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Watched Star Trek II on HBO the other day, what a difference in effects compared to the OT!

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I was watching Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan on HBO the other day for the first time in many years, I couldn't believe how inferior the effects were to the SW OT.

Now, it is still a great movie, and the effects dont detract from the movie one bit, but this shows how far ahead Lucas & Co. were from everyone else in the late 70's early 80's with stop motion models. There is a big difference from ROTJ & ESB to the original SW, but all those movies are SOOO much better than the early Star Trek movies from that time. Can you guys think of any other SciFi movies from that time and how their effects compared to SW?

Sometimes I take for granted how great SW was at one time, ah, those were the days...........
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Well Blade Runner had some great special effects. All models and no CG. Still looks great,
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
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Say what you want about the effects, but the computer animation of the Genesis Effect was TOP O' DA LINE at that time. There was nothing like it.

Besides, STII had far more story than the entire PT put together.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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I know this isn't quite in the same time period, but I can't help thinking about Clash of the Titans. I mean, it's a fun movie, but I'm sure you know the special effects...

And Rocky Horror Picture Show came out two years before Star Wars, and I still think the laser blast Riff-Raff fires at the end looks really funny.

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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ST II was a low-budget film dont forget. They reused the bridge sets for both ships and the klingon footage from the beginning was just recycled effects shots from the first trek film. But yes, the effects are noticeably inferior. Thats why Star Wars was king of the genre baby!
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You mean ST II, don't you?

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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ah, yeah i meant stII. damn these sci fi titles!
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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
Say what you want about the effects, but the computer animation of the Genesis Effect was TOP O' DA LINE at that time. There was nothing like it.

Besides, STII had far more story than the entire PT put together.


It had more emotion to it than the PT for sure. I'll take over-acting by Shatner any day over wooden acting by Hayden.
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
http://www.myspace.com/harlock415
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Kahhhhn!! Yeah, way cooler than "NooooooooooooO!"

On another note, Gaff, I think Riff Raff's blast was intentionally cheesy.
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Um, CO, Wrath of Kahn's special effects were done by Lucas and Co. ILM did the effects for Star Trek II, III, IV, VI, VII, and VIII. Though I believe the Genesis Video was outsourced as ILM didn't do CG at the time. So how ILM could've been ahead of itself...

At a budget of 11,000,000, that's only 2 million under Star Wars, and 7 under Empire. So I don't see how that makes it any more "low budget" than Star Wars. It's not an astronomical figure, but certainly not a B movie like the term "low budget" suggests.

Zombie, yes it did recycle footage from The Motion Picture. This is however due to the shear abundant amount shot for that film. It was felt that instead of wasting money shooting establishing shots, a couple of shots from TMP could be edited and fit in. They even reused models. I'm sure if they hadn't you'd be hear saying how they wasted money, which they would've. It's a wonderful exercise in intelligent cost cutting. This was done to conserve money for the Mutara Nebula sequence, which I still think is one of the best examples of model effects on film.

For what the film called for, I'd say Wrath of Kahn is easily on par with the classic trilogy in terms of how models can exceed CGI.


Made for IE Forum's Episode III theme month - May 2005.

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Originally posted by: Klingon_Jedi
Um, CO, Wrath of Kahn's special effects were done by Lucas and Co. ILM did the effects for Star Trek II, III, IV, VI, VII, and VIII. Though I believe the Genesis Video was outsourced as ILM didn't do CG at the time. So how ILM could've been ahead of itself...

At a budget of 11,000,000, that's only 2 million under Star Wars, and 7 under Empire. So I don't see how that makes it any more "low budget" than Star Wars. It's not an astronomical figure, but certainly not a B movie like the term "low budget" suggests.

Zombie, yes it did recycle footage from The Motion Picture. This is however due to the shear abundant amount shot for that film. It was felt that instead of wasting money shooting establishing shots, a couple of shots from TMP could be edited and fit in. They even reused models. I'm sure if they hadn't you'd be hear saying how they wasted money, which they would've. It's a wonderful exercise in intelligent cost cutting. This was done to conserve money for the Mutara Nebula sequence, which I still think is one of the best examples of model effects on film.

For what the film called for, I'd say Wrath of Kahn is easily on par with the classic trilogy in terms of how models can exceed CGI.


I really liked that battle. Reminds me a little of "The Enemy Below."

I think the Genesis animation was done by JPL but I could be wrong.
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
http://www.myspace.com/harlock415
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Originally posted by: Klingon_Jedi
Um, CO, Wrath of Kahn's special effects were done by Lucas and Co. ILM did the effects for Star Trek II, III, IV, VI, VII, and VIII. Though I believe the Genesis Video was outsourced as ILM didn't do CG at the time. So how ILM could've been ahead of itself...

At a budget of 11,000,000, that's only 2 million under Star Wars, and 7 under Empire. So I don't see how that makes it any more "low budget" than Star Wars. It's not an astronomical figure, but certainly not a B movie like the term "low budget" suggests.

Zombie, yes it did recycle footage from The Motion Picture. This is however due to the shear abundant amount shot for that film. It was felt that instead of wasting money shooting establishing shots, a couple of shots from TMP could be edited and fit in. They even reused models. I'm sure if they hadn't you'd be hear saying how they wasted money, which they would've. It's a wonderful exercise in intelligent cost cutting. This was done to conserve money for the Mutara Nebula sequence, which I still think is one of the best examples of model effects on film.

For what the film called for, I'd say Wrath of Kahn is easily on par with the classic trilogy in terms of how models can exceed CGI.


Text

I take your word for it, but I guess how are the OT effects that much better than Wrath of Khan? I mean it is like night and day!

But as I mentioned before, the inferior effects don't take away from the power of the movie, and I think it is a lesson to directors, that a good story and good drama can override a more visual experience to many. I for one wasn't turned off by the effects in Wrath of Khan, but just noticed how much better the OT effects were.

I guess another question should be, you have a generation of younger fans that love these new effects, and eat up all this CG crap. So aren't the directors just givng to the fans what they want?

For me personally, I think most of these movies that are overloaded with CG look like one big animated film with actors placed into it.
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Originally posted by: sybeman
Kahhhhn!! Yeah, way cooler than "NooooooooooooO!"

On another note, Gaff, I think Riff Raff's blast was intentionally cheesy.


It probably was, but I still don't know if they could have done any better had they wanted to.

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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$11 million is not "modest", its relatively low for a space adventure film. Star Wars had squeeked by with roughly $9 million five years earlier but due to inflation this is not comparable. Empire cost over twice the amount of STII (rough 25 mil) and Jedi, released the next year, cost about three times Wrath of Kahn (about 32 mil). So the statement "it was pretty low-budget" is indeed correct for this type of films. Even your average comedy was costing slightly more than Kahn's budget.
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And as far as budget is concerned, I think ST: The Motion Picture finaled out at $40 million(give or take). Most people hate ST:TMP. I just found it boring for sunsequent viewings after the initial excitement of seeing it opening night.

So $40 million budget, mediocre film.
$11 million superior film. Go figure.
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
http://www.myspace.com/harlock415
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I'll take Ray Harryhausen's stop motion FX in Clash of the Titans over CGI any day of the week! The Medusa scene is still scary!

Where were you in '77?

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heck the Skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts is still awesome.
There's good in the Original Trilogy, and it's worth fighting for.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
http://www.myspace.com/harlock415
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Star Trek II is better than the sci-fi films coming out today,

just because there is no modern 21st century cg, does not make it a bad film.

If they ever add cg to wrath of Khan, it would be as rediculous as the star wars special editions with effects from 2 time different time periods.

Re-do's of effects on classic sci-fi films never work and should not be done unless the movie sucks so bad it would definetely need it. Like Star trek V for example, that could defintely use some new effects.

I hate how fake all of todays films look, how horribly overblown all the cgi effects are in them.

worst offenders:

peter jackson's king kong

star wars prequel trilogy

Lord of the rings trilogy

Star wars 2004 and 1997 Lucasized cg crapped on versions

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Originally posted by: CO
I take your word for it, but I guess how are the OT effects that much better than Wrath of Khan? I mean it is like night and day!


I wouldn't go that far. I think that they're on par. It's just that Wrath of Kahn didn't ask for the set pieces Star Wars did. A lot of it is rather subtile. Plus you have two huge, lumbering ships animated like a sea battle. Whereas Star Wars was influenced by small, nimble fighters in dog fights. So it's really more of the focus and emphasis placed on the effects instead of a whole "night and day" sort of thing. Even if it is as "low budget" film, it made more that adaquate use of it's budget. TMP got severely out of hand in that department.

I too am in the camp that effects don't make a movie. People have forgotten that old adage, "if the film has you commenting on how great the special effects are, then the effects have failed". They serve the film, not vice versa. Kahn is a great example of that.

I believe the Genesis sequence was done by the division that eventually became Pixar. Which Lucasfilm had a stake in at the time. ILM claims responsibility for it on their site. I'm not certain though. All I know was that ILM proper didn't do it.


Made for IE Forum's Episode III theme month - May 2005.

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I think we need a Special Edition of STII to replace all of the models with CG, have the Ceti Eel replaced by a big CG head that pops out of the sand and blinks notably (with Jabba The Hutt's theme from ROTJ playing in the background), and re-shoot the CG of the Genesis sequence to look on-par with the brilliant visuals at the end of A.I.
I am fluent in over six million forms of procrastination.
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http://droidmaker.com/ the book about the early stages of computer aided film work at ILM. (pg 241-257)
[here's a very abbreviated version of the story]
At the time computer animation wasn't part of ILM proper. They we're an advanced unit working on future projects. (to put things in perspective, they had just created the concept and initial implementation of alpha channels) So ILM had the contract to do the FX for ST2, and at first the computer division was not expected to help out. But they we're asked to help envision the computer interface design, and after reviewing what shots still needed to be done, decided that they would like to give the Genisis Effect a try. (The animation is 1,621 frames - 67 1/2 seconds) They had hired a guy (Loren) recently who had done fractal landscapes and camera work. (the computer allowed for a more dynamic fly through, not as easy to accomplish with models) Another member of the team (Reeves) invented particle animation, which became another important compositional element in the Genesis Effect. Motion Blur was also refined as a process and implemented in the FXs. All this work was being done on VAX computers. Also keep in mind there was no way to output the final animation, since laser printers didn't exist. Instead they filmed each frame (off a monitor) with a 35mm camera. Frames to render, took between 5 minutes to 5 hours. The mountains took a month of full-time rendering. (i think work on the sequence started in late 81 and was finished in April 82)

Most likely if it wasn't for the Genesis Effect proof of concept the computer generated shot in RotJ (Death Star/Endor) would have been done in a different way.

there's tons more in the chapter but that's the basics, great book, worth getting. Don't believe me read the reviews by Ben Burtt and Alvy Ray Smith (Co-Founder of Pixar) amazon.com Droidmaker page
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