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Am I the only one who thinks the CGI effects look fake?

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I know Emperor Lucas is in love with CGI, but I actually think most of the effects in the prequels were INFERIOR to those in the OT because they look cartoonish and fake. Tatooine, Hoth, Daghobah and Endor were real looking. Heck, even Bespin was more believable than Naboo and Coruscant. I really think they went overboard on the CGI, which I think should have only been used for space battle scenes or action sequences. The computer generated backgrounds and characters looked like they belong in Shrek and not in Star Wars, at least IMO.
George Lucas was seduced by the dark side. The OOT ceased to exist in his mind and became the Special Editions...." "They're more maching now than movies. Twisted and evil."
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You're right. They look fake. My kingdom for an actual set!

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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I like knowing that, for example, the Yoda puppet is in storage somewhere, not in 1's and 0's on a hard drive.

BUT, at the same time I am retiring from 'Lucas Bashing,' officially, because it's getting old.
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I actually think they're better in TPM and ROTS than in the middle one. Call me nuts but Attack of the Clones was the least convincing - they were still new at doing Yoda, a lot of the environments sucked. In TPM they had enough practical stuff to make it look good, and in ROTS they finally had ironed out their problems. Heck, in the shot where Yoda goes "consumed he is by Darth Vader" I was finally able to think 'hey he looks like a puppet'.
And you don't know how much I hate CGI and how much it pains me to credit it. So trust me, by ROTS it wasn't that bad.
VADER: Let me look on you with my own eyes...

LUKE: Dad, where are your eyebrows?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WO_S6UgkQk0
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You're not alone Zeb. AOTC has the worst CGI of the prequels by far.

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I agree. Just look at the droid factory scene or *gag* Anakin cutting that cgi pear (or whatever it was).
Don't forget: with Lacuna, you can forget.
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Now, I might sound insane, but the only moment I found the CGI Yoda to look like a puppet is in ROTS, when he is figthing with Palpatine and he falls and grabs into that senate booth thing, there's a 2 or 3 second shot showing Yoda from a distance, trying to hold himself into that thing, he looked like the ESB puppet during those 2 or 3 seconds.
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering
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No matter how complex the model or sophisticated the computer, the CG is still a 2D image trying to appear 3D. If an entire scene is CG, it looks fine. Once you add a something real, you see the 2D-ness.

Ex. Every time I see the re-added ANH Jabba scene, whether the 97 or 04 edition, it looks wrong.
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no matter how good is a CGI it'll always looks fake and more important COLD! no feelings of a real light interaction, of the grain of the film, of the "real thing"!
i don't like the CGI Yoda, it's over animated, it draws to much intention to itself ("look!!! i'm a big CGI that took months and hundreds of peoples to animate where a puppet works 100 times better!"), it 's the imperfections of the puppet that makes the OT Yoda "real" like a character, and not special effect.

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Have you ever listened to the commentary on Attack of the Clones? I swear the animators spend half the movie patting themselves on the back over their Yoda. I mean, they don't just explain how things work and are naturally proud, it's like, "See that eye movement that Yoda did there? Oh, that was so cool! I loved that! We couldn't do that with the puppet! He is so amazing!" It made me want to wretch after 15 continuous minutes of it.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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TPM had the best CGI because they had a longer production time for that movie, I heard they started work as early as 1994/95
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Really? The first official pre-production news I've seen was in 1997...
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering
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There seems to be a lot more background shots in the PT - I mean actors in the distance with CGI surrounding them as a background - than the OT where close up shots of the actors were the norm.

It gives substance to the view that the CGI takes you out of the story and characters and lessens it's effect - and changes the feel the of the saga. Obviously GL going back and inserting more CGI into the OT will 'help' change the overall direction style...

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The PT is already showing its age, alot quicker than the OT has, but the OT still looks great.
"Drink the Kool-Aid. Wear blinders. Cover your ears. Because that's the only way you can totally enjoy Revenge of the Sith -- the final and most futile attempt from skilled producer, clumsy director and tin-eared writer George Lucas to create a prequel trilogy to match the myth-making spirit of the original Star Wars saga he unleashed twenty-eight years ago. Fan boys, of course, have convinced themselves otherwise. So have several critics, if you go by early reviews."
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where is it shopwing its age? give me an example of a shot that looked fantastic when it came out and looks bad now. also the OT would be showing lots of age if it was never cleaned up in the faces version and then the SE and so on.
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what movie over 20 years, if it is not kept cleaned up won't show its age?

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Originally posted by: starkiller
No matter how complex the model or sophisticated the computer, the CG is still a 2D image trying to appear 3D. If an entire scene is CG, it looks fine. Once you add a something real, you see the 2D-ness.

Ex. Every time I see the re-added ANH Jabba scene, whether the 97 or 04 edition, it looks wrong.


I couldn't have said it any better myself.

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I agree with the CG...it has taken a big step towards improvement in ROTS, but TPM and ATOC it looks like Roger Rabbit. Live action actors over blue/Green screens showing a cartoony background. Natalie Portman said nearly all the scenes they did were that way and it was very frustrating as an actor (maybe part of the reason the acting seems stilted). The cartooniness pulls me out of the movie. What's sad is that 20-30 years ago it looked more convincing and "real" with models than it does now. Further still I don't dislike CG, I love Blood: The Last Vampire, Appleseed, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within and I am psyched about Final Fantasy: Advent Children and Sky Blue coming out on DVD. Have it one way or the other. Live actors over a cartoony background looks so fake. CG should be a tool to HELP a movie like in LOTR, not BE the movie. Oh well, what do I know...he's a billionaire and I am not...so be it.
16 years I wait and this is what I get???
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I don't really think the CGI helped Lord of the Rings, it resulted in truly questionable shots winding up in the movie (anything with Legolas' digital double stunk like a fetid corpse). Outside of that it wasn't so bad, but I think it's like any modern movie - they're doing stuff they can't quite do yet and I don't want to watch an FX test, I want to watch something that is perfect (especially when I'm told it's the "best Movie Ever" and have just paid ten bucks to see it).
VADER: Let me look on you with my own eyes...

LUKE: Dad, where are your eyebrows?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WO_S6UgkQk0
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What I don't understand is how ILM is the forerunner in CGI technology, yet they put out garbage. And when did "life like" mean "shiny"?
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The only movie I know of having CGI a 100% beneficial to the movie and not fake, badly done or annoying at any point, is Jurassic Park. Still there are movies being released with CGI inferior to that one. A couple of months ago I saw "Red Planet" and that one probably has the worst CGI I've ever seen. And "I, Robot" could have been done a lot better aswell I think.

That's no moon. It's a LaserDisc.

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Who framed Roger Rabbit was more believable than the prequel CGI.

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Fine, mister Lucas, while you're at it why dont you replace Lando with will smith?
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Originally posted by: Warbler
what movie over 20 years, if it is not kept cleaned up won't show its age?


thats my point

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I think he means that the film will deteriorate if not kept cleaned up over a period of 20 years, not that the special effects need to be updated.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Originally posted by: Kam
Who framed Roger Rabbit was more believable than the prequel CGI.

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All those fucking prequels by LucASS suck

"A Jedi can feel the force flow through him".
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Originally posted by: Kam
Who framed Roger Rabbit was more believable than the prequel CGI.


Well you have to remember that Roger Rabit wasn't even trying to convince us that it wasn't a cartoon; they only had to match motions with the actors movements.

In the prequels it's a whole different story. They are trying, and not always suceeding, to make us believe that these objects are physical solid "real life" objects, and that can't be easy. Still, RotS did a respectable job with the CGI, especially compared to the rushed cartoony look of the CGI at the end of AotC. CGI is used in like EVERY shot of RotS, but it's not really noticible except in just a few--mostly those involving Obiwan's cursed lizzard.

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