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

Best for me is the battle of yavin because it was the first time we saw a battle of this scale. Endor may have been bigger but Yavin was the more groundbreaking.

Worse. The Rancor pit. Even in the Special edition the rancor is clearly digitally added especially when Luke runs past.

 

BEST ANH; the opening shot of the star destroyer, and the Falcon's battle with the TIE fighters (possibly the best special effects sequence ever put on film). WORST ANH; the Death Star explosion. Even at the time, I was underwhelmed. BEST ESB; the long shot of the rebel soldiers retreating, with the walkers advancing in the background, and the entire sequence of Yoda using the force to lift the X-wing out of the swamp. The puppet work in that scene is fantastic. WORST ESB; some of the stop motion work on the tauntauns, while well done for what it is, simply looks fake. BEST ROTJ; the opening sequence with the star destroyers and the Death Star (even though the shuttle doesn't look like it belongs in a Star Wars movie). WORST ROTJ; the sailbarge explosion, and the entire speeder bike sequence (except for a few long shots), were very poorly done. ROTJ, in my opinion, has some of the worst effects in the series.

 

The tauntauns look great. Love that slightly unsettling stop motion movement.

 

Good call. The tauntaun movement takes me out of the moment when I watch ESB these days. Distractingly fake for my tastes.

 

Fake yes, but the stop motion work was still top notch. If that scene had been done twenty years earlier, it would have been truly remarkable.

 

Stop motion works because it has tangibility. Feels like it’s there, in camera, in the scene (because it is). I prefer that, and the jerky motion of stop motion puppets, to more weightless digital creatures with smoother movements (though nowadays, ILM at its best creates completely tangible CGI, like K2SO. To this day, the tauntauns and AT-ATs in ESB are my favorite creature/ vehicle effects in the saga. Followed by the sea cow Luke milks on Ahch-to.

 

I gotta say the worst effects shot is the landspeeder shot where they smudged the area underneath it as it drives through Mos Eisley. Why they didn't just film the scene without showing the mirrored part covering the wheels is beyond me? And trying to smudge out the area after-the-fact is embarrassing.

The stuff that still astounds me is the Falcon racing out of the DSII as the flames follow it.

 

"In camera" means that the trick is done in front of the camera; that the effect is on the original negative. Stop motion miniatures are composited in, after shooting. Stop motion effects are by definition not in camera.

 

Not always, depending on whether the effect is on an isolated sound stage. Given the way the Tauntauns and walkers are used in ESB (and ROTJ), they're usually on miniature sets in addition to compositing for other shots:


Though it looks like the Tauntauns were indeed composited in, though you could say all the aspects on screen were 'in-camera', even if not all the same camera

 

Yeah, I stand corrected re: the AT-ATs. Skimming, I thought the point was specifically about the tauntauns, but the above poster does mention the walkers as well.

 

Interesting question.

Best: The swarm of TIE fighters attacking the Falcon in ROTJ with the Death Star in the background as the camera tilts slightly. Super complex for barely a second of screen time.

Worst: Luke's lightsaber when practicing on the Falcon.

 

Best: Everything in space.
Worst: Rancor. SE CGI.

 

To be honest all special effects are dated. The PT, OT and CW should have been put to legends and the PT and OT should have been remade eradicating all its flaws and inconsistencies.

 

I just did a quick search on youtube, and to my surprise I didn't find a single fan video that improves the crash of the Executor SSD into the DS2. That's a moment that could use a little - or a lot - more attention to detail.

 

It shouldn't have exploded on impact. It should have stuck firmly upright in the surface of the Death Star, vibrated from side to side, and made a loud boing noise.

 

wasn't it improved for the SE?

 

There were no improvements in the special editions, only changes.

 

A more spectacular end for the Executor could have had it torn apart in the Death Star's gravitational field. I'm not sure if the Death Star would actually have much of a gravitational field, or if it did, that something like this could even happen, but it would have been visually impressive to see that ship tilt, and twist and have all of that cityscape on top ripped away as it was pulled down to the surface.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of the 2 SD's that collided in R1. That was an impressive collision.

 

But there was nothing in the battle big enough to put a dent in the Executor...except an A-wing, of course.

 

The novelization does have the Executor collide with other ships on its way to collision with the DS2.


"Firing proton torpedoes," Green Wing advised.
The bridge was hit, with kaleidoscopic results. A rapid chain reaction got set off, from power station to power station along the middle third of the huge Destroyer, producing a dazzling rainbow of explosions that buckled the ship at right angles, and started it spinning like a pinwheel toward the Death Star.
The first bridge explosion took Green Leader with it; the subsequent uncontrolled joyride snagged ten more fighters, two cruisers, and an ordnance vessel. By the time the whole exothermic conglomerate finally crashed into the side of the Death Star, the impact was momentous enough to actually jolt the battle station, setting off internal explosions and thunderings all through its network of reactors, munitions, and halls.

 

The initial explosions from the Executor bridge look great.

Then we pull back and it's terrible.

What even is that? It's not to scale.
And then the whole collision looks terrible. The flames from the Executor are now coming from the engines and the bridge. It seems to hit a massive fuel tank under the Death Star surface that explodes. And the explosion reveals the compositing background from around the Executor.

It's real bad.

 

Oh, god... no. Just no. Absolutely not. The worst, most misguided thing Lucasfilm could do would be to do an honest-to-god remake of any of the films, especially the originals. "Old" and "dated" do not translate to "bad." Not everything needs to be updated to meet modern standards; art should be allowed to exist as a product of its time.

 

It would still exist.