by George Lucas in the 1970s to bring his “Star Wars” vision to life. ILM collaborated with Pixar for the creation of the knight, and the teams took six months to bring it to the screen for less than a minute.
ILM had a teammate be photographed against a grid for reference for the CGI, all while wielding a fake sword. Then, a small physical miniature was made of the knight, which was later digitized and rendered in ILM’s computer system to breathe life into this scary character.
The CGI stained-glass warrior was frighteningly convincing. Under the effects of a hallucinogenic drug, Reverend Duncan Nesbitt, played by Donald Eccles, believes that the apparition has jumped out of the windows of his church to kill him. He flees for his life into into the street and is hit and killed by a carriage.
The legacy of Young Sherlock Holmes
The work on the CGI knight did not go unnoticed. “Young Sherlock Holmes” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1986. ILM and Pixar both have certainly stayed in business, and fully digital characters are now more commonplace in movies and television shows. This groundbreaking work laid the path for the future, showing that characters that were not real could be convincing and work in tandem with real human actors on sets. The technology is now so believable and life-like that even Roy Kent of “Ted Lasso” has had to assure viewers he is not CGI.
John Lasseter was the Artistic Supervisor for ILM at the time, directly working on the knight. He recounted the challenge in an article he wrote for Time magazine. He stated, “It was some of the hardest things we ever did, but I’ll never forget when it came out — the effects industry, people from all over the world, had no idea how it was done … We were so excited. But it was focusing on understanding the technology and pushing it to places that we couldn’t. The goal was to make the technology invisible.” I feel like in this regard, the field of CGI has certainly succeeded. You can enjoy the story of “Young Sherlock Holmes” now on Paramount+.
