Discussion The role of the Muppets in the ST (seriously)

Sure they are, if it's subtle and in the background enough.

 

A canteena style scene with a band playing, Animal on percussion and a drunk, passed out Kermit you just notice slumped in a corner. That gets my vote.

 

I didn't think there was much dispute about what was and what wasn't CGI in Jurassic Park, at the time anyway. People watching it for the first time now are probably use to thinking everything is computer generated.

 

Most decent film makers these days seem to have a good balance between practical and CGI effects. Where a practical effect can be used, that seems to be the choice. However, from there they try to opt for motion capture (Caesar, Gollum, etc). Purely CGI animated seems to be the last resort now for character placement. I think we'll see a good balance of the three from Abrams.

 

Look at Star Trek, Abrams relied heavily on character make-up but with a anamatronic puppet head for one of the bridge aliens on the Kelvin (with I think CGI eye blinking), and there was a character with CGI eye replacement. However, there are usually more aliens in Star Wars than Star Trek (they tend to be rather humanoid affairs.) I highly doubt they'll be a main muppet character (that time has passed), expect costumes and makeup and maybe a CGI backgrounders in random shots. I don't think there will be a major character that is all CG, though.

On the flipside, the alien in Super 8 was CGI, and a big character in terms of importance, but really not in the movie all that much.