It's become very easy to take for granted the experience of watching live actors interact with CGI creations (or really anything that isn't physically on the set of a movie or series). Even the most basic TV shows utilize green-screen now to make it look like real people are standing outside instead of in the middle of a film studio's vast warehouse. But it wasn't always like this, and it wasn't that long ago that actors having to act against the unreal was new and strange, both for audiences and the performers themselves. Though special effects had been part of filmmaking for a long time, one of the most seminal and influential films of this nature was the 1988 fantasy comedy "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is one of the great modern films, and not just because it set a new standard for what audiences could expect when...