RU.08 said:
I don’t care how the special effects team does it, they can use CGI or a puppet or a man in a mask or do whatever they want. My point was that you don’t want it to look fake. You don’t want people to roll their eyes and say “lifeless puppet” or “CGI” or “Halloween mask” etc!I ask you this, though: has there been a single sci-fi/fantasy movie in the past fifteen years or so that featured a major character that wasn’t an actor in a costume that achieved this? I suppose Gollum would be the one, but my reaction to him was always more “Jesus, that’s impressive CGI” rather than “I can’t tell if that’s CGI”. He’s sort of the Yoda puppet of CGI. Effects almost always look like effects, that’s just the reality we’re in.
I understand this Snork guy is just one of few CGI characters in the movie, and yeah the story it’s more important (except less then 25% of it is actually original, but whatever), but I still don’t get it: the PT was constantly criticized for its CGI puppets (especially Yoda), but now for TFA all of this suddenly is just… fine? Honestly I agree with RU.08 and, considering Snork looks a lot like the Emperor in ROTJ, I don’t see why they couldn’t use a real guy in costume (with just a few fixes in CGI if actually needed).