George Lucas on Special effects and filmaking during making of ROTJ

This just proves what an asshole Lucas really is.

There was as much story in the PT as there was in the OT, it could be argued that the story didn't make as much sense but it clearly was there.

I think the main criteria is does the special effect serve the story or is the story secondary to the display of effects.

In most of ANH and ESB the effects are just as much a story telling element as the sound, the music, the dialogue, the editing etc.

Lucas has always had a taste for whimsy but in ROTJ some of the story telling elements began to warp towards the display for display sake side and in the SE and PT the emphasis on what can be shown for it's own sake moved well beyond what needed to be shown to tell the story.

I'm with Harrison Ford in thinking that the opening shot of ANH is pure story telling with special effects.

It describes the whole in-film fictional universe in one unforgettable sequence and as unforgettable as it is it flows perfectly into that universe as well as being the ultimate primer for it.

Y'know what one of the most amazing examples of visual effects I've ever seen is?

Zodiac

There's this scene where Mark Ruffalo is walking around a San Francisco crime scene at night, on some Haight-Ashbury-esque street.

Just about everything surrounding him, from the moving cars to the houses, was put in via cgi. I had absolutely no idea it was all fake until someone brought it up on a message board I frequent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT491ctM8Kk

I've been wanting to start a thread about this for a while, but this is proof that Dave Fincher (a former ILM-er!) would've been a perfect director for one of the prequels.

Hey come on now, he's not an asshole. This situation with the original versions is more of a dick move. Anyway the reality is that he just doesn't have the same job he had in 1983 so his m.o. is different now. He quit making movies to sell trinkets and give ponderous interviews. Did you know that Joseph Campbell Mythology Genre Limitations of Technology?

Forgive me for being potentially ignorant, but did the SE really add THAT much to the originals in terms of "effects"?

Sure, there are matt paintings replaced by similar looking CG landscapes or something, but I mean essentially?

ESB only has the Wampa (who was terrifying when not seen on screen, but now just kinda looks funny), and... anything else? ROTJ has, um, that one song in Jabba's palace replaced, which wasn't as disturbing in effects overload as it was in style.

SW had that Mos Eisley arrival bit, which was stupid, few giant cows walking around the screen, stormtroopers inexplicably riding giant cows... and... wasn't that shot with the departing X-Wings way cool? Then a few added stormtroopers in the death star... maybe a few weebo robots flew by thee stormtroopers here and there (which is really not that much of a stretch from that toy car in the DS later on)... anything else that's significant?

Just to throw it out there, the OT wasn't entirely guiltless when it comes to "action scenes for the sake of it", either - for example, the Death Star segment would've been a lot more believable and suspensful had they not cramped like 10 shootout scenes into half an hour, each of which is a major contributor to the stormtrooper meme.

But they went for cool, actioney swashbuckling, and way, it added fun, but took away a good portion of seriousness and suspense. "Alternative to fighting", yea?

Then, the TIEs attacking the Falcon... not that out of place, but it's just kinda thrown at us with questions like "did those guys go voluntarily on a suicide mission? or are they pussies like the rest?", and then at the end they're all like "we diid iiiit!!" as if they knew no more fighters would come chasing them... dunno, felt more like an excuse to have a super cool space battle scene than anything else.

The dogfight at the end I found unnecessarily stretched out and boring - obviously a show-off of some degree, as well.

Then, the robot camel attack on Hoth... now, the main point is that the rebels get attacked and eventually flee towards a new base - there is no tension involved in the rebels' escape, because they just breeze through the "blockade" or whatever in like 10 seconds, and the rest is just a lot of flying around and fighting - Luke pulls off some cool tricks and blows up two space camels, the rest is just background fighting and at the end, the Empire kinda wins - do we ever see the camels win and eradicate all the attackers, though? At the end, Luke and a few other pilots are just chillin' in the snow without worrying about anything, so my impression of that battle was that it had a bit too little consequence and tension involved. The main heroes flee, the majority of the rebellion makes it... to a space base that never gets attacked or even found by the Imperials from there on.

Again, had they focused on the escape and evacuation and a bit less on bringing down camels with cool tricks, with no avail at the end, I guess it would've turned out better narratively. We also wouldn't be laughing at the somewhat funny-looking robot camels today. 

Then, the asteroid chase sequence - again, this time clearly no one's trying to "let them escape", and they just send 4 TIE fighters? Who look like pussies and crash into the first asteroid that happens to float on their way? Why not send like 20 of them, there would've been enough left to at least track the ship to the dinosaur's belly, but then again, we couldn't have had that prolonged and completely absurd and pointless scene inside the monster, right?

Again, feels more like just an action scene pushed into the movie for the sake of it, and I can't say I felt any tension watching it, either.

But none of that compares to how useless most of the PT action is in relation to its necessity to the plot - sure, not all of them, but a very good chunk.

The Imperials have been given new orders, to capture the Falcon (not to destroy it or allow it to escape).

The fleet prior to that had been scattered to pick off the Rebels evacuating the base (we only see the first transport escape unscathed it doesn't follow that all of them did).

The aim is to knock out the hyperdrive (which they don't know isn't working) and to slow the ship down so it can be caught in the tractor beam of one of the capital ships.

The new orders and coupled with the prior orders make the sequence entirely consistent with the plot.

I think young Lucas was just talking about how the effects wouldn't mean jack if people didn't like Ford, Hamill and the gang, not the necessity of FX scenes, or lack thereof. This topic would come up a lot in that period, usually in the context of getting Lucas to distinguish Star Wars from Black Hole, Galactica, Star Trek I, Krull, Dragonslayer,  and everything else that came out in its wake.

Baronlando said:

This situation with the original versions is more of a dick move.

Agreed.

SE or no SE, good prequels or bad prequels, burying the originals is Lucas' biggest sin.

I seem to recall Lucas mocking the tag line for Godzilla (1998) which was "Size Matters" by saying "Story Matters".

For all it's faults I find Godzilla (1998) a much more watchable film than any of the PT.

Yep, even with Broderick as the star.

Bingowings said:

For all it's faults I find Godzilla (1998) a much more watchable film than any of the PT.

 +1

skyjedi2005 said:

It is from The John Philip Peacher book,and seems to almost be about the prequels its quite bizarre.  Reminds me of the star wars to Jedi quote " a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing".

 

"Special effects don't make the movie,and they are only important to tell the story and to give the characters credibility"

"if the Characters are not there or the acting isn't good, the movie will fall apart. It can't sustain itself. People think these are special effects movies. I would say the effects contribute  15 to 20 percent to the enjoyability, effectiveness, and popularity of the movie- At the most. Even in Star Wars

" If you start developing computerized backgrounds , hopefully that will be a way to bring down the cost. But in reality, if things are done right the films won't look any different than they do today. With these systems available, there will be a lot of filmakers moving in. You'll have tiny figures walking around in giant beautiful sets , which will be boring; the films will be a failure , and everybody will say 'Computer movies are not commercial'.

" The whole thing relies on the actors. I would say the acting and story are at least 75 percent of the film.  Just that.  If you can't get that 75 percent , if you don't have good performances and a good plot, you will never get the film to run on the 25 percent that is left. No matter how brilliant a director you are, how fantastic the special, effects, how beautifully it is photographed, how wonderful the music is, it will not work as a popular movie running at 25 percent."

 

Copyright 1983 Lucasfilm LTD and Del Rey books, quoted only for free use for education purposes.

This shows that George Lucas was once a genius. Now he is one of those type of guys that works in IT and tries to act hip to his kids but fails miserably and spoilers his daughter with too many things she wants.

Bingowings said:

The Imperials have been given new orders, to capture the Falcon (not to destroy it or allow it to escape).

The fleet prior to that had been scattered to pick off the Rebels evacuating the base (we only see the first transport escape unscathed it doesn't follow that all of them did).

The aim is to knock out the hyperdrive (which they don't know isn't working) and to slow the ship down so it can be caught in the tractor beam of one of the capital ships.

The new orders and coupled with the prior orders make the sequence entirely consistent with the plot.

So why don't we see the rebels getting "picked up", and instead watch Luke flying around space camels? Wouldn't that be kinda important? But no, we only see the one transporter that makes it through the blockade with far too much ease, and that's the impression the viewer takes away from the whole thing in the end.

The asteroid chase, again, is a bit pointless because the TIEs are far too useless and easy to crash into asteroids, and you know for sure that had the Empire had a sense to send off like 3 times more TIEs, the film would've been a lot shorter.

Hence - plot convenience. Hence - plot serving the action to a degree. Hence - spectacle over substance.

Now, that of course would lead us to the next point - the characters themselves, especially Han Solo, are, to a large part, a "spectacle", too. Solo might've gone through a change and all, but neither his role in the story nor his character development is particularly deep, or important to anything, we first and foremost enjoy watching him being a swashbuckler and care about the romance.

So THAT spectacle is obviously very well balanced with the audiovisual spectacle, and that's what makes the original films such a good piece of entertainment.

In the PT, obviously, the characters were bleak, and the action sequences often made even less sense and felt more artificial.

Are you watching the same film ducks?

The command centre is providing cover for the escaping ships.

The Imperials cannot bombard the planet because of the shield generator so they land the space camels to take out the shield generator and ground troops to take out the the ion cannon which the being operated from the command centre.

Luke and his friends have to slow down the space camels to allow the Rebels enough time to evacuate as many people as possible, the command centre has to remain manned to provide cover for the evacuating Rebels.

We have no idea how many TIEs the fleet has or how many can be deployed from one ship (considering the relatively small amount deployed by a much larger number of capital ships in ROTJ I don't imagine they could send wave after wave) and how many were in pursuit but were not close enough to be seen?

The one thing we know is that the fleet which had been previously deployed attempting to shoot down Rebels over Hoth had been ordered to track, slow down and capture the Falcon but not destroy it.

If they fired too much and in the wrong place Vader would not be able to get what he wants, he either imagines or senses (depending on if you want to kick in the Leia sister retcon yet or not) a Skywalker on the ship and every Imperial officer and pilot knows what will happen if they accidentally got too good a shot in.

The action makes sense in terms of the story.

Why a beweaponed bounty hunter would get another bounty hunter, armed with a big space rifle to guide a robot, carrying poison bugs, to open a window with space lasers and hang around to deploy them to poison a senator and then allow a Jedi to hang onto the droid long enough to be spotted and then shoot the droid (not the Jedi) etc, etc, etc, makes no sense at all.

Bingowings said:

Are you watching the same film ducks?

The command centre is providing cover for the escaping ships.

The Imperials cannot bombard the planet because of the shield generator so they land the space camels to take out the shield generator and ground troops to take out the the ion cannon which the being operated from the command centre.

Luke and his friends have to slow down the space camels to allow the Rebels enough time to evacuate as many people as possible, the command centre has to remain manned to provide cover for the evacuating Rebels.

We have no idea how many TIEs the fleet has or how many can be deployed from one ship (considering the relatively small amount deployed by a much larger number of capital ships in ROTJ I don't imagine they could send wave after wave) and how many were in pursuit but were not close enough to be seen?

The one thing we know is that the fleet which had been previously deployed attempting to shoot down Rebels over Hoth had been ordered to track, slow down and capture the Falcon but not destroy it.

If they fired too much and in the wrong place Vader would not be able to get what he wants, he either imagines or senses (depending on if you want to kick in the Leia sister retcon yet or not) a Skywalker on the ship and every Imperial officer and pilot knows what will happen if they accidentally got too good a shot in.

The action makes sense in terms of the story.

Why a beweaponed bounty hunter would get another bounty hunter, armed with a big space rifle to guide a robot, carrying poison bugs, to open a window with space lasers and hang around to deploy them to poison a senator and then allow a Jedi to hang onto the droid long enough to be spotted and then shoot the droid (not the Jedi) etc, etc, etc, makes no sense at all.

Well if you actually take a closer look at the single elements, how easily the "first transporter" manages to breeze through the supposed blockade by having a magical cannon on the planet surface firing at one single ship who was firing but didn't hit the transporter (and obviously couldn't be used against the space camels), and the rebels' strategy in attacking the camels from the front and all, lots of things don't make perfect sense in that scene, but no, I wasn't saying the whole sequence didn't make sense from scratch, I said too much FOCUS was dedicated to whacky, fun adventure stuff and less to things that actually mattered, or could've provided some tension.

Luke takes down two camels all by his clever tricks (and we never see any of them being taken down by anyone not cooperating with Luke, so he's the Mary Sue all again, I suppose), but they still manage to fire some super blaster at the rebel base, or their shield generator, and the rest of the attackers doesn't really seem to bother the rest of hte camels, so in the end it's just a bunch of action stuff with no real tension or consequence.

We see Han and Leia escape, but the rest of the rebels, who are just extras anyway, either escape with incredible ease (in a scene that's basically saying "yea the rebels escaped that so that's where the space base later on comes from), or aren't shown being stopped, destroyed or arrested anywhere.

At the end of the day, the essence of the scene is: rebels are put to rout from their base, and a bunch of fighters somewhat slow down the attack. Which one should've been the logical focus, and which would've contained more tension?

As for the other thing, you really just rely on assumptions at this point - come on, so we are to believe that neither the death star nor the executor can send off more than 4 stupid TIE fighers?? We just have to ASSUME that there are "more" out there, but "we just don't see them"? Nah... there were 4 fighters, full stop. They were sent to capture the heroes, but were pwned all too easily, and in the end the scene was just a spectacle with cool music and one-liners.

As for the assassination plot in Clones, sure, again, the plot holes and nonsense in the PT is infinitely worse than in the OT, I've said that, but if you look at the whole chapter, it's not so much the whole premise behind the scene that doesn't make sense, it's its execution.

They could've easily had the assassin try to shoot Padme from the window, or something like that, or use her shapeshifter skills and intrude the building, and then the two Jedi would've chased her through the city after she took off - but no, they added the centipedes and flying robot and all the other stuff in it to make it more diverse and intereesting, I guess, and ended up butchering up the logic.

Did BOBA FETT really have to be the main assassin? Or why did he have to fly off in the jetpack for everyone to see, insead of just hiding somewhere?

So again, they could've easily had a chase sequence there, but the way its executed, and the (non-)way the whole assassination plot ties into the rest, are more than enough to disqualify the whole thing, and then some.

twooffour said:

Did JANGO "TANGO-WITH-A-MANGO" FETT really have to be the main assassin? Or why did he have to fly off in the jetpack for everyone to see, insead of just hiding somewhere?

Fixed ... and then some =D

DuracellEnergizer said:

twooffour said:

Did JANGO "TANGO-WITH-A-MANGO" FETT really have to be the main assassin? Or why did he have to fly off in the jetpack for everyone to see, insead of just hiding somewhere?

Fixed ... and then some =D

Calling Jango Fett Boba is an old inside joke, you dunce ;)