CT What's the best and worst special effects in the Original Trilogy?

Simple question, I'm probably gonna post the same question in the PT forum at some point but here's some to kick off. I've deliberately left my list very short as I'm interested to see what other people come up with.

Best
Just about any shot in the Endor space battle
Opening scene of ANH
The dish explodes on Endor
The bottomless pit matte painting in Cloud City

Worst
Some (not all) of the Taunton effects
The SSD crashing into Death Star II
Tie fighter explosion in the too narrow gap in ESB
The bottomless pit matte painting in Death Star II

 

Hmmm. I'm too close to it (as a fan) I can't fault the special effects since they did their job perfectly for me at the time.

I think that the shield generator explosion is probably the best miniature explosion ever photographed for a movie. It's awesome in ever way. Even watching the normal speed footage

The SSD crash always tickled me the way it was a seemingly puny and relatively unimpressive, considering how imposing the ship had appeared beforehand, I figured that it was meant to look that way because of the size of the Death Star. On closer inspection, of course it's not great by ILM's usual standards.

And the direction for Ackbar's reaction has always puzzled me from where he's sitting in the rebel flag ship, several thousands of meters from the death star. The explosion must have been just a fairly small fireball on the side of the space station but it looks as if it's happening just across the way from him.




The only one that's ever truly stuck out to me is the Falcon travelling in a straight line after Han says he knows some manuevers.

 

I think his reaction was less due to the relatively small amount of damage that had been dealt to the Death Star, and more to do with a Super Star Destroyer having just been taken out of the battle.

 

Best - the Rebel fleet battling the Imperial fleet at Endor. They look 20 years ahead of their time.

Worst - the speeder bike chase. That scene has not aged well IMO

 

Oh it's definitely relief at that threat being neutralised. I meant that the stage direction, and the shot of the explosion it cuts to, looks to me like Ackbar's reacting to something happening much closer to him than it could possibly be.

 

Best - I really like the short scene with the AT-AT in ROTJ, where it moves up to the base, the AT-ATs in ESB in general, the remastered X-Wing take-off and approach in ANH

Worst - The poor compositing when Luke, Han and Chewie are being taken to the pit of Carkoon, the shaky stop-motion on the AT-ST's and Tauntauns.

 

SBoE Composite MF against BR. MF is too small. Simple error.
SBoE Composite BR against Nebulon B. BR is too small. Simple error.
SBoE Composite scene with DSII where a pane of glass with painted squiggles ('ships') is rotated for dramatic tension. Economizing.
SBoE shots where static front images of Mon Cal wingless Liberties, and gum and trash, were used to fill out the background. Economizing.
SBoE Second DSII blast is a vertically flipped version of the first. Economizing.

SW77 Boarding of BR, spatial discontinuity because of blaster fire that is incorrectly directed from upwards or downwards off screen. Dramatic license.

 

The exploding X Wing inside the Death Star II is pretty ropey.

The shot of the Falcon exiting the reactor chamber is fantastic.

 

The Battle of Endor has to be the best... Rogue One is the only movie I have ever seen with a space battle that can rival it.

The AT-ATs still look amazing also.... Unreal how they still hold up after all these years.

Honestly some of the worst effects are the horrid CGI characters in ANH and ROTJ (I'm not against all the CGI additions, I think the Cloud City stuff, Battle of Yavin stuff and some other things all look fine (if not great)). Jabba looks terrible and it's completely obvious he's a cartoon... totally breaks the 4th wall. The Jedi Rocks singers are also terribad... again, it's completely obvious they are cartoons.

The AT-STs are mostly good in ROTJ.. but there's a few scenes where the stop motion is bad.

The SSD explosion is ROTJ is embarrassingly bad. I can't believe they didn't fix that for the special editions... it would have been easier than a bunch of the stuff they did change

 

I didn't even realize people took issue with the SDD explosion until a couple of years ago. I always liked it. It's a nice pyrotechnic effect, and I never got the impression that it was small. It's just that the Death Star II is freaking huge.

 

I didn't like that effect when I was watching it on my Betamax tape of ROTJ

 

Huh. It takes all kinds, I guess. I'm not going to lie, not every effect in the OT is perfect, and some have aged a bit, but more than anything I'm just impressed that the movies look as good and convincing as they do 40-34 years later. I mean, that is a feat in and of itself considering how bad some movies look that came out within the 21st century. But the only effect that ever bugged me was the destruction of the shield generator in Return of the Jedi. It's a fantastic pyrotechnic effect, but my issue is it's just too damn big. Han's immediate reaction shot is pretty much just there because otherwise it looks like the explosion wiped out everything in a several hundred foot radius. It's the only one in the entire trilogy that breaks my suspension of disbelief. I've tried to rationalize it as being really far away from the bunker, and the explosion from the charges the Rebels set traveled down that long electricity tunnel and reach the generator, but... is that what happened? Was that the intent, or did they just go overboard with the effect?

 

LOL, that one always bothered me too. Don't get me wrong.... The films (esp TESB) still look absolutely amazing. I still think they look better than many films made in the last 10 years even.

 

To be absolutely fair to the sequence, making something that big look like it's exploding/crashing is something none of the original SW movies got right - Alderaan looks like a balloon being popped, when the reality is the explosion would be much slower - the Death Star blasts in RO got it right IMO, it's an effect that seems to have only been perfected quite recently in movies.

 

Another vote for SSD into Death Star

 

It's relative. Obviously they were great for their day in almost everyone but Lucas' eyes because he and others like Murren knew how not so great many of them were.

Personally I accepted them at the time and never thought about them and only in hindsight do I find the very odd one to not work so well and besides that the SE's either fixed or replaced most everything.

There is one shot right after Luke says "This is Red Five I'm going in." That does not work for me. Something is just off about it.

 

The shot from Luke's POV when he flies into the trench? Seriously? That has to be one of my favorite effects of the entire trilogy, although the same scene is used twice. Of all battles Yavin is still my favorite one in the OT. The only thing that bothers me slightly is the torpedoes going into the shaft. That looks a little fake - well, not the torpedoes themselves but that sort of "glow" around them. I never liked this sort of effect, including in newer movies like LOTR.

 

I think because it looks very much like a model with explosions that seem just like that. It only really stands out in isolation and the point was they got away with a lot of poor shots that they didn't like all that much but it's not like there was a home video release coming out any year soon back then.

 

Hmmm.... I guess I see your argumentation, but still feel just the opposite. What makes the shot so special is that in SW POV shots (meaning without surrounding cockpits or window frames etc., just the camera itself moving, not just following something) are very rare. I also like it because we move in from a high altitude view of the DS surface right inside the trench without any cuts and at a very high speed. It really shows the pilot's flying skills that are not so apparent elsewhere. But to each his own

 

Best would probably Wedge and Lando going in and out of the Death Star II core. Worst candidates: various shots of the Death Star I surface, wampa arm, and the super star destroyer crashing into Death Star II.

 

Good call... those shots of the fighters right before the enter the DS2 tunnel and the shots when they do enter are absolutely phenomenal... still look great and compare well to anything in modern films

 

ROTJ has the most dated effect imo. The speeder sequence, the Rancor pit fight are pretty bad.

As others mentioned the worst offender is the SSD crashing into DS2 looks like terrible cheap effect you'd see on a Roger Corman movie:

 

Growing up on the OT I never really faulted them and I have a great appreciation for how advanced it was for the time. That said, now the rancor pit scene looks a bit off and the speeder scene (as mentioned in above post). There are also a couple of parts in the Battle of Hoth.

I love all the matt paintings for Cloud City- they were pretty amazing. Also, I do love the lightsabers- especially in ESB and RotJ.

 

OOT SFX :

Best:

• The Chase after the Falcon escapes Cloud City in ESB, along with the following Rebel fleet little sequence and shots at the end
• Most part of the Endor space battle in ROTJ
• ROTJ opening scene

Most phoney, but only after watching and re-watching the movies for the last 2 :

• Ben Kenobi's lightsaber in that infamous shot when he confonts Lord Vader in ANH : it just seems that the blue laser has all but disappeared....
• Background (sand dunes and blue sky) in the shots when Luke and company are leaving the party after Jabba's sail barge explodes in ROTJ : it looks like a drawing
• Background when Han Solo and Lando are chatting about the Falcon before they part ("I want you to take her. She's the fastest ship in the fleet...") in ROTJ : same issue, it looks pretty faked

OT SE and DVD version:

Palatable :

• added shots of other planets during the celabration at the end of ROTJ
• Some original shots polishings and enhancements

Worst :

• By far, Jedi Rock's sequence in ROTJ : absolute and definitive crap to me
• Hayden Christensen's face replacing that of Sebastian Shaw in ROTJ : what the hell...
• pretty much everything else : mostly disgraceful and basically out of tone with rest of the footage...

Yeah...Still looks awesome and believable 37 years after.

I hadn't even heard about it until this very thread...Nothing's really wrong with that shot with me either.

Surpised it's considered by many as one of the worst.

 

"Background when Han Solo and Lando are chatting about the Falcon before they part ("I want you to take her. She's the fastest ship in the fleet...") in ROTJ : same issue, it looks pretty faked"

That reminds me that there was an obvious, fixable compositing error during this scene. Back layer: Matte painting. Middle layer: Ford and Williams were doing this scene against blue screen. Additional flourish is added by having one red helmeted pilot walk left then immediately turn around and walk back left, now with a blue flight suited pilot. Near Layer: A green flight suited A-Wing pilot is added who is optically *closer than the red helmet and blue flight suit (should be near layer), and therefore *taller, but he is composited *behind the two shorter, more distant pilots. Oops. Same error that occurred with MF/BR and BR/NebB.