“The return of the real fake”

They make some good points. I think CGI is still a good tool, particularly for backgrounds etc (i.e. where you’d need a matte painting anyway otherwise) or where ‘real world’ stuff just wouldn’t look right, but if it can be done physically, it will always look best that way.

However, I disagree with this statement:

“What began as a grumble about the CGI-heavy Star Wars prequels looking worse than the original trilogy”

The Star Wars prequels surely had their problems, but the look wasn’t one of them. They looked amazing (although looking carefully at the CGI, you can tell it’s not quite real, but you’d never get that level of detail without it.) The only way such a character like General Grevous would be realised without CGI (or some kind of animation) would have been stop motion.

Hence the battle with Obi-wan later would have been somewhat akin to that famous (and have to admit brilliant in it’s time) battle with the skeletons in Clash of the Titans. Whilst stop motion can look very effective, (and I’m happy with modern stop-motion animations etc, like the Wallace and Gromit film) it still wouldn’t look completely real mixed with real actors any more than CGI would. (Actually I suppose, it would be swings and roundabouts. The model would look more real in stop motion, but the movement would have the edge in CGI.) That being said, I have to admit a fight between Obiwan and a stop motion Grevous would be interesting to see…

Where the CG did fail however was with some of the scenes with Jar Jar Binks where the character eye line doesn’t quite match up.

I’m all for CGI still being used, but I agree it’s a tool and shouldn’t be overused.

Now I don’t care if you’ve saved up all your 50p’s. Take your money… and GEDDOUT!!

>Doesn?t the human special effect of Ray Park?s movement beat the crap out of any >multi-limbed CG fighter?

He played Darth Maul right? Yes he was great. And that was a fabulous scene (and Maul a great character) in a film I thought the worst of the Prequels.

As for Grevious I guess they could have made him a humanoid alien (i.e. a guy with prosthetics, as in an actual guy actor) and that would have worked.
I liked the rather original design for Grevious though, although I accept it didn’t look entirely real.

I totally disagree. When you don?t know when to stop – when you try to put every scene in front of a frantic new backdrop – you detract from the main action.

Point taken (emboldened) but overall the CGI didn’t really detract me from the main action. Well perhaps a bit in the space battles when there were so many things flying around I sometimes found myself rewinding the DVD to see what happened, or to catch things that happened to one side that I missed.

I do find that in a lot of modern films, that the main problem with these particular scenes is that the action tends to be extremely fast, and whilst it looks very cool, its sometimes hard to follow. That’s not just a CGI fault though, but action scenes in general.(I know that’s not what you were speaking about Andrew, thats just another point I’d add.)

I did find that sticking a dinosaur creature into every empty space in Mos Eisley in the revised version of A New Hope felt extremely tacky though. It looked great, but they did it too much.

A stormtrooper is a bloke in a plastic suit. Yoda?s a puppet (that dreadful Ep I version sucked, mind you). The sky is the sky (or a backdrop) and land can be a location or a set. The eye knows, and you should only use effects when you have no choice to do otherwise.

I do totally agree with this. If it’s not required, then the CGI need not be used. And using CGI for the troopers didn’t make much sense, (except in copying guys to make up numbers, but then you’re effectively just seeing copies of real people not CG, so I’m not sure that quite the same thing.) And a good puppet does look more realistic than a CG character (when it can be use effectively. Imagine the Dookuu vs, Yoda fight without it, but then CG only need be used for the fast moving scenes there.)

Do I agree that CGI was used too much in the Star wars prequels, and the revised Star Wars films? Yes. (Actually I’ll make an exception with the revised Empire and Jedi, the CGI there was much more subtle. Except the celebration bits as the end of Jedi and the music number in Jabba’s palace. I found that quite amusing though, if cartoon-like.)

But did I think it made the films look bad, or worse than the original trilogy?

With some reservations, no. As I said, as a whole the main problem with the films was not the look.

Money is now a huge factor in the over-use of CG. It’s now way cheaper and easier to do things digitally than to create physical effects, build bigger sets, shoot with a full crew on location etc. The impossible IS possible with CG, so it’s beyond tempting to go there. The problem is 99% of the general audience couldn’t give two penile warts over whether something was CG or a physical effect. It’s only people who really love films that care.

For the most part I DON’T think CG was over-used in the Star Wars prequels. The only bits would be the opening space battle of Revenge of the Sith which basically WAS a videogame (and not a very good one, certainly not Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab…(sorry)) and the absolutely ridiculous Anakin/Obi-Wan duel on the lava planet of Mustafar. It could and SHOULD have been so fucking fantastic. There’s zero drama when they’re hopping between lava platforms with millions of dollars worth of CG going on in the background. The money should be in the FOREGROUND!!!

Lucas as writer and director was the major failing. I actually think The Phantom Menace is the best prequel, in retrospect. For a start it feels like a Star Wars film. Despite Lucas making Jedi seems like pretentious, constipated arseholes, the characters weren’t THAT bad. Neither was the acting, aside from the kid Anakin Jake Lloyd (I firmly believe Anakin should have been a bit older and best friends with Uncle Owen, who got pissed off when Anakin left to become a Jedi and that explains the chip on his shoulder in A New Hope – that’s simple straightforward character material that everyone would have liked).

The podrace and the Maul fight are two of the most amazing sequences in any film. I know loads of people hate the podrace, see it as self-indulgent effects work, but if the character stuff around it was better no-one would have a problem with it. The Maul fight was out of this world, and YES possible without CG but it added to it rather than making it fucking stupid like the Revenge of the Sith duel.

Sith and Attack of the Clones are so bad it helps you see Phantom Menace in a better light. Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine, for example. He was great in TPM, actually giving an acting performance and Lucas for the only time in the prequels getting the story right with the subtle way Palpatine gains power and he manipulated everything from behind the scenes as Sidious. In Revenge of the Sith he’s a fucking joke – ‘No…no…no YOU will die!!!’ being the worst line delivery I’ve ever seen in a film.

> Padme?s death, either by jealousy, accident, whatever, fair enough, but just as a result of a broken heart? Come off it.

Thankyou for bringing up the worst moment in all six films! It’s at times like that when someone, ANYONE needed to take Lucas to one side and say ‘er, George…look, just hand me the script…give me that pen too…I know I’m just a runner but I think I know the difference between sanity and insanity, therefore I’m more qualified to edit this scene than you are!’ ‘but the medical droids still need to be digital..digital’ ‘yes, George’ ‘digital…DIGITAL! DIGITAL!!’ ‘yes I GET IT, George! they have to be digital even though you managed perfectly well in the original trilogy WITHOUT them being digital. Now GIVE ME THE FUCKING SCRIPT!!!’

Heh. That was great!

I was thinking of ways they could have made Padme’s fate work. I.e. the physical violence done to her by Vader’s ‘grip’ doing more damage, trauma birth etc, not enough time to save both her and the babies, etc.

I even thought the ‘dying of a broken heart’ think might work if it had been mentioned she has some force affinity. (I.e. just as Luke and Anakin naturally tap into the force resulting in quick reactions as pilots, her depression causes her to subconsciously manipulate the force to her own ill health. Yeah I know that’s a stretch. Almost as bad as the broken heart thing.) Then it occurred to me, just leaving her alive would have worked better. Let her be adopted into the Alderaan royal family (she’d likely need to disguise herself to fly under the imperial radar after all) and actually be the mother who Leia remembers. The one who died between films. You still don’t get the explanation as to how she died but people die all the time, and at least it wouldn’t be a stretch as the version we got.

So simple. I wonder why Lucas went the route he did? Keep with the romantic theme?

I wonder why Lucas went the route he did? Keep with the romantic theme?

It’s possible it was just an oversight. Or maybe he thought it was a cheat to effectively kill her off-screen (what TV Tropes calls a “Bus Crash”).

Tochlafane. I have trouble remembering which each of the various Who aliens are? Were they the big batty ones in the school?

http://images.wikia.com/tardis/images/d/d7/Saxon_Toclafane.jpg

> Should. Have. Been. A. Model. Dammit.

It’s interesting what Mike said at DJ about the Mill knowing what should be done as a model but BBC Wales insisting on CG most of the time.