Interesting Tidbit from lucas before episode 1 started filming that gave a hint that the pt films were not given the care needed to be great — Page 2

haljordan28 said:

 

the overuse of CGI  to me  was very simple to understand.  This all boils down to greed on lucas behalf.  All about profit.  Lucas owns all of the new state of the art cgi technology.  He used the three PT  films to showcase  what his company was capable of  doing.  No telling how much he has made just on  other companies wanting to use his tech. Not to mention it saves money  not  needing props and  certain locations. Why fly personal and equipment  around the world  at a heavy cost when you can  use CGI  to  create a background or  location for nearly a fraction of the cost.

I would just like to say to Lucas  that you  can't take  money with you  when you die.  The only  true thing you  can take with you  is that which you  leave behind.  A legacy,  a body of work  and he went from being hailed  as a genius and master  film maker  to being ridiculed and  laughed at it.  He ruined his legacy  and his  reputation all for what? A few extra bucks.

Given that Lucas has been overwhelmingly a director interested in visuals and technical processes I think it's baseless, bordering on silly, to say that the use of CGI is motivated by greed.

While it indeed might be cheaper to use CGI backgrounds rather than location shooting or extremely extensive sets (since most of the PT locations could not actually be found on Earth), I fail to see why Lucas is

• obligated to go a more expensive route on his self-funded picture lest he be called 'greedy.'
• forbidden from using the technology he developed for this very purpose.

Also, using the PT to "showcase" his technology kind of ignore the facts that

1. ILM had been a gold standard of SFX for decades, hiring out to do all sorts of films.
2. There's nothing that revolutionary in the PT that the industry wasn't already gearing up for and didn't know ILM (and other FX houses) was already capable of.

As for your moralizing at the end there, George Lucas made some of the greatest films of all time, including four films already in the Library of Congress and on the AFI Top 100. Nothing can take that away from him. And as for his few extra bucks, the PT made almost 3 billion dollars in box office alone.

So let me honestly ask... if Geonosis had been shot on location somewhere, would the AOTC plots somehow not have sucked? If the Gungan City had been an actual set would Jar-Jar have not been annoying? If Mustafar had been real, would the Anakin/Padme romance have worked dramatically? I think what you're complaining about it meaningless when compared to why the movies were actually not good.

In terms of space battles the one at the end of TPM looks WWI to ANH's WWII (colourful simple fighter craft /less colouful gritty fighter craft ).

The problem isn't so much in the design but it the writing.

It's a shame that the fresh off the production line Y-Wings only appear in The Clone Wars animated show but they would still be a design from the last days of the war.

Concorde still looks like the future now and that was a product of sixties engineering and is now obsolete.

As for the compositional language there in lies a multitude of problems.

The Rebellion seen in the OT is a coalition of many groups with largely customised out of date hardware, running a series of guerrilla campaigns against a single uniform, well equipped navy.

The two forces of the PT have both got up to date hardware and are fighting large scale battles against each other.

If the PT is a World War the OT is more a series of bushfire skirmishes.

That is going to dictate a different visual language.

The Bantha in the room is obviously that the two film series were created decades apart.

It is arguable that making a film set (not that long) in the past of the same fictional universe but with larger scale battles would create stylistic problems even if the technology being used to make them was the same.

If anything the OT looks more epic which in a way is all wrong considering the nature of the conflicts described in the story.

RLM is correct in pointing out that the PT is a film series made by a mostly seated director about characters who are mostly seated.

The larger scale war of the PT lacks any of the emotional and visual impact of the smaller scale war of the OT.

If you look at the WWI battle scenes in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles you get a better idea of what the PT could have been like with more modern techniques.

Love or hate the series those scenes really did feel like a war and not like a cartoon, as much because the audience had time to connect to the characters as the sequences were depictions of a real life tragedy.

However the characters were certainly more kinetic than in the PT and in a more realistic fashion when they were.

The fisticuffs in the PT felt more like dancing than fighting and having battles between duplicate men and duplicate robots didn't cook up much of an emotional connection with this viewer.

Most of them do to be honest.

In defense of some the PT designs I found this interesting bit of vintage future over on Boing Boing (looks rather familiar imagine the PT version being used in a context you could care about though):

Bocce_Linguist said:

Bingowings said:

In terms of space battles the one at the end of TPM looks WWI to ANH's WWII (colourful simple fighter craft /less colouful gritty fighter craft ).

The problem isn't so much in the design but it the writing.

Maybe it's not so much the specific look* of the fighter crafts but rather the execution of the battles that makes it hard for me to believe/accept that TPM is supposed to be 'before' SW/ANH.

*even taking into consideration your color analogy, there's still a problem, though: we should have at least seen Y-Wings in the PT,  since during the OT days the film makers involved were saying that they looked so 'beat-up' because they were in fact older craft than the X-wings....

I can see both sides of this, but ultimately it seems to me that the choice to not even care that the PT didn't really look earlier than the OT (except smaller Star Destroyers) is a creative choice, not a technical one. Whatever design choices would have successfully made the PT look a generation earlier than the OT could have been acheived in CGI.

(on the other hand, if the Republic has already stood for a thousand generations, how much technological advance do we expect to see in 20 years?)

When I  gripe about Lucas not spending enough money I do not  refer to him spending money on sets and other things of that Nature. While I would have preferred live sets and props  compared to CGI my main complaint is money not being spent in behind the scenes talent. Such as is mentioned in that Entertainment weekly article. Lucas not spending money on  some great screenwriters,  hiring directors for episodes  2 and 3.

The  core problem of the PT films  has been and always will be the screenplays and the directing.

Bocce_Linguist said:

Bingowings said:

In terms of space battles the one at the end of TPM looks WWI to ANH's WWII (colourful simple fighter craft /less colouful gritty fighter craft ).

The problem isn't so much in the design but it the writing.

Maybe it's not so much the specific look* of the fighter crafts but rather the execution of the battles that makes it hard for me to believe/accept that TPM is supposed to be 'before' SW/ANH.

*even taking into consideration your color analogy, there's still a problem, though: we should have at least seen Y-Wings in the PT,  since during the OT days the film makers involved were saying that they looked so 'beat-up' because they were in fact older craft than the X-wings....

according to lucas in a 1987  starlog interview i have    x-wings in the OT  were old ships because  the rebels  were a small outfit   fighting a gorilla war  and they could not afford   the newer  state  of the art ships  like the  twin ion engine ships used by the empires   and he said in the PT films  x-wings would be state of the art   and  the ships used by  the    republic.

Of course someone  reminded george that  all the collectors already had   x-wings  and they had been released  multiple times  already    and that if  they made a new ship  thats another   30 million in sells  from the toy  side of things.  he also went on to say in the   sequel episodes in the 3rd trilogy that tie fighters would be the old ships used and there would be a newer state of the art  craft

Yeah but the Naboo Royal Air Corps is not the Republic Airflight from the last days of the Clone Wars so that allowed George and Co a degree of creative freedom to design different craft which had a totally different design ethic and obviously a chance to sell more toys (something I wouldn't have a problem with off the back of a good series of films).

My point is I don't have a problem with the design of the PT my bag is with the stories and dialogue not being well written, acted or directed.

He didn't need to spend an extra dime on that.

I agree with you for sure.  Any extra money spent should have been on  another  director and a screen writer.  The designs  and  most of the characters in the PT  were just fine and in many cases  great. It was  like you  say the screenplay  and acting that is the problem.

Darth maul  was awesome.  Qui-gon was awesome.  The best of  actors and characters  can only  do so much when they have garbage to work with.

Lucas  wanting to sell  as many toys as possible  reminds  me of how the  1986  transformers movie was ruined for the same reason.  That movie  was used as a  2 hr long  commercial to sell the new  toy line  and they  killed off or changed all the characters  people loved and had an emotional attachment to  so they could make room for  new toys to sell. People went to see that movie  to  see  the transformers they  grew  to love and ended up  getting cheated.   for a good laugh though  any transformers  fans should watch this. its the funniest thing I have ever seen.

Optimus is brought back to life and he starts  cussing  cause iron hide is dead and ratchet  and calls   rodimus a bitch  "who the fuck is this autobot"  lol.   this guy made a masterful  skit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1_6D9QS9Y

throw money at a turd and all you got is money, stuck to a turd ;-)

Darth Cracker said:

throw money at a turd and all you got is money, stuck to a turd ;-)

But will you make a return from your deposit?

TheBoost said:

Bocce_Linguist said:

Bingowings said:

In terms of space battles the one at the end of TPM looks WWI to ANH's WWII (colourful simple fighter craft /less colouful gritty fighter craft ).

The problem isn't so much in the design but it the writing.

Maybe it's not so much the specific look* of the fighter crafts but rather the execution of the battles that makes it hard for me to believe/accept that TPM is supposed to be 'before' SW/ANH.

*even taking into consideration your color analogy, there's still a problem, though: we should have at least seen Y-Wings in the PT,  since during the OT days the film makers involved were saying that they looked so 'beat-up' because they were in fact older craft than the X-wings....

I can see both sides of this, but ultimately it seems to me that the choice to not even care that the PT didn't really look earlier than the OT (except smaller Star Destroyers) is a creative choice, not a technical one. Whatever design choices would have successfully made the PT look a generation earlier than the OT could have been acheived in CGI.

(on the other hand, if the Republic has already stood for a thousand generations, how much technological advance do we expect to see in 20 years?)

 

One wonders what events would have looked like 5000 years before the Star Wars movies.

xhonzi said:

I have to jump and say I think a lot of you are looking past hal's point and that I think he has one.

Better artists and artisans and, shock!, paying someone talented to help write the scripts, the dialogue, and to direct would have gone a long way.  Hiring someone with the talent and the, *ahem* cajones to stand up to George when he was wrong... That would have cost more money.  Money that George apparently wasn't willing to spend.  And because of that, he has a few more bucks (maybe) than he would have had.  And a crap reputation to show for it.

 

 I disagree. I'm sure there were many talented, creative, and perceptive artists working at LFL during the PT production. Many probably had insight into the flaws of the PT films.

That the culture of the place and Lucas's own desire to be the end-all-be-all of the creative process  (and drink his coffee seated) have little to do with who got paid what.

If Lucas had been willing to have a talented writer rework the script, or willing to let another more passionate director tackle the material, those people would no doubt have been paid, but I don't think the money was the problem.

If you look back to the ROTJ Classic Creatures documentary where George is discussing Sy Snootles' lips and compare it to the ROTS Hyperspace short about designing Grievous the two bits of footage are pretty consistent.

George takes a design idea and turns it into a bit of on screen whimsy without anyone questioning if it's maybe a bit too far or countering it with other options.

These things tend to be edited to give the impression of a team all pulling in one direction so it's possible that in that footage we aren't seeing the full picture but I get the impression that at both of those periods the people around him are very nervous and perhaps a bit too eager to please.

I've been a minor player in scenarios structurally similar to those and it's more common place that you'd have people pressing the boss (tactfully) to see if the direction he is going in is where everyone should be heading and offering alternative options.

I don't feel George likes working like that and now he has the clout he has he doesn't have to.

Before then he did and perhaps that led to better decisions.