60. | ROTS | ‘The Force Ghost in The Machine’ - the mystery of a briefly appearing head in the climactic sabre fight - solved…
     

‘The Force Ghost in The Machine’, an article by Ian Kintzle, explains all (April 2025, for Star Wars Celebration Japan)…

https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-movie-mistake-mystery-from-revenge.html

A Mini-Index…

 
0️⃣ • Introduction

1️⃣ • The Phantom Menace

2️⃣ • Attack Of The Clones

3️⃣ • Revenge Of The Sith

4️⃣ • Your own irksome / noticeable / poorly executed CGI scenes & CGI-affected scenes from the Prequels… (this post)

 
 
The above 15 topics for each of the 3 PT films are my own personal take on some of the many scenes that stood out to me. It is by no means a ‘definitive list’ or even a ‘comprehensive list’ of substandard / noticeably poor CGI issues in the Prequels…

Everyone’s mileage may very much vary on just what constitutes poorly executed/affected CGI in the Prequel Trilogy films.

Please add your own problematic / poor CGI scenes / irksome CGI issues / any scenes I’ve overlooked… in the thread, below…

46. NeverarGreat | ROTS | notorious CGI moments when Anakin, Kenobi & Palpatine meet the politicians - #1. | link
47. NeverarGreat | ROTS | notorious CGI moments when Anakin, Kenobi & Palpatine meet the politicians - #2. |link
48. Mocata | AOTC | Clones cutting up fresh air and eating missing CGI food from their plates in the Kamino cantina. | link
49. oojason | AOTC | awful looking unfinished CGI of the Chancellor’s office hallway. | link
50. oojason | AOTC | Ki-Adi-Mundi’s lightsaber changes colours in the battle on Geonosis. | link
51. Haarspalter | AOTC | ReShoot-Wig Obi-Wan walking through the awful looking CGI Jedi Temple hallway. | link
52. oojason | AOTC | Mace Windu misses trying to deflect away a blaster bolt and gets shot! 😉 (misaligned CGI) | link
53. oojason (all credit to Phase3) | TPM | Human actor blocking the CGI reflection from a blast door onto floor. | link
54. Anakin94 | TPM | the poor CGI texture of RD-D2’s dome in the N-1 Starfighter when flying through space. | link
55. oojason (all credit to Phase3) | TPM | Maul’s lightsaber blade is translucent / part disappears in many shots. | link
56. oojason (all credit to Phase3) | TPM | Incomplete CGI makes it appear that Qui-Gon has sliced right through Maul! | link
57. oojason (all credit to Phase3) | TPM | On the recent blu-ray release Qui-Gon has no colour at all for several frames. | link
58. oojason (all credit to JoyOfEditing) | AOTC | CGI snafu between Capt. Typho’s arm & body for the length of the shot. | link
59. oojason | TPM | Padmé’s ‘bulb’ dress is still plugged into the wall - seems someone forgot to CGI-out the power cable. | link
60. oojason | ROTS | 'The Force Ghost in The Machine’ - the mystery of a briefly appearing head in the end fight - solved. | link
     

HowINeedIt said:

Honestly, I think the full scale battle droid props mesh well with their CGI counterparts. Lucas should have done something similar with the clone troopers by having actors portray them in close ups shots. Yes, I know that as clones they all have to be the same size but you can easily work around that in close up shots, like they way Peter Jacksson made the actors for the fairly-short-in-statuer hobbits appear smaller than the actors actually were.

Yeah, I think you’re spot on re that… Lucas could have hired stand-ins / actors / extras etc in a similar range of height (6ft - 6ft 3in) and then used perspective camera ‘tricks’ long used in film for any group shots of Clone Troopers for close-ups / mid-range shots etc to give the impresion they awere all the same height - no additional CGI work required. Though it seems that wasn’t what Lucas was going for - or wanted to compromise on - as John Knoll and the already overworked / overstretched VFX team found out.

👍