Continuity with the special effects = NONE!

I realise that the PT has been made many years after the OT but the PT is so overkill with the special effects it is IMPOSSIBLE now for it to blend in with the OT. IF generations of fans tune in in ten years, they will be greeted with oberkill CGI in the PT only to be followed by the subtle and restrained OT.

Compare the effects. In AOTC, Corusant is littered with all sorts of CGI. The ships are overkill (Obi-Wan's fighter in two parts etc). When we finally get to the OT, people will say, what happened to the Clones repeater guns, the big laser guns and the super battle droids and the transforming fighters? What happened to the technology? What happened to the cloning? What happened to the huge armies of droids and clones? Why do we only see smaller (more realistic) armies when clones or droids should be plentiful? Where are the curved and double-bladed lightsabers?


The fact is, the PT is a lot about Lucas showing off his effects and his imagination. He is not interested in showing restraint and the PT will suffer for it. Shame.

 

No, the PT is the first chance Lucas has ever had to truely show off what he wanted the OT to look like visually, and he's using that opportunity.

It's been his goal to always have SW look and feel the way the PT has from day one. With CG, he's finally getting what he's wanted visually in a movie, which is why he was excited when he had the chance to improve some effects from the OT with CG in the SE.

Frankly, I don't care if the OT looks outdated in effects compared to the PT, because basically, it is. The effects in the OT are not as great as the effects are now.

And I support the use of many CG effects, even if it's "overkill" as you say, because I'd rather have a visually pleasing film that takes my breath away, rather the OT look again. The time of the OT effects are gone, and CG is the new rage, get use to it.

 

I agree. Unless Lucas really HAS got some genius idea of explaining all this in Episode III, I can't see how the continuity will be continued. I dont even view the PT as prequels, I see them more as sequels. Its very hard to watch them in order. They just come across as "the three star wars movies, oh and the ones that he made afterwards"

 

"Where is all the cloning?"

Are you pulling my leg ???

 

I remember hearing once that Lucas never stopped working on the Special Editions but that he has spent the years since 1997 tinkering with and improving the effects in the original films. I have no doubt that when Lucas releases the rumored Ultimate Edition DVD box set, we're in for a pleasant surprise when we realize that he has been working to ensure visual and narrative continuity throughout the entire saga.

Now, honestly, do you really think we armchair movie directors are going to notice something that would escape the attention of a veteran like Lucas? Please.

 

What do you suggest? They dumb down the FX to match the OT? They're competing with a dozen other big budget FX films. They're not going to set their FX back 20 years just to make the PT look like the OT.

 

why would tying to make the effects more subtle be dumbing them down? subtlety is a good thing.

sometimes i wonder how some of you are able to appreciate the older films, then i remember its because those films arent all about sfx, they have story and engaging characters to hold the viewer.

 

Did the story of the OT require that many special effects? Maybe that's why he did that one first?

 

sometimes i wonder how some of you are able to appreciate the older films, then i remember its because those films arent all about sfx, they have story and engaging characters to hold the viewer.

Strangely enough, those are the same reasons we enjoy the prequel films. The superior special effects are just the icing on the cake.

 

>>>why would tying to make the effects more subtle be dumbing them down? subtlety is a good thing.<<<

Right. I only wanted about of dozen or so clones to represent the fighting forces of the republic. It's subtle but we would have understood. And their giant war machines would have been better represented through stop motion models. The beasts in the arena could have been "taun taun-esque" stop motion creations as well. The battle droids could have been puppets and the Geonosis landscape could have been realized through countless 2-d glass paintings.

When I think of how Lama Su's eyes could have given off that blank puppet stare as opposed to what we got, I just get angry.

Lucas is an idiot.

Here's a shocking revelation. I watch the prequels for the immersive and fun story just as I did the OT.

*gasp* [face_shocked]

 

Beautiful post Rogue

 

Thanks fox. I felt it appropriate.

You can't blame Lucas because time ages stuff. Although I see some people that try.

Let's think of this logically. Do you think the masses (the fans, the movie goers) would have preffered modern effects for the pt or effects circa 1983?

People complain and whine now. Imagine what it would have been like if early 80's effects were used.

People also always complain about Lucas showing off with his new, versatile effects. I wonder if these same people live there day to day lives saying "look what I CAN'T do". That seems to be their thinking. Lucas creates movies. A visual form of art. And since it involves a GFFA, I say plaster the screen with amazing imagery!!!

 

I don't think people's main concern is the quality of the effects but the quantity, although many bashers have a hard time getting that point across. But the fact is, in 1977 when A New Hope was released, the audience was overwhelmed with the seemingly constant special effects that assaulted their senses every few minutes. Viewers today forget that even the laser fire, so ubiquitous in film today, was in fact a highly noticable special effect that nobody had ever really seen before, so even the Death Star scenes, which today we recognize is comprised mainly of sets and matte paintings--itself another visual effect--was a huge special effects extravaganza in 1977! And if you really think about it, the Battle of Yavin was, in all practicality, a 20 minute non-stop special effects reel.

So looking at this objectively, one realizes that the original films were perceived to be as visually saturated with effects as the prequel films appear to be today.

 

Except they had substance behind them.

 

Explain...

 

They were just better written and directed and had a better cast too. They just werent as cack-handedly made.

 

Well, whether YOU think they had no substance behind them doesn't mean the effects themselves are inferior to the OT.

 

Its better than when he is 80 and regreting not letting himself make the films he really wanted because he worried over effect continuity.

 

With that said SLAVE2, I think the simple fact is some people just want George Lucas to be miserable his entire life

 

Um, it's been said many times that he PT has so much more high-tech stuff and it so bright and shiny and everything is becuase it's before the Empire. Before the dark times. Everything's butt gets kicked when the Empire arrives including tech.

This isn't anything new.

 

My take on this whole thing is exactly what Lucas said in the little documentary on the TPM VHS release. He intends the special effects and vast environments to be just that: vast. He wants the scope to be larger so that when you get to Tatooine in Episode IV, you realize that Luke is right when he says that if there's a bright center to the universe, they're on the planet that's farthest from. With the prequels, you finally get to see all of what Luke was missing out on when he was stuck on Tatooine.

What I'm getting at is that the scope is smaller in the OT for a reason. And we're dealing with different locations as well as a different era in the prequels than in the OT. That's why the special effects in the prequels work. The only place we've gone to in the prequels that's also in the OT is tatooine. And it's bascially the same look and feel. The only time it kind of wasn't was when we were treated to a pod race. And that's a different location on tatooine than in the OT. If we were to travel to Cloud City, Degobah, Hoth, or Endor in the prequels, you can be sure that those locations would have a similar feel to the OT's as well.

In the end, we all know that if Lucas had the capability to do what he has done with the prequels to the OT, he would've done it. However, because he couldn't, he has written the saga so that it does work out for him to go all out with the effects and still have it work with the rest of the saga. In the OT, we don't travel to Naboo, Kamino, Geonosis, etc. And when we do get to see Coruscant in the OT, it looks the same as it does in the prequels(except in the prequels we get to explore more of the planet).

And like I said, it's a different era. A lot can happen in a 20-year gap between Eps. III and IV with the Empire taking over.

So as far as I'm concerned, the continuity with the special effects works well.

 

Yeah ST-TPM-ASF-TNE, the real "fans" want that

 

Let's see, the cloning is still going on. They're just called Stormtroopers and not Clonetroopers.

On Tatooine there was just a small detachment in Mos Eisley. No need of all the equipment on Geonosis. On Hoth there were the AT-AT's, which simplified everything and made it more compact. On Endor, there were trees everywhere. AT-ST's were more manuverable, alongside Speeder Bikes. Otherwise, that kind of equipment wouldn't be needed aboard the Death Star or in Cloud City.

The Droid Army was destroyed and all the surviving businesses and coperations were most likely made apart of the Empire. The Stormtroopers were the next step up from droids. So Palps doesn't need them.

The Alliance had to hide out on the Outer Rim as that's the only safe place away from the Empire. You don't go hiding on Courscant, where people's faces are plastered all over the place. The Alliance and the Empire just needed weapons and vessels of war, not luxary ships.

Otherwise, everything else looks believable. I've watched the 5 films in order and they look very well done, aside from the diffrence in film quality. The OT has done the best it can to look modern, but it gets the job done. And watching the SE's, you see that Tatooine and Bespin match their PT counterparts.

 

Once they give us the archival edition of the classic trilogy, they will all have continuity of effects, because Lucas is redoing all of them.

I hope Jar-Jar survives episode III and they put him in the background of -EVERY- shot in the classic trilogy.

I can see why Lucas wouldn't want to release the films again without bringing them up to the quality standard being set by the prequel trilogy.

It would be like releasing dailys or some other unfinished cut without all the effects added yet or something.

 

As to the one guy's comment, I'm probably a bigger fan of old sci-fi than most of the people here. One thing is true of all of those films. The filmmakers put as many FX and created the most quality FX that they could with what they had. No movie in this genre has ever intentionally held back on FX. So you can't ask Lucas, the FX director of the last couple decades, to hold back on quantity or quality of FX for the sake of continuity with 20 year old films.

I for one would love to see a Hoth battle with 1,000 AT-ATs or a Yavin battle with a 1,000 X-Wings and TIEs, as long as the originals were still available. I mean let's be honest, it makes more sense to the plot. 30 X-Wings at Yavin? 4 AT-ATs and 10 speeders at Hoth? It was the best they could do at the time, as each second of film for 3 models on the screen took like on hour or something. It's great filmmaking that should be appreciated but it takes a lot of suspension of disbeleif to buy the logistics of that. Audiences today wouldn't.

Just accept and appreciate the fact that they're different films from different eras and realize that this is Lucas' last chance to blow everyone away and he's going to pull out all the stops.