Did the prequels have boring visuals? — Page 2

DavidBrennan said:

American Hominid said:

To me, the prequels had some pretty evocative designs/preproduction work too:

 [....]

  

Granted, some of that was not used as-is, but I don't think there was a lack of interesting design. Though I do see a difference in how McQuarrie's work, along with  the rest of the artists on the OT, creates a sense of "world" in me that some of the prequel art does not.  This might be due to the use of traditional media and generally sketchier aesthetics (there are some nice prequel pieces like that too).  I'm not sure. McQuarrie's world definitely feels more lived-in, but I also like the nouveau/deco/early 20th century feel that shows up in the prequel designs, especially in TPM.

I do think that the OT, though it was created and viewed as a spectacle when it was made, struck a nice balance between good filmmaking and showing off the designs. I think the PT got progressively more showy, and it can just seem garish.

Not only did they seem to construct shots specifically to show off the design work (in very in-your-face ways, I mean), there were so many designs that it was hard to keep track of things. I never felt the OT was impoverished in its numbers of new ship/character designs per movie.  It became a bit overwhelming in the prequels.

I think one major distinction between the PT and OT art can be viewed by contrasting the Alderaan design - and bear in mind that the above Alderaan design is among the more detailed and grand designs used for AOTC or ROTS (by far, in my opinion).  It's clearly more of an impressionist design, whereas Ralph McQuarrie's were much more tactile and definitive - and yet every bit as grand (in my opinion).

 

I highly recommend the book, The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. which features I think almost all of McQuarrie's great paintings (woven together in a faux travelogue of the galaxy by Kevin J. Anderson).

TISWU is one of my favorites. :)

And that's a good point - McQuarrie's work, and the OT in general, is much more modernist/minimalist in flavor than the PT. In some ways this is intentional (Theed, etc).  But in other ways it probably reflects the changing styles in illustration, architecture, and design over the last 30-40 years.  Personally I tend to prefer the "70s-80s future" look.

Mrebo said:

Many good points. And ultimately blame lies with he who chose which visuals to use. It's not that the battle droids (pictured below) do not have artistic merit or would not make for a cool sci-fi painting.

I am curious, how would you have envisioned the galactic senate?

"DIE, Jedi dogs. Oh... what did I say?"

Oh shit, ROTFLMAO!  Now Im crying!  too......damn........funny!

DuracellEnergizer said:

Blame the CGI. The visuals of the PT - flawed though they are in places - would have looked a lot better done in the old school "models-and-mattes" method of production.

Case in point: the prequels themselves. To me, there is a noticeable difference between this:

and this:

A ton of the landscapes in the later prequels were models; I'm not sure if any of the post-TPM vehicle shots were.

They were models????? How the hell did they screw it up and make them look cgi then??

I really don't know. I suspect it has to do with the complex camera movements within shots (not possible in the OT), and perhaps even more to do with the heavy use of CGI characters and vehicles, and their flashy movements (really not possible in the OT).

I think I'll watch through the PT a little and see if that makes sense.

the pt had models - but many of the models would have been actual sets or partial sets in the OT.  i guess the trade-off is you can build actual sets, but only so many and then you lose the diversity of locations. one of the model makers also said that the digital camera gave problems because it was too 'clean'

for vehicle models, the problem is they would have one or 2 models engulfed within hundreds, if not thousands, of cgi objects.

[sigh] have movies become 'overproduced' ? you may remember during the late 1980s, the music business focused on hit singles, slick big-budget production values and a lot of synthesized/keyboard music.  then came eric claptons unplugged album and everyone was like 'wow, check this out!"

not too long after, almost every music genre (rock, pop, rap) became more stripped down and rebuilt from the ground-up.

maybe not a great analogy, but do movies need an 'unplugged'?  how about the artist?  its black and white and silent!! will that change things?

American Hominid said:

I really don't know. I suspect it has to do with the complex camera movements within shots (not possible in the OT), and perhaps even more to do with the heavy use of CGI characters and vehicles, and their flashy movements (really not possible in the OT).

I think I'll watch through the PT a little and see if that makes sense.

This is a really good point. Sometimes we complain about CG looking fake...and we are wrong. We're tricked by things we think can't be done without CG.

Hoth-Nudist said:

Mrebo said:

Many good points. And ultimately blame lies with he who chose which visuals to use. It's not that the battle droids (pictured below) do not have artistic merit or would not make for a cool sci-fi painting.

I am curious, how would you have envisioned the galactic senate?

"DIE, Jedi dogs. Oh... what did I say?"

Oh shit, ROTFLMAO!  Now Im crying!  too......damn........funny!

Glad you enjoyed it xD

And, Bingo, I don't blame Brad anymore. Not in the least.

What PT moments could have had (more) visual impact with minimum alteration?

American Hominid said:

I really don't know. I suspect it has to do with the complex camera movements within shots (not possible in the OT), and perhaps even more to do with the heavy use of CGI characters and vehicles, and their flashy movements (really not possible in the OT).

I think I'll watch through the PT a little and see if that makes sense.

I do wonder though. The model which appears to be Dex's diner and the blue building on the back right are not the same as what we see on screen (which are placed different as well).

Walking carpet, timdiggerm, good points.

I just stepped through AOTC looking at effects shots; here's what I noticed.

-Actors are often composited directly into model or CGI environments. In the OT, mattes were used to extend sets (docking bay 327 on Cloud City, the Executor bridge, etc), but the actors were on a mostly real set with real lighting. Not only does this automatically look more natural, I think it allows for better shot compositions, because you can take advantage of the geometry of the set, the lighting effects, etc... instead of everything being a two-shot against some to-be-determined background that may or may not really work against the actors' placement in the shot.

-Things move strangely. Aliens are sometimes very animated, and missiles, energy trails, explosion debris, etc, all follow twisty paths through space, which might be cool a few times, but it happens a lot.

-On a related note, the lighting from said explosions/projectiles seems off, probably because it doesn't bleach out the shot the way a real huge explosion would. Rich orange tongues of flame sometimes seem out of place (the destruction of the flying wing at the beginning of AOTC sticks out in my mind).

Relatedly, the lighting on CG objects often seems flatter (or less stark?) than normal, which exacerbates the amount of visible detail (sometimes so much that it makes things look unrealistic, with tons of circuits and things all over) as well as making the objects in question not look like real objects.

Compare (apologies for the image heaviness, but I think it's illustrative):

I've only briefly thought about this before but the answer to OPs question is:

YES YES YES UNEQUIVOCALLY YES!

Flat, dull, lifeless, boring, inane, stupid, pointless!

There is no life to these shots, no vitality, no wonder, most criminally no imagination. By the time of II and III when everything was an empty room with a blue screen, all semblance of camerawork was gone.

There were flashes of energy in TPM. Such as actual people walking around in a desert. That was nice.

SW has a freshness in it's camerawork if you look at it. There's a definite energy that ties into the overall experience. That said, my camera related favorite moment is in the DS chasm when Luke begins to pull out the super-convenient grappling hook and the camera pans up into a sudden an unexpected documentary style closeup.

A moment of inspired energizing camera movement that sets up a composition most would never use.

THERE. IS. NEVER. ANYTHING. LIKE. THIS. IN. THE. PREQUELS.

EVER.

You simply can't set actors in front of a stationary shot and expect to fill in the lifeless looking void with a massive amount of whirring bits of crap from a computer. For some reason live action is now being seen by a few as uninvolving. Spielberg made Tintin with essentially a videogame controller. I couldn't watch the film after seeing that.

I don't know, I'd give the prequels a tad more credit than that, if only because their (very) general plot already existed in the 1970s. (It's not that those ideas are automatically good because they're older; rather, they were developed in concert with the other films, and have also had more time to age in Lucas's mind.) Where there were changes made to this, I think they mostly ended up being less effective. And of course, a ton of stuff was added, some good, some not.

And there are some things that aren't really followed up on thematically. Anakin's motivation - political, personal, what? It varies. This is where there was clearly some basic idea, but more development of a throughline in all three films would have been VERY beneficial.

But I don't think the PT is all in the viewer's head (though I have seen quite a few people go way overboard with their analysis of symbolism).

I think they look too modern, and newer in tech than the oot.

When the designs should look older than the other movies not newer.

Also bringing back the Joe Johnston, Ralph Mcquarrie designs would have helped.

Again they look too clean and sterile and not lived in or universe once used like the oot.  Even the props and costumes in the oot had meticulous aging done to them to give them a real world feel, also real sets and models and locations/stuntwork instead of cgi helps too.

Ralph McQuarrie's art had a really nice pulp science fiction look to that found its way into the entire design philosophy for the OT.  The prequels just don't have that lived in look without McQuarrie's designs. 

American Hominid said:

I don't know, I'd give the prequels a tad more credit than that, if only because their (very) general plot already existed in the 1970s.

Really?

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

American Hominid said:

I don't know, I'd give the prequels a tad more credit than that, if only because their (very) general plot already existed in the 1970s.

Really?

 whatever plot lucas had in the 1970s for the PT you could fit on a napkin - maybe the reverse side of the same napkin spielberg used to write up his pre-nup with amy irving

TheBoost said:

This is less about how the visuals were achieved, but about the lack of passion put into them.

Think of how awesome the following should have looked

• A guy fighting with two lightsabers at once.
• A lightsaber duel in the dark.
• A guy fighting a four-armed monster each arm wielding a lightsaber.

 

i was excited when I first heard about the a lightsaber fight in the rain for AOTC.  I assumed that the rain would cause obi-wans lightsaber to sizzle and crackle...

but it didn't :(