Hoth-Nudist said:
And I cant stand the jedi vs battle droid cgi mayhem. Cant see myself watching that crap ever again.
And I concur about the silly design of the battle droids. They look like something a preschooler would design. Hardly menacing and overly boring. Get a sack Luca$!
but but but...lucas said it was supposed to be that way!! the battle droids were intentionally lame!! he told spielberg this!!
a cynic would say that lucas simply was too lazy to choreograph an action sequence and only cared about the quantity of cgi (not quality). thats how the battledroids were contrived.
good thing we're not cynics ;P
anyways - so when we talk about the visuals, are we talking about strictly what we saw on the final screen or also the concepts, paintings and model work? if its the former, i wouldn't say boring just not engrossing or cozy. The jedi temple had cool drawings and it looks like it was based on the Duomo in Florence - but many shots in the films look so sterile. Utapau looked cool on paper, but it did not work for me at all in ROTS. Polii massa maternity ward also sucked as did many of the order 66 planets. Kayshyyk, OTOH, was great all the way through (too bad we saw so little of it).
I've said on other threads that AOTC for me is the most photogenic of the movies (at least on DVD - in theatres, the protype digital camera and projection caused problems). I liked the fireplace scene (speaking strictly of the visual, mind you) because it was cozy and had actual lighting and color creativity - it was the polar opposite of the over-the-top picnic scene. The Art of AOTC book is the only PT merchandise I own. there is one thing in particular thats kinda neat that no one else seems to have noticed. But even that movie has stuff i dind't like - the cloning facility with the babies looked lame. there was an abandoned concept drawing I saw that looked better than what was in the movie. I already mentioned that horrible shot of obi-wan, mace and yoda walking and talking. and enough has been said about the bone-headed decision to cgi all the clone-troopers.
We all like the 'used universe' of the OT and you dont see it a whole lot in the PT. That could be one reason. But Cloud city looks like something out of the PT and it always looked cool.
just feel the lighting, framing, editing and camera work for scenes that were predominantly cgi left a lot to be desired. sometimes it was cool - the scene in TPM with darth maul and sidious on the coruscant balcony at night. but it was few and far between. the ROTS opening space battle certainly wasn't inactive but it was just a bunch of spacehsips and lasers and explosions occupying every square inch of the screen.
ROTJ coulda looked better too, especially on endor and death star scenes that were not in the throne room. For years I could not describe it but someone said it looked flat and like a TV production - and i think thats perfect. Compare dagobah in ROTJ to ESB. For awhile I thought there wasn't much that could be done - endor looks like earth, no getting around it. and most movies in the mid 80s (worst movie decade ever) also looked like ROTJ.
sadly, as the third part of red letter medias ROTS review showed, lucas simply is not a 'visual' filmmaker as much as he insists he is.