Frank your Majesty said:
which means the prequels got it totally wrong.You’re not seeing what i’m saying. The PT used CG for Yoda, yes. But that’s because CG is (very arguably) superior to puppetry. It’s why Maz Kanata isn’t a puppet.
You can of course disagree that CG is more expressive etc, but it’s changing it BACK after it’s already been changed that is the comment on the franchise’s history that i’m talking about- in a way that merely “updating” Yoda was not.I mean, they wouldn’t have made him a puppet in TLJ if they didn’t think that superior. I think many people would say puppet Yoda is far superior to CG Yoda.
As for ‘changing’ vs. ‘changing back,’ I don’t see any significant difference between the two, especially in this series where, if you were to watch chronologically, had TLJ used CG, that would seem like ‘changing back.’
I don’t think i’m really getting my point across. I’m trying to say that Maz Kanata wasn’t a puppet for the same reason PT Yoda wasn’t a puppet- the tech is newer. It wasn’t a comment on the puppet Yoda being bad. Yoda being a puppet in TLJ is a comment on CG Yoda being bad/worse, even though Maz Kanata exists.
I don’t see how it’s a comment on anything. TLJ is a sequel to ESB and ROTJ and in those films Luke interacts with a puppet Yoda. Simple as that I think.
It’s the director’s decision. When Lucas decided to change Yoda to be CG, that was his perogative. Hopefully a director isn’t making decisions based solely on what tech is “newer” (though I fear that was a big factor in many of Lucas’s PT decisions).
Okay, but then why was Maz Kanata (AKA dimestore Yoda) CG when JJ tried to spin TFA as “practical effects: The Movie”?
And by “newer” I meant that Lucas perceived a benefit to using it. Not that I communicated that at all.
Well first of all your over-exaggerating JJ’s statements on practical effects. Anyone who’s seen the film knows that there’s thousands of VFX shots and JJ would have no reservations admitting it. Both kinds of effects serve purposes. The pre-release hype over practical effects was only done to quell the fears of fans who were turned off by the two guys on a green screen approach of the prequels.
As for why Maz was CG, it must be noted that she was actually conceived as puppet character. And I think there’s a lot of reasons why JJ might’ve made the decision to go with motion capture. Besides the simple binary “better or worse” that you suggest, being a CG character gives the director and performer a lot of latitude to change the character and performance well after production has wrapped. If I remember correctly, Maz and Snoke’s final designs were chosen relatively late in the process.
Ultimately, why a director chooses one or the other depends on a variety of factors. With JJ, you can tell that he pushed for puppet creatures in every instance except ones in prominent speaking roles. The fact that he replaced Plutt’s face with CG would suggest that there was something he wasn’t getting out of that particular puppet performance.
With Yoda, things are slightly different. If Rian was making a comment, as you suggest, I’m not sure why he wouldn’t have made Snoke a puppet as well (which is what many rumors said he would). But Snoke’s role is fairly sizeable in the film, and it’s easy to see why Rian would have opted for continued use of motion capture there. But with Yoda, this is a character who has a history of being a puppet. Every scene he’s ever had with Luke was as a puppet, performed by Frank Oz. Considering the fact that this is quite likely Yoda’s last film appearance, it seems at the very least fitting to be done this way. Moreover, there’s really no need to make him CG. When Lucas did it, he said it was done for the purpose of the fight scenes. Not only does Yoda not fight here, he just has one scene where he remains largely stationary.
So, to sum up, directors prefer puppets in certain circumstances, this role fit that circumstance, the character has a history of being a puppet, the puppet version of the character is (by most accounts) the overall better known and better liked version, the puppet version is the one chronologically closest to this film, and using a puppet here worked better to connect on an emotional level with the films that are most relevant to this scene. The fact that the character has appeared as CG a couple times doesn’t seem like a terribly great reason against.