PT Do you truly think the PT CGI has aged for the worse?

I have grow up with Babylon 5 as my favourite show in the 90', when TFM appear in the late 90', I was in awe of the quality of the CGI and the practical effects, and more with the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, at difference of most people crappy CGI really doesn't bother me if don't interfere with the story, in the 90' there was a lot of crappy CGI, and we learned to use something called IMAGINATION to compensate and pay attention to the story, sorry, some of us learned, because most of my generation to be shallow complaining about the stupid CGI and not even paying attention to the story. I am ashamed that my generation had turned to be so shallow.

 

Obviously in the run up to TFA I watched all six films. So I watched the PT very recently on Blu Ray. First of all watching them on BR was a revelation. It was almost like watching them for the first time all over again (even more so for the OT). I will say that a lot of CG in TPM holds up very well today. Honestly a lot of it is of higher quality than you see nowadays. I thought that ROTS still looks very good. In fact, I think ROTS is one of the most visually strongest SW films yet. The CGI, for the most part, is still very high quality and stands the test of time. Out of the three of them the one that looks the most plastic is AOTC.

 

AOTC was the first feature film on digital and it showed. I respect Lucas as a pioneer but perhaps playing more conservative would have been more prudent in this case.

 

A lot of people complain about the grass in the gungan battle. I think it looks good but can anyone post pictures of it looking bad?

 

None of the CG bothers me in the PT, but I'd be okay with some of it being redone as well.

 

This. I see the dated stop motion taun-tauns and the Rancour, each and every change of scale model during the ESB land battle, the almost 100 year old projected background technique during ROTJ and the menagerie of 80's animatronics. Even the out of the Falcon views have that composited look - as does the space battle at the end of ROTJ which despite being the end stop in the technique and something to behold - still has a time stamp on it. Optical compositing has a 'look' as obvious as CGI. But so what? King Kong isn't less of a classic for making a start and innovating grand cinematic illusion.

Same with CGI, sometimes it doesn't look 'quite right' - but as a technique it is carrying on a tradition of fooling the brain into seeing impossible things, and sometimes it works. Actually for the first time in cinema history we are edging closer and coser to being able to literally show anything we can imagine photorealistically and the PT were the first set of films where people regularly got it wrong and actually couldn't always be sure what was real - sets, 'real' - models, or miniatures - or entirely created in a computer. Now we know General Grievous can't exists, so no matter how good CGI gets our brain will put the breaks on, but where such things could exist like explosions, sets, full size models - or men shaped soldiers in uniform we often were fooled.

Instead of being wowed by it, people took it out on the artists and complained. "I don't wanna see an army of robots, an insect race, clone sodiers and space wizards kick up dust on a faraway planet in a 'Star War' ----- whaaaaaahhh ----- if it doesn't look entirely real --- wahhhwahhh...." WUT?

When people put up those digital mattes from AOTC or whatever I literally don't understand what the point is. It's a painting, an illustration for a moving fantasy tale. A beautiful work of art in a story book.

Now we have a clean break with Disney I think it has helped me with the PT to stop giving a sh$t about stuff in them. I have enjoyed them for 15 years and they have only got better, and stayed with me like the OT did - time to leave them alone now. In fact I have never enjoyed them more - at home at least.

The CGI ranges from 'sufficient for the story' to awesome. If it dates the films it will be in a good way - as a the fork in the road from where on anything would be possible if you want to free your imagination.

 

^^ This, it's not supposed to be 100% realistic.

People act as if Lucas suddenly became interested in effects, at the expense of story, but this is demonstrably not true. The original trilogy was cutting-edge for its time, and George used every technique available to him, limited only by what he could imagine. When we got to the prequels, he did what he knew best, pushing the visual envelope. Now, for the first time in Star Wars history, the franchise has taken a deliberate step backward. While everything in Episode VII feels more gritty and real (JJ uses almost entirely real sets on real locations), what does it matter, when we’ve seen these places before, in other films, and with our very own eyes? I’ve walked through a forest before, and a beach, and a snowy mountain. I don’t need to go to a galaxy far, far away to visit Jakku. Heck, my parents went there this summer; it’s called Dubai. And if I had a Millennium Falcon, I sure as heck wouldn’t take a trip to Clearwater Beach, 10 miles down the road. I’d want to see a giant sinkhole planet, like Utapau, or a termite-mound world like Geonosis, or the planet-wide cityscape of Coruscant. I’ll take imaginative and unconvincing over boring and realistic any day. National Geographic may look more believable than anything Frazetta can paint, but what does it matter, when we’re talking Sci-Fi/fantasy?
http://writersdisease.net/2015/12/18/underwhelmed-by-the-force/

 

Another good example of crappy CGI with way good story is two cartoons that I was seeing back in the 90', Beast Wars, a Transformers spin-off (trust me this one has nothing to do with Bay Transformers, for ones, it has no humans at all) and show called REBOOT, this CGI shows can be compared with Batman TAS of the time, very good stories, very, very, very good stories, even that REBOOT ended in a cliffhanger because it was cancelled before they reached to the final season, but the CGI was really crappy, but I care less about it, but after Toy Story it was a great advance make a whole TV Show CGI, it something common now, and even that the CGI was crappy, the stories were so good that I care less.

 

The grass was real in some of the closer shots. Only the wide views that showed a lot of the battlefield were CG

In fact, the short part where Jar Jar has the droid tangled up in his foot was footage of Ahmed Best in costume

 

It was? From the "creating the world of star wars" book it looks like he was 100% cgi.I might be wrong though.

 

TPM still is a decent film visually. Combining modelwork and CGI fairly well, and while some elements like the Gungans or some of the podracers are overly computery, it's nice to look at despite the many flaws.

AOTC...yeah, it definitely doesn't hold up as well, and looks pretty video-gamey at times. It was cool at the time, and it did do important work in advancing techniques, but compared to modern stuff, it definitely can be jarring at times.

ROTS looks a bit better. Some obvious CG comes out at times, but the opening battle is impressive, it has a bit more variety than the oftentimes sparse and empty environments of Episode II, so this one gets more of a pass.

 

It still looks great! But they definitely should still retouch it in the future.

 

I just rewatched all the PT films and I believe the CGI holds up very well still,. In fact I enjoy them even more now after seeing TFA.

 

Just rewatched the PT for my lead up to TFA and was surprised by how much the Special Effects hold up, TPM in particular. I was watching it with a new fan and he couldn't get over the fact that the movie came out in 1999.

Out of the 3 PT flicks the only one where I cringed at was AoTC when it came to CGI. RoTS still looks amazing.

 

Did they know the backstory in the prequels?

 

He was my little cousin (12), watching all of the Star Wars movies from 1 to 7 over the holiday. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that TPM (A movie I saw when I was 12) came out before he was born. He was not the biggest fan of Star Wars before but he really enjoyed watching them with me and the rest of the family. His favorites were RoTS and TFA (Recency bias and the fact it is the only one he saw in theaters I bet helped).

 

I still think the CGI holds up well apart from a few crummy shots of Jango and the Droidekas at the end of the factory fight in AOTC.

I love the CGI Yoda in ROTS.Its my favourite character animation in ANY film.

 

Then he would have never done ANH in the first place.

The "age" of the entire OT shows watching the original as did the age of ANH by the time TESB came out. Far more than AOTC's ever will.

I think for some it's the use of images that they latch onto as opposed to the actual realization of the images.

It's the same as those who insist that the images in the OT never age when they clearly do and no where near as well as the PT.

TFA was very good but it's nowhere near the visual storytelling level of TPM from 16 years ago.

The lesson of the Star Wars from the start is always go beyond to the next level.

TFA is the first Star Wars movie to play it safe.It's conservative and prudent.

I expected that it would be so I wasn't disappointed that it did so.

JJ Abrams is a good craftsman but he is no George Lucas.

 

When Tarrful stands up behind the barrier the other wookies look pretty bad. The masking is glaringly obvious.

When Yoda climbs Chewbacca, Tarrful and C appear to moonwalk across the tree-hut's glossy wooden floor. Again, the masking, and shadows, are badly done.

When Yoda backflips and decapitates the two troopers, the shadows are fuzzy beneath his cloak, looks like clumsy use of a blur tool. Also, the gravity physics look awkward for the falling heads, and there's no 'give' upon impact, which looks unnatural.

These are just some examples.

 

several of the cookies were men in suits


The floor on Kashyyyk was from a miniature, and i don't really understand the rest of your complaints. Looks good to me.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Honestly, to me that frame looks absolutely awful. It looks like a montage; there's no natural interaction between the characters since they're individual layers; there's no depth of field, and the light source is ambiguous.

 

There seems to be something of a consensus that the CGI in AOTC hasn't aged well. All I can say is that the three times I saw it on the big screen it looked absolutely amazing. That movie blew my 22-year-old mind!

But that's the thing for me, these movies were made to be seen on the big screen and, to my eyes, CGI always looks more obvious on the small screen. I remember watching Spider-man at the cinema and thinking those shots of him swinging through the city were absolutely astonishing. Watching it on DVD around a year later was a whole different experience. Same thing with numerous other movies like Man of Steel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and JJ's Star Trek films.

So when I'm watching AOTC (or TPM or ROTS) at home, I don't judge the CGI, I just remember how amazing it looked when I saw it the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen.

 

The only time I notice any downgrade in the effects between TPM and AOTC, is the first shot of the Naboo ship. It does look slightly less realistic than the TPM version, something to do with the reflections I think. It looks better when it descends into the clouds though, and the rest of the film still holds up perfectly fine to me.

Especially the battle of Geonosis. That is the high-point of battles in Star Wars, in terms of effects and thematic depth.

 

While I do fine ROTJ and AOTC to be the weakest SW films, (Incredibly jarring that ROTJ is getting higher reviews and ROTS is dropping), I'd say the climax of AOTC is far better than ROTJ but ROTJ has a better resolution. I love ROTJ SE ending with all the planets and victory celebration. With that said, the battle of Geonosis is INSANE!! We have never seen a battle of that scale and that size. Especially a ground battle. Hoth was the closest we got and even that was a pretty one way battle....

 

TPM, no. ROTS, sort of. AOTC, YES.