CT Classic Trilogy special effects triumphs

It may have been a little less than believable by today's standards, but back then it was rather impressive. The special editions have further refined it by cleaning up the boxes around it. It always impresses me how they achieved the effect of it picking up Luke

 

Sure, there's no doubting that. But this thread seems to think that they hold up TODAY. Which most of them do not.

 

I disagree. 'Hold up today' doesn't mean necessarily flawless. It just means as convincing as some of the modern effects used, which much of it is. The Rancor , for instance, is to me at least as convincing as Anakin's giant flea.

 

Death Star I and II inner structures and docking bay matte paintings :















Just awesome art of painting, and so realistic.

Yeah, that one's really terrific.

 

The original was pretty dire, what with all the obvious matte lines and weird color-timing. The cleaned-up version is really very convincing though.

But I think a lot of OOT purists may not have actually seen the original unaltered rancor scene in a while. Just speculation.

 

that gif is my favorite special effect in the entire trilogy. also the sound makes it so much better.

 

Its subtle... but this shot at the beginning of ESB.

Sequence 01.Still001 by dskywalker01, on Flickr

Thought it was CGI until I saw the OOT. Fantastic!

 

It is one of the great mysteries in life, but, somehow, practical effects are much more enjoyable to look at.

 

i think the reason is visually, films are essentially 2 dimensional mediums that filters a 3 dimensional realm. When u see a practical effect ur eye knows it exists in 3d, and u see the 3d through the 2d movie screen and your eye accepts it. CG images exist in a 2d world to begin with. so when u see the 2d cg effect next to the 3d characters/objects they come off as disjointed. i think thats what makes the difference.

 

I don't think that's the problem. After all, like you said, everything on the screen is actually 2D anyway. It's just that CGI technology isn't quite good enough to render everything completely 100% photorealistically at the moment. In time, this will most likely become possible. I don't think there's some intrinsic quality to CGI that prevents it from looking absolutely real.

And it's because of people like George Lucas, who pushed the medium to its limits, that the technology is continually getting better.

 

That remains to be seen.

 

You think CGI technology won't ever get better than it is right now? That seems unlikely. Are you basing this on insider industry knowledge about the technology?

edit: One thing's for sure: It's definitely not going away. Ever. Unless something better that we can't even conceive of supplants it. And no, that doesn't mean "models and puppets, like the good old days before all this newfangled hip hop music and YOLO and whatnot".

 

Unless it gets replaced by something new altogether.

 

Posted just as my made my edit, haha.

But I don't understand this point of view. What makes you think CGI technology has reached a hard-and-fast plateau? That doesn't seem to be based on either the evidence or on how these things usually work.

 

If only they'd stop persisting with all this silly sound and colour nonsense I'd really be happy, right?

I didn't say the technology won't advance. I was responding to your statement that it will "most likely ... render everything 100% photorealistically." To my eye, even with my monocle on, it's a fair way short of it at this point.

 

Well, yes, I don't think anyone would claim that most CGI is 100% photorealistic at this point. But the thing is, even today there are cases where certain CGI effects go completely unnoticed by most people because they approximate real objects so closely. That indicates to me that the only thing holding the technology back is skill, money, and technology. Live-action elements are just colors projected on a 2D screen in a certain way. It's definitely theoretically possible to duplicate that artificially. It's going to happen.

 

Some CGI going unnoticed and CGI becoming 100% photorealistic are two very different things. I'm really just responding to your claim that CGI will most likely eventually render things 100 photorealistic. I have reservations about that for the reasons put forward by Ditolus above. As I said earlier , only time will tell.

Anyway, this is all by the by. Let's get back to those OT triumphs!

 

The practical effects were very well done for the era, and more importantly, they were very ambitious. So I easily give some matte boxes a pass. Calling them bad in today's era of cgi is just an insult to the artists who made them.

 

Star Wars was a special effects movie; it single handedly created its own revolution that continues to this day. With something like that, it's understandably tough to pick one out in particular because we're so accustomed to the effects the artists of Star Wars made possible. Though the one that sticks out to me is the Millennium Falcon in Empire Strikes Back. We saw some good shots in ANH, but here, we see it twist around and do all sorts of maneuvers that add a lot of dimension and excitement to the scenes of escaping the Empire's fleet.

 

Why is it bad to point out the junky artifacts that occurred as an unavoidable result of the limitations of the technology of the time back in 1977, but okay to lambast the special effects artists of today for their own technological limitations? How is that not an insult to the hard work done by the CGI artists? And it is hard work.

 

In my humble opinion, Yoda never looked better than he did in Empire.

 

I love the taun tauns in ESB. Whether it's a close-up of Han or Luke on top of one, or one of those shots of them running through the snow…I think they are a "special effects triumph". I totally buy that they are actual living, breathing (and smelly) creatures. They are also a great illustration of why if you don't NEED to do CGI (and yes, for some effects I admit it's necessary), then the old fashioned effects are the way to go. Taun tauns come across as living beasts, while CGI creatures come across as…well, CGI. Just my opinion, of course.

 

The shots of them running are really really obvious jerky stop-motion that is, at best, serviceable.

And that's like the one effect from all three films that really, truly, never held up.

 

"Held up". What a load. These movies are of their era and represent the state of the art of the time. If some people can't enjoy them without applying the latest eye-candy standards then I don't know what to say. The films aren't the problem, they are.

 

They haven't held up. I get that it's from 1980, but even so, there's some really impressive stuff in there that still is quite convincing today. The tauntauns are not among them. I'm actually quite surprised they didn't go back and redo the effect during the SE or beyond.