*OFFICIAL THREAD* "CGI in the Prequels" Discussion

Well, if you read through the posts here, there is widely varying feeling about what works and what doesn't. I suppose the only thing everyone's agreed on is that the live action heads on the CG clones were terrible.

Much of what is depicted in RotS couldn't have been depicted using the "good old model and rubber" techniques, certainly not even for $200 million. The use of CG is primarily a budgetary measure. It makes films like RotS fiscally possible. How would Grievous have been done the old way? He would have been a combination of Go-motion, rod puppeteering, and full sized animatronic parts, much like the Terminator Endoskeleton. That would have cost dramatically more money and taken much more time to execute. How about Yoda? A puppet like in Empire? How would you do the fight? Using "Muppet Movie" or "ET" techniques? You should go back and take a good look at those films and see if those methods are as good as you remember. I didn't hear anyone remark on how they thought Nute Gunray was great and they wish more of the creatures had been done that way.

George has clearly made a tradeoff. He has opted for making a film full of wild exotic environments and bold epic action with pretty good visual effects, rather than a much smaller and more contained film with perfect visual effects. Well, that's his choice and some here like it and others don't. That's ok, lots of other filmmakers make the smaller films, so everyone has something to enjoy. George couldn't have made RotS with perfect effects by just spending a little more money. The reality of visual effects is that you spend 50% of the money to get 90% of the way there and the other half trying to get it up to 95%. The Star Wars pictures are actually kindof low budget compared to other "spectacle" films, considering what's depicted for the budget. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" had a budget about the same as RotS. Who got a bigger bang for the buck?

Visual effects are harder to do than a lot of people here seem to think. I understand that many are just being dramatic when they say that some effect was "horrible" or looked like it was done on a Playstation, but if you can do work like that in five minutes on a Playstation, you should start your own visual effects company and put ILM out of their misery. When you're trying to do such a huge amount of that very complex work on a tight budget, you do as well as you can. The results may not be perfect, but that's the choice George made.

I thought all the CGI and special effects were all sweet, no complaints here.


Good Stuff

took me to star wars world in a wonderful way which is the only thing that's important.

One thing I noticed after watching the DVD is how realistic the ships look... they have the real world-likeness and quality of models now but also have the flexibility and movement of CGI. It makes me a bit sad that this was the last Star Wars, simply because of how much the CGI technology could have advanced.

The Clone Troopers came out great- not only were they much easier to make/control for the movie, but they looked better.

Some CGI I think was overexaggerated, such as the SBDs in the scenes vs. R2. (Not to mention their stupid voices)

Grievous was made great, I loved his duel scene. Also, all the other duel scenes looked great, wherever the CGI was used.

Awesome. I too wish, that they would SOMEHOW remake the stormtroopers into CGI so they'd look better, and maybe the droids too in some scenes. Other than that, awesome CGI.

Why? There's absolutely no reason to replace the stormtroopers with CGI. That makes NO sense. As for replacing some of the lame looking droids from the OT, there I agree with you.

The Storm troopers looked good, it was pretty great. I liked the Dooku flipped, I don't see whats the complaint about that is. I've viewed ROTS about 20 times, the CGI looks great everytime. And the digital masks, as I was saying before, look amazing.

heh, heh, Gonk anyone?

Is it true that The Sidious/Yoda saber battle was completely CGI.

Slow mo that fight, utterly amazing.

Mace v.s. Palps in slow mo? Not if you want to cry.

I have a huge problem when people criticize CGI in general.

Most of these critics seem to view CGI as some secondary complement to the story, when they ARE the story--or at least very integral to it.

Star Wars is supposed to be a visual saga. If we judge the PT by that respect, then it's a near-perfect triumph.

I don't think so, I believe 2 shots are (the one where the pod is rising out of the ground and the one where u see the whole senate). Other than that, if you look in the making-of book, you can see a picture of Micheal Byrne with a saber, so the rest Sidious must be real.

Roo: Changed topic title to CGI in Prequels for discussion of all three.

Thanks rohnderoo for the re-direction, always appreciated. This is the article we were discussing in that other thread:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1182022_1_0_,00.html



darth-sinister:
"Overall, both trilogies hold up well. Only a few stop motion scenes in TESB, namely the Taun Tauns stand out in a couple of shots"


You know, I was just going to say the exact same thing. Those Taun Tauns do look pretty badto me now.

I think Lucas's love for CGI were both the best and worst things that could have happened to Star Wars. It was great in the sense that with this new technology, Lucas was able to achieve visuals that could never have been done before. Certain planetary landscapes and alien varieties just couldn't be done in the same complex fashion twenty years ago and through CGI he saw a way to tell the rest of his story, however he abandoned what made the Original Trilogy so visually fascinating in the first place, that it appeared to be shot on location. When we see Yoda on Dagobah, we don't question his tangibility because well... he's really standing there. He has texture, and it is texture that visually separates the two trilogies. There are moments in the Prequel Trilogy that have this texture, but they're severely outnumbered.


I understand that many of you feel the effects were stunning, and to a degree they were... but there were just far too many instances in which I felt I was watching a video game with beautiful graphics rather than an actual film with living, breathing people on the screen. The effects may have been good but they certainly weren't seamless as many of you have suggested. Now the effects in the Original Trilogy, those were seamless.

When we see Yoda on Dagobah, we don't question his tangibility because well... he's really standing there. He has texture, and it is texture that visually separates the two trilogies. There are moments in the Prequel Trilogy that have this texture, but they're severely outnumbered.

So you like the puppet better ? I personally think CGI Yoda is more realistic.

Well said, the prequels are awesome (I think EP3 is one of the best SW movies made), yet the special effects hurt them in a sense. Heck if I was George I would of filmed everything in HD but used models and everything else that gives the originals that realistic look.

Once again, he used more models in the Prequels than the Original Trilogy. There is plenty of model work in the Prequels. Episode I beats out the model count in one film than the entirity of the Original Trilogy....

Yeah there are so many myths and misconceptions floating around about the use of CG in the prequels.

I might've posted this somewhere before, but I feel that the CGI worked brilliantly for the space scenes but was horrible for planetside ones. CGI made the battle over Coruscant beautiful, but made Mustafar and Utapau look like fake settings. It might be justifiable considering how much pain Lucas had to go through to film ANH, but oh well.

I think the CGI was way over used and the movies suffered for it. Hardly any of it looked in any way real to me. The clone troops were a complete joke. AOTC looked like a bad video game. IMO reduce the amount of CGI and let the actors act = better PT.


CGI doesnt make a movie good the actors and story do, good CGI is a nice bonus.

Surely it looked like a good video game.

Thats very true, I stand corrected it looked like a good video game.

Whats ironic about AOTCs final ground battle is that its the most gritty depiction of war in any star wars film, yet its described as a "video game".

Perhaps the clones in the foreground shouldve been men in suits and not CGI, but its still the most chaotic and amazing ground battle in sw imo.

Of course, Siskel and Ebert said RotJ looked like a high tech video game back in the 80s. They meant it positively, but still there's a precedent for those comments.