What are the 20 most important moments in CGI movie history? I take you through my list of candidates. Part #2 of a 5-part series.

This is my response to Premiere Magazine's "20 Benchmark Films in Computer Animation History" which details which movies and shorts are crucial to CGI's development to the moviemaking force we all know and . . . <insert opinion here>.

Last time, we focused on four live-action and animated films that charted CGI's development from 1976 to 1986. However, the late 1980's and early 90's were when the CGI craze really started.

16 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

This Disney flick was a once-in-a-lifetime situation, putting live actors alongside their toon counterparts. It also featured the first (and only) time that Walt Disney's iconic cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck would appear on screen with members of the Looney Tunes gang.

Tough talking private Investigator Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) had to discover who had framed Roger Rabbit (voice of Charles Fleischer) for murder, before the sinister Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) could sentence the hyperactive toon to be "Dipped." Robert Zemeckis, who would later helm 1994's Forrest Gump and 2007's Beowulf, directed the film.

Many studios had mixed live-action and animation before (Walt Disney had done it with their "Alice in Wonderland" shorts, and in a sequence in 1964's Mary Poppins) but Who Framed Roger Rabbit featured human actors interacting with cartoon characters all the way through the movie. The CGI work here was subtle (mainly in the background), but an indication of greater things to come.

Critics and moviegoers loved the film, and it revitalized interest in animation, causing classic animators like Chuck Jones and Tex Avery to become celebrities in their final years. It not only sparked Disney's 1990's "animation renaissance," with films like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, but it can be argued that Roger Rabbit's success made the Mouse House more receptive to Pixar's proposals for their first full-length movie.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? also gave Warner Bros. animation fever, causing the studio to develop such television properties as Animaniacs, Darkwing Duck and Tiny Toon Adventures. Cast in that light, Who Framed Roger Rabbit's importance cannot be overstated.

Despite the flick's runaway success, infighting between Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Warner Bros., and producer Steven Spielberg doomed all hopes for a sequel.

Fun Fact: Warner Brothers would only allow the use of their biggest toon star, Bugs Bunny, if he received equal amount of screen time and lines as Walt Disney's biggest star, Mickey Mouse. To mollify the WB, and to make the animators' lives easier, both characters are always together in frame when on the screen.

15 - Tin Toy (1988)

Certainly 1984's Luxo Jr. was the first Pixar animated short, but Tin Toy was the first Pixar short to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1989. That makes it an important film in the studio's development, since it gave CGI and Pixar the cachet it needed to move into full-length CGI animated films.

Once again, writer/director John Lasseter created a simple, well-told tale of a toy one-man band terrorized by a diapered baby. It was also the first time that Pixar had attempted to create a human character in CGI. It was admittedly rough (especially when compared to Pixar's later work), but the touching-yet-hilarious story and vivid characters more than make up for any weaknesses in animation. It's a lesson that still seems beyond most movie studios.

Fun Fact: In 2003, the Library of Congress selected Tin Toy for preservation in the United States National Film Registry because it was "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

14 - The Abyss (1989)

This James Cameron film was overshadowed by the director's later successes, but the Twentieth Century Fox film is a crucial stepping-stone between Cameron's first real movie hit, 1984's The Terminator, and its 1999 blockbuster sequel.

The Abyss has glaring weaknesses as a movie. The multiple stories (and plot holes) confused audiences, it was judged to be too close to Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Deus ex machina ending irritated many. However, everyone praised the unprecedented CGI effects, including the computer-generated "water tentacle" that was a warm-up for the liquid metal T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Fun Fact: The Abyss stars Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio were reportedly so traumatized by their experiences on the shoot that they both refused to do any press for the movie, and publicly vowed never to work with Cameron again.

13 - Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

If Cameron's previous film The Abyss proved that CGI was a useful resource for sci-fi flicks, then Terminator 2: Judgment Day put the phrase "CGI blockbuster" on everyone's lips. Unlike the first Terminator flick, which was made for $6.5 million, Terminator 2 cost Tri-Star an unprecedented sum of $100 million.

A large chunk of that budget went towards star Arnold Schwarzenegger's salary, but a larger part went to the stunning special effects, and it showed. Cameron created a new, liquid metal Terminator for the flick, which could morph into virtually everyone and everything. It was the first main character in a movie to be generated from a computer, and another feather for Star Wars special effects legend Dennis Muren's cap.

Robert Patrick received the most screen time as the T-1000, and he was an effective "Everyman" villain, similar to Lance Henrikson who was initially cast as the original Terminator before Schwarzenegger nabbed the role.

The combination of the new, "morphing" Terminator plus the action set pieces earned the flick over $500 million worldwide, made Terminator 2 the most successful movie of 1991, and ushered in a new era of computer-generated summer action blockbusters.

Fun Fact: O.J. Simpson was on the short list to be the original Terminator but director Cameron turned him down, saying moviegoers wouldn't believe that "such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer."