One of the pioneering greats of ILM has passed. Marc Thorpe was 77, and joined the company in 1979 as a modelmaker and animatronic designer, a position which would see him work on an incredible array of ILM projects and incredibly become the brainchild behind the mega success that is Robot Wars. Our condolences to his family and colleagues.
Thorpe joined ILM in 1979, working on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as a modelmaker and animatronic designer. It was the start of a long, fruitful run at Lucasfilm, which would include a dazzling array of credits on classic films of the era, including Dragonslayer (1981), Poltergeist (1982), Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), the first three Indiana Jones movies, and more. Among the memorable props and miniatures that Thorpe contributed are the mine cart tunnel and cave interiors from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the Death Star II surface from Return of the Jedi, and a spider-like creature from Explorers (1985).
Born in San Francisco in 1946, Thorpe grew up in San Leandro, CA, and attended the UC Davis graduate school for art; he received a Masters of Fine Arts in 1971. Thorpe was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1993, the same year he launched Robot Wars, and ultimately passed due to complications from the disease. In a post on Facebook, his daughter Megan Feffer maintains that will not be her father’s legacy. “But if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that my dad would want to be remembered – and not for his Parkinson’s Disease,” she wrote. “He would want to be remembered for his art.”
