ST George Lucas and the Mystery of the Treatment

Well, the tech was certainly more limited from 77-83. And frankly, the production quality of ROTJ was just lacking in some respects. Marquand was out of his depth, and Lucas was pretty tired. I still enjoy it too, but there are a bunch of little things that annoy me in that flick.

 

I can see Luke in a Gandalf like role during the ST.

 

The original terminology was 'Dark Lord of the Sith' - I never liked the way it was abbreviated so that they were referred to just as 'Sith'.

 

That last pic looks terrible! Seriously, even though it's on location it looks more artificial in the sense that it's mind-numbingly obvious that they're just in some random forest - that is, it looks fake because it looks very ordinary in a movie where it should never look ordinary. It could be in my backyard for christ's sake. You can shoot on location and have it not look ordinary - Naboo is a good example of that. Hell, the entire film of Mad Max: Fury Road is like that as are many others that have fantastical worlds.

And besides all that, I don't see what the big deal is with whether something "looks artificial" or not anyway. I don't really care as long as it looks nice. Which a planet like Mustafar does! That's why I like A Scanner Darkly, despite the fact that every single scene shot for the movie was rotoscoped over (they hand painted over every single frame of the film). It's also why I like Terminator 2 despite the fact that the T1000 is obviously not real, and why I like Star Trek despite the fact I know everybody's not really in space. Or the Tintin movie, or Avatar, or any Pixar movie or cartoon I've ever seen. The Lion King looks extremely artificial and it's brilliant!

 

I respectfully disagree. I'll take the scenes that look less artificial any day.

 

Here's the problem, CGI ages like milk. The effects in the OT still look good today,

 

When you say "less artificial" do you just mean "less special fx"? Because to me when I think "less artificial" I think of whether it looks good, or fits the setting.

 

Then how did it not "fit the setting"? Did none of the location shoots in the OT fit the setting to you?

 

You seem to be confusing me for somebody else in this thread because I never even mentioned the OT. I was talking about a particular photo of a shot from Ep7.

 

You seem to have a problem with real locations and are defending the use of really artificial looking cgi environments. You said the image in that pic was awful because it looked like a forest. So did you not like the forests, deserts, and glaciers where the OT was shot because you have seen sand, rocks, trees, and snow before?

 

Wow, way to spread propaganda. I do not have a "problem with real locations", nor did I ever say that I did. And again, I'm not sure what you mean by "really artificial looking". Everything in a movie like Star Wars is artificial looking - there's no such things as lightsabers, or star destroyers, or aliens. The only thing that matters, in my opinion, is whether the particular scene looks nice. That's why I mentioned Terminator 2 - the T1000 is obviously not real, but who gives a ****? It looks cool as hell and it fits the story. The same goes for lightsabers - there's nothing even remotely realistic about them, I just accept them because they look great. It's art - artificiality is the defining characteristic of it. Do you never watch anything animated? Do you hate the Lion King or Aladdin because they're really artificial looking drawings?

No, I never said that at all. Comparing the photos he posted (and only those photos), I said it looks artificial as hell in the sense that it doesn't feel right as it doesn't look like a place in a Star Wars movie. It just looks like an ordinary forest in that particular photo. The other three all looked pretty good. Something just has to look nice artistically for me to enjoy it, I really don't give a crap if it "looks artificial" or not. Virtually every episode of Star Trek: TOS looks artificial as hell because of all the crappy makeup, costumes and sets - but it's still awesome and I still like it visually because it looks nice artistically.

 

What is an ordinary forest? Forests sure don't look like that where I live. So how do you feel about all those other real environments? Ther're okay because they're less familiar to you? Is that it?

 

Do people really lose their touch when they get older?

I mean nobody wants to read new comics written by Stan Lee and everyone hates on Georges prequels.

But did they really lose their touch? Or they believe their own hype and stopped collaborating?

Seems like Jack Kirby really did all the heavy lifting with Marvel while Stan got the credit, in Lucas's case he just surrounded himself with yes men that was his downfall. Can you imagine if Kasden and Gary Kurtz worked on the prequels with George?

I have noticed lots of story tellers and filmmakers lose their edge when they have kids, and they tone down their movies.

 

Yeah man I totally forgot about all those places on earth with sarlacc pits, wampas, gungans and multiple suns in the sky! There's barely any locations in Episodes 1-6 that I would consider realistic, regardless of whether it's scenes shot on location or not. And that's the way it should be.

 

When using VFX, it's generally preferred that the image look convincing. So, yeah, people aren't REALLY in space, but it should like they are, as much as is possible. No, lightsabers aren't real, but they should look as real as possible. What I mean by "artificial" has nothing to do with the setting per se. For example, I find Mustafar reasonably convincing, even though it's obviously a created environment. Likwise, the digitially created scenery in the TPM pod race sequence is convinving, and that can be hard to do, since it resembles real locations on Earth. OTOH, Utapau didn't work for me. I don;t know if it was the depth of field, or lights, or the compositing, or what, but the scene feels artificial to the point that I find it distracting.

And you can't compare that to an animated film. The Star Wars saga films are intended to be photorealistic. Animated films are intended to present stylized images.

But hey, different people like different things.

 

I don't agree with you, but at least you understand where I'm coming from.

Although I would dispute the argument that they're intended to be photorealistic - I don't think so at all. I think first and foremost they're intended to portray a fantastical, mythical and alien world. And that's what they do, successfully.

Although perhaps this divergence in what we seem to think the creators' artistic intentions are is why you and I have such a difference of opinion. I can see how you would prefer the SW films to take place on worlds that look like places on Earth if you're looking for photorealism. Whereas I simply want them to look great visually, since I'm looking for fantastical, unusual and inherently unrealistic worlds.

 

And Marcia Lucas.
She also contributed significantly to Star Wars and influenced Lucas' decisions.

I think the one collaborator who makes the strongest immediate impact is Ralph McQuarrie. Without his design work-especially for Darth Vader and the storm troopers, I cant fathom it having the same reaction. The three most important visual designs in my view are the TIE fighter, Vader and the storm troopers. There was nothing remotely comparable to those designs in sci-fi movies. Logan's Run had the carousel participants wearing skull-like masks that are sort of mechanical art deco, but Vader took it to a new level.

And Lucas himself said John Williams score was around 50% of the experience.

You can see how Lucas' mind works when he did the Phantom Menace and Darth Maul. He liked contrasting the organic with the technological. So if Vader is a mechanical skull face, Maul is an organic alien demon.
Just as Lucas liked to match up natural planets with highly technological ones.

 

My metric would be, did the actors have some critical mass of physical objects and environment to act against? There's no specific value of percentage of visual field, but there has to be something for the actor to act against. Let it be a visual representation of a backdrop. Let it be a motion capture eyeline target. Let it be off stage stage hands showing where eyelines should move to. I love TPM but each of the Prequels had trouble with the actors anchoring or grounding their physical placement, attitude, spatial awareness. My kingdom! for a lousy matte painting in AOTC.

 

Russell T Davies wrote Dr Who for adults, and then Steven Moffat wrote Dr Who for his children.

 

Don't know if I'd necessarily agree with that statement, at least not 100%. The Death Star trench run in the original, 1977 cut of Star Wars is incredibly hard to watch due to the dating of the visual effects. It doesn't even live up to the effects in ESB or ROTJ. I, of course, understand that the effects work there was incredibly new and wowed audiences and is of historic significance, but that version of the sequence just doesn't work for me anymore.

 

I would love to know what Lucas' original story treatment was.

 

Moffat's Doctor Who is way more complex and serious than anything Davies did.