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Ranking the Star Wars films — Page 142

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I don’t think stills are a fair portrayal. I’m not going to deny there’s some crappy effects across almost almost every film, but they typically look a lot worse when screencapped.

ray_afraid said:

There are hardly any environments in AOTC or ROTS that look real to me.

Naboo looked perfectly real. Episode I was a giant set. Episode II was filmed in Italy with a few background altercations to look more ‘sci-fi.’ The establishing shots and the grass battle in Episode I are obviously completely CGI, but other than that I think they’re fine. Tatooine also looks great in Episode I, Episode II has a few more wonky CGI shots like Anakin’s speeder scene, but overall the actual locations look great, as they are actual locations.

There are also hardly any environments in AOTC or ROTS that needed to be 100% effects, which is what makes them horrible from any perspective.

Um… Kamino, Mustafar, Coruscant?..

Geonosis didn’t have to be fully digital, I’ll give you that. However a water, lava and city planet aren’t really laying around in any of Earth’s biomes. And Mustafar and Coruscant both actually use a massive amount of both miniatures and real footage (lava, volcanoes, in the case of Mustafar).

As for the space battles, obviously they’re going to be CGI; even the new films are fully CGI for their space battles.

The ST actually has much more CGI than any of the PT film; the issue is that CGI of that scope back in the early 2000s was widely unheard of. As such there was a lot of growing pains and ILM was still trying to figure out how to properly work with the technology and make it look convincing. So all these practical effects, sets, and real locations get overlooked because the CGI at the time just wasn’t 100% ready yet. Not saying that magically makes a lot of the CGI good, just that there is a reason.

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Ryan-SWI said:

The ST actually has much more CGI than any of the PT film; the issue is that CGI of that scope back in the early 2000s was widely unheard of. As such there was a lot of growing pains and ILM was still trying to figure out how to properly work with the technology and make it look convincing. So all these practical effects, sets, and real locations get overlooked because the CGI at the time just wasn’t 100% ready yet. Not saying that magically makes a lot of the CGI good, just that there is a reason.

But that’s also a problem with the decision making. If the technology isn’t ready, you don’t use it. Or you think it is ready and it’s not and you’re just fooling yourself.

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There’s a lot of garbage whether it was built by hand and composited later or not. Execution is everything. The one thing that always confused me was this effect

Didn’t ILM pioneer morphing back in 1990 or maybe earlier? Why is it nearly just as bad in the third movie …in a major scene?

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TV’s Frink said:

Ryan-SWI said:

The ST actually has much more CGI than any of the PT film; the issue is that CGI of that scope back in the early 2000s was widely unheard of. As such there was a lot of growing pains and ILM was still trying to figure out how to properly work with the technology and make it look convincing. So all these practical effects, sets, and real locations get overlooked because the CGI at the time just wasn’t 100% ready yet. Not saying that magically makes a lot of the CGI good, just that there is a reason.

But that’s also a problem with the decision making. If the technology isn’t ready, you don’t use it. Or you think it is ready and it’s not and you’re just fooling yourself.

This exact same criticism should be applied to cartoon Grand Moff Tarkin.

The Person in Question

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snooker said:

Episode II looks like plastic.

Ancient zooplankton and algae did turn into the oils used to make plastics just to be compared to Episode II.

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moviefreakedmind said:

The worst one of those was when Mace Windu, Yoda, and Kenobi are all standing in the Jedi Temple atrium in AOTC. That one looked particularly bad.

Yup, I was thinking the same.

I also think LuckyGungan brings up a good point in that taking a still image of a fast-paced CG action scene isn’t a fair assessment of how it actually looks in motion. That still of Kashyyyk looked awful a few posts up, but it definitely isn’t that noticeably horrible in the film, even if it does still look fake.

Well it’s a give and take when in motion. Yeah for sure the pic I posted is unrepresentative and goes by fast. But I’d say, by and large, seeing it in motion is worse. I’m thinking of things like the pic Neverar posted, where when you see it in motion the compositing becomes very obvious and characters slide across the floor.

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That’s a very slow-moving scene, like the atrium discussion in AOTC. Those look just as bad if not worse in motion, but the battle scenes look much better in motion.

The Person in Question

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The TFA marketing overdrive that kept going on about practical effects was actually an attempt to annoy people that loved all the gorgeous prequel vistas.

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 (Edited)

TV’s Frink said:

Ryan-SWI said:

The ST actually has much more CGI than any of the PT film; the issue is that CGI of that scope back in the early 2000s was widely unheard of. As such there was a lot of growing pains and ILM was still trying to figure out how to properly work with the technology and make it look convincing. So all these practical effects, sets, and real locations get overlooked because the CGI at the time just wasn’t 100% ready yet. Not saying that magically makes a lot of the CGI good, just that there is a reason.

But that’s also a problem with the decision making. If the technology isn’t ready, you don’t use it. Or you think it is ready and it’s not and you’re just fooling yourself.

There is also a lot of special effects in the theatrical OT that looks bad (Jedi is particulary bad, but Empire is also not as good as Star Wars). The only difference is that in the OT they only used such effects when they had no alternative (which is why the OT reuses small sets all the time or it has relatively modest action scenes), while in the PT Lucas basically went free and did whatever he wanted without any consideration to how the movie would look years later.

Unless I’m mistaken, the space shots of Naboo in Phantom Menace were rendered, and the planet looks like ass, while Hoth or Dagobah still look decent almost 40 years later.

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Visually I didn’t like TFA very much. It looked more like the prequels than it did the OT, except the visual effects were just better. R1 looked more like the OT than TFA did.

The Person in Question

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moviefreakedmind said:

Visually I didn’t like TFA very much. It looked more like the prequels than it did the OT, except the visual effects were just better. R1 looked more like the OT than TFA did.

Can’t agree with that.

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Ryan-SWI said:

TV’s Frink said:

Ryan-SWI said:

TV’s Frink said:

Ryan-SWI said:

TV’s Frink said:

Mocata said:

Hahaha YES. The comedy I’ve been waiting for.

All three prequels above ESB. And we’re supposed to ignore these posts. Lol.

I mean you think the ST are good films so if we’re gonna start taking cheap shots two can play at that game.

I don’t rank them above ESB so your point is irrelevant.

Right. I forgot dissenting opinions aren’t allowed. We should just all post an identical ranking over and over again to stilt discussion, because it’s not like this is a forum or anything.

Here’s an actual question for you…why do you consider all three theatrical prequels better than Empire Strikes Back?

If you’re actually wondering why, I’ll bite.

I’m not going to comment on why I think ROTS is better purely because I feel that film has enough defenders as is; I’m sure you disagree with them, but you’ve probably heard arguments for the film time and time again, so there’s no point repeating them. Dumbing it down, I think it’s both visually and emotionally more impactful, while having a more interesting plot and contributing more to the saga’s lore as a whole; but that’s just my opinion.

As for TPM and AOTC being ranked higher?
First of all I want to make one thing clear; I think on a technical level, one based purely on physical filmmaking and nothing else; ESB is undoubtedly the best Star Wars film. Its direction, artistry and dare I say, acting, is unmatched to this day.

However, that’s not all I look for in a Star Wars film. I’ve always been more concerned with the overall story of the saga of films I - VI than technical details. You can disagree with this notion and that’s fine, but that’s just my preference.

I think the world-building, the expansion of the lore and the incredibly detailed plot of TPM and AOTC far outweigh that of the OT. Do I think the execution is better? No. The execution of the OT (At least ANH and ESB), is fantastic. The execution of the Prequels? Not so much. But I much prefer an interesting experience over a play by the numbers one; there are plenty of ‘legendary’ films that hit all the technical beats, but few as interesting as the prequels.

I’m not going super in-depth because I’ve spent years on this site frequently just getting trolled for my viewpoints so I don’t want to pump heaps of time into a response, so I’m trying to keep it simple.

Essentially what I’m saying is that everyone pulls different things from Star Wars. Some people are just interested in seeing the best technically made film possible, and that’s totally fine. If we’re judging the films purely on those merits I’d say TFA is better than ROTJ, but that’s not all I personally care about.

I know it gets made fun of a lot but I personally think George’s vision for a one complete story told over six films is incredibly interesting and valuable, and I view all six films as one large piece, so I judge them more on what they add to the overall story than what I do as an individual work of art.

If you disagree, totally cool, this kind of thing is subjective, but that’s just where I stand.

I’m coming into this a bit late, but I was clicking around testing the site after doing some maintenance and stumbled on this post. I also think the prequels (and their supporters) tend to get judged more harshly than is warranted — both here and elsewhere — and I’m glad there are counterpoints to those opinions. I started this site to push for the preservation of the OT, not to be anti-PT. I enjoy them for what they are and wish they were more in some ways.

And TPM is my favorite of the PT. There, I said it 😛

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MTFBWY…A

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Jay said:

And TPM is my favorite of the PT. There, I said it 😛

I’m honestly surprised this isn’t a more widely held opinion. It’s my favorite by a pretty wide margin, too.