The Works sits on the strangest technological threshold. It was early enough to be a pioneer in the realm of CGI, and yet also early enough to just not get made. While the New York Institute of Technology’s Computer Graphics Lab wanted to tell the story of a post-apocalyptic robot world, and make the first fully CGI animated film ever to boot, the tech just wasn’t quite there.
The project is also a bit of a ghost. Tiny clips exist online, along with the teaser trailer (above). But, aside from an early script that surfaced in 2021, that’s about it.
The trailer itself is like a robotic fever dream. “Two thousand years after the end of the world,” it proclaims, “one human being holds the key to a robot planet gone mad.” Unfortunately, it’s mostly just a short tech demo, with disjointed 3D renders of robots, wormholes, and UFOs. “Simultaneously incredible for the time, and also absolutely terrifying!” writes one YouTube viewer.
Work began on The Works in 1979, and stretched all the way to 1986. But eventually NYIT had to pull the plug. If they had succeeded, The Works would have crossed the feature-length animated CGI finish line first. Instead, that achievement would go to Pixar’s Toy Story in 1995.
Imagine for second, though, what the world of CGI movies might have looked like had The Works actually released. Toy Story led the way for the other classic Pixar movies. It was lighthearted and musical, followed by A Bug’s Life, and Monsters Inc. Then Dreamworks jumped in with Shrek, and later Illumination with Minions, and so on. It’s all family fun time. But The Works, if you take a peek at its screenplay and what little we see from its trailer, was a darker, grittier 80s post-apocalyptic scifi. Tonally something totally different.
If that had been our trajectory, and if the film had been successful, I think maybe we would have seen more of that industrial or even 80s dark fantasy aesthetic in 3D animation. Something more like what you see from early PC games. But that’s just speculation about a different timeline.
The March/April 1983 issue of Computer Pictures was still optimistic about the movie’s release date, opening with “Any year now…” That didn’t happen, but the article itself captured prescient thoughts on where the tech was heading. What we see in movies today was accurate speculation in 1983, for better and for worse:
“With three‑dimensional video, the turnaround time is much quicker and the costs are much lower than using film,” [Lance Williams] said. “This affords us greater opportunity to experiment. We aren’t as limited in our trial‑and error process.”
The early struggles of NYIT trying to get The Works off the ground, and years and years of not quite making it, laid the groundwork for today’s rapidfire CGI that is now absolutely everywhere. My question is: Will The Works ever actually be made? The story’s premise still feels fresh, and I think the world’s first ever 3D animated film (that never was) deserves to be made. It’d be interesting to me, anyway. Maybe you have something against robots.
If you don’t, you can read more about The Works, its plot, and some extra behind-the-scenes details over at its (probably) one existing fansite.
