ST George Lucas' visual creativity was noticeably absent - and not in a good way

One thing George Lucas has always had is a magnificent imagination. When the technology became available for him to portray his "mind's eye" on screen he succeeded beyond everyone's wildest imagination.

It's clear The Force Awakens needs his vision. Badly.

For example, in Episodes, I, II and III, we see some new worlds we hadn't seen before:

Naboo - a world with beautiful old buildings on the surface, and a beautiful underwater city. The planet is inhabitied by two sentient lifeforms. It's obvious it isn't "Earth"

Coruscant - a awesome city world the likes of which we had never seen before. We see various aspects of it, including it's lower levels. It's obvious it isn't "Earth"

Geonosis - a planet with giant triangle bee-hive like columns made by the life forms that live there. It's obvious it isn't "Earth"

Mustafer - a volcanic planet that simply looks amazing. It's obvious it isn't "Earth"

Kamino - a world that is entirely an Ocean with huge structures coming out of the water made by the inhabitants. Huge flying whale like creatures fly out of the water occasionally. It's obvious it isn't "Earth"

Utapau - a planet with massive sinkholes everywhere extending miles deep. It's obvious this isn't "Earth"

In The Force Awakens we start with a Tatooine doppleganger, then go to Takodana, which from what we can see, has some trees and a lake. We see Maz's castle which is just a castle with nothing remarkable about it. This could be Earth.

The planet with the resistance base, from what we can see, has some rolling green hills and more trees. This could be Earth.

Luke's planet, from what we can see has a few islands protruding from an ocean that looks just like Earth (obvioulsy because it was filmed here on Earth.) It doesn't appear any special effects have been added to make the surface of the planet look different and amazing. It's just... meh.

Starkiller base has snow and mountains. They are not particularly big mountains, or something unique that we don't see on Earth. This could be "Earth"

Even when George Lucas went back to Tatooine for the prequels he altered the landscape (such as when Anakin is riding his speeder on his way to save his mother) so that we see amazing rock structures. It's obvious it isn't "Earth"

Every planet we go to in TFA could be "Earth." Where was the imaginative vision? Even so far as putting some moons in the background in the sky (such as on Utapau, where half the sky is taken up by what appears to be a huge moon of Utapau). The skylines, of all the planets look like.... well, like Earth. When we see the sky above the mountains on Starkiller base, why can't we see something in the sky (like a huge moon) to make it "different"

The lack of creativity in the showcasing of the various worlds was very conspicuous.

This is why I have hope with Episode VIII. Rian Johnson (the director) said, a few months ago, "There was something beautiful about the prequels". And he's right. They are beautiful visual movies. This makes me hope that his artistic vision is much more unique than JJ Abrams. Quite simply, the worlds and planets we saw in TFA were uninspired and boring. George Lucas would have never made something so uninspired.

 

The first episode in each trilogy feature quite conventional locations. TPM had Tatooine (again), Coruscant which is a giant cityscape like Manhattan or Tokyo, & Naboo which is just Earth with Gungans. In TFA I'd expect the environments to get more out-there in the next episodes, as they did in the PT.

 

Ahhh. I've typed and deleted 3 times.
It's always going to head down into PT vs OT warfare.

This movie aimed to be Realistic. To look like real places. It was a style choice. You would rather they went more "fantastic"? Okay. Shrug.

 

Personally I prefer more Earthly settings for Star Wars. There's plenty other-worldly going on in terms of the characters and story and I find ice, forest and desert planets, for example, to be pleasantly grounding (excuse the pun).

 

The worlds in the new film are far superior to the ones you mentioned... They actually feel REAL and lived in!

 

I agree the visual richness of this vilm was sorely lacking especially coming off ROTS which had some of the most incredible detail of any movie ever made, every space was so layered. Maybe it's because the development process was rushed. The planets felt too real world agreed, it's no wonder people couldn't tell if the Resistance base and Maz's castle were on the same planet. It feels so weird with the ships, even when we left off in ROTS there were Tie Interceptors, A Wings, B Wings. Jakku was largely populated with pre existing designs of ships and vehicles and even left over Tatooine designs from Jabbas Palace.

 

I'd rather see sights that are interesting, at least Degobah doesn't look like an Earth swamp.

 

I totally agree, the prequels did have some great otherworldly locations and this movie seemed a little dull visually.

 

Oh give me a break Darth Downunder, Coruscant is nothing like Manhatten or Tokyo. The whole planet is a city, and the building are miles and miles high.When I say something is "like Earth" I mean that at a glance you could think it was Earth if you were shown a picture of it. If you were shown a snapsot of Coruscant it is 100% obvious it is not Earth.

The surface of Naboo could be Earth, but the planet also features and underwater city. It's obvious it isn't "Earth" just like it's obvious Coruscant isn't "Earth"

Takodana, The resistance base planet, Luke's planet and DStarkiller base (the natural surface part with the mountains) could all substitute for Earth. Where was the visual creativity??

 

When you put the film in the hands of two people (J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan) whose understanding of and viewpoint on the Star Wars franchise is incredibly straightforward and borderline superficial, you're going to get environments that lack visual 'pop'. I'm not really sure why this is so surprising to people.

 

Fair enough... I would rather real locations made to look alien! I quite like Kamino - But then the Waterworld Luke was on blew it out of the water because it WAS real! Although that place looked straight out of a fantasy film...

 

"straightforward," "superficial" ...hmm.

 

So what you are saying is you would rather see some hideous cgi planets that look horribly fake! Got ya...

 

Exactly. Dagobah was built on a set. This means it is unlike anything that exists on Earth. As it should be.

In the galaxy far, far, away there are millions of planets. It is unrealistic to think they all look like Earth. George Lucas knew this, and made them look different, which was a realistic way of portraying the galaxy. All the worlds WOULD BE different. Sure you can film on Earth, but you must "add" some extra features to give ALL the planets an otherworldy feel.

 

Exactly, i was rewatching TPM, and they were talking about in audio commentary how they added creatures that weren't from Earth to the world to make it look different on Naboo!

 

Abrams and Kasdan don't care about or understand the mythological and archetypal underpinnings that set SW apart from other franchises, and this can be easily documented based on the way they have publicly talked about it in the past, and by the way that TFA was approached.

Their approach to SW is very straightforward and pretty much amounts to presenting things at face value rather than imbuing them with any deeper significance. The only real instance in TFA where they bothered to go beyond the straightforward is with Kylo Ren's role and portrayal, which is one of the reasons why he's one of the best things about the movie.

 

It's just a bigger scale cityscape. We don't see much of it in TPM anyway, just a few establishing shots. We'd also already seen it in the RotJ SE in '97. So we had Coruscant that we'd already seen, Tatooine (again), & Earth Naboo. Three cheers for creativity

 

I would rather see some CGI planets tnhat look real, like Coruscant, Geonosis, Kamino etc. I'm sure you would too, because that's what the Star Wars Universe should be. A\mazing worlds, set in space. We don't want to see a million "Earths." I'm sure you don't want to see Earth 3 different times in the one film, even though it's supposed to be three different planets.

You want your imagination to run wild with all the possibilities that the Star Wars galaxy should have.

 

Like I said, each first episode of a new trilogy takes place on fairly conventional worlds, just as TPM did. They want to establish the story & the new characters, not bamboozle us with kooky new environments. Stay tuned for more out-there locations in the next movies.

 

Yes it's a bigger cityscape. By like 1,000,000 percent.

As I sad, when you take a snapshot of it, could you "accidentally" think it was Earth? NO

If you take a snapshot if any of the locations in TFA it could have been Earth.

Why even make Jakku a Tatooine doppleganger? Why? What was the point of that? Why not make a brand new visual world? You wouldn't need to even alter the story.

 

Why are you presuming to know what I want...I already told you!

I'll lay my cards on the table - I hate cgi...hate it! I would rather see a hundred earth looking locations than something cooked up in a computer Grrrrr! What I will say though, is take a look through some of the topics about "weird earth locations that could be used as Star Wars planets" ...and I'll agree with you that they should shake it up a bit with new locations...but make them real!

There are plenty of freaky looking environments on Earth that have not been used...

 

Tatooine = desert planet
Hoth = Ice planet (system, I know)
Dagobah = Jungle planet
Coruscant = City planet
Mustafar = Lava planet
Kamino = Water planet
Endor Moon = forrest moon

Does this look very creative? It's basically just "take whatever feature from earth that fits the tone we're going for, and make it into an entire planet". This is typical sci-fi lack of imagination. The whole planet doesn't have to be only one biome. Make it varied! Give us big mountains with fjords cutting through, give us deserts relatively close (as in not half the galaxy away) to where there's a jungle, give us glaciers on a planet that also has volcanoes.
TFA didn't do it much better, so using this as an argument for Lucas' brilliance doesn't hold water.

Earth has a ton of various sites and features that seem "otherworldly", just because it isn't in our back yard doesn't mean it "can't be earth".
Look at this link http://travel.allwomenstalk.com/of-the-most-incredible-other-worldly-landscapes-on-earth
Every single photo there could be from a Star Wars movie that's "clearly not earth", yet it IS on earth.

 

this

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They didn't need anyone the production team and the people involved did a fantastic job and the reviews all over reflect that. The vocal minority can't stop this train.

 

I agree with the OP 100% on this. GL's visual touch was noticeably missing from this film. The worlds did look uninspired. Many people like to bash GL but with this film we see the clear negatives of him not being involved.

 

It shouldn't look like real places on Earth. This film series is set in space in a galaxy far, far away. It is not set on Earth.

It is REALISTIC for the planets and worlds to look varied.It is REALISTIC for the planets and worlds to not look like Earth. That was George Lucas vision. He didn't want every location to be like Earth and he made sure it didn't feel that way. Even in the original trilogy, where the constraints of the technology made it impossible for it to look like anything other than Earth, he still invented Cloud City.