The factory scenes where Anakin, Padme, C-3PO and R2-D2 ended up in and almost got killed were totally unnecessary.
But the sheer amount of CGI in the movie was too much. I'm much more for practical effects.
You, me and most everyone else! You can blame George Lucas for this, he got carried away with technology bigtime. Sadly none of his effects team were brave enough to tell him ‘No’.
shareA friendly reminder of how propaganda works. The Farce Awakens somehow got praised for it's "return" to practical effects despite the fact that in reality it used MORE shots of CGI and fewer practical effects, models & sets than the Phantom Menace which in fact used more practical effects than all three OT films. Heavy use of CGI is commonplace in effects heavy blockbusters today but often gets overlooked because the industry has had 20 years to improve upon it.
shareI know right? its laughable to listen to people complain about CGI, when every modern movie is nearly 90% CGI.
shareSpeaking of propaganda, Lucas Cultist identified...
shareReal Star Wars Fans love and enjoy the Prequels.
#RSWF
I have all 3 on VHS if you ever want to watch them.
"Real Star Wars Fans"
No one above the age of 5 should say this.
I am more than 5 and I still say it, been saying this for years. all people still do and have been for years is criticize the CGI of the Prequels. its literally the dumbest criticism ever.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/udmez4/to_this_day_im_still_blown_away_by_the_cgi_they/
"all people still do and have been for years is criticize the CGI of the Prequels."
There's a reason for that.
well in 1999, it was brand new and no one complained until about 10 years later. then everyone jumped on the bandwagon and said how outdated the CGI was. I think it still holds up 20 years later.
I have had this discussion for years with people, and the complaints are always the same. people basically wanted the prequels to be made exactly like the OT, and when it wasnt, they threw fits.
you will never see anything this good in the Disney movies. this is like almost 20 years ago.
the attention to detail is mind blowing, even the background characters are doing something.
https://youtu.be/Xj49nsG4ruo?t=16
this is prob the most complex and beautiful opening sequence to a Lucas Star Wars movie ever, Disney even couldnt come close to this.
65" TV + Nakamichi 9.2 surround, absolutely mind blowing!
https://youtu.be/tVjYFTDOaSw
PS: this was all done in 2002
It's just some ships flying through a battle. No story. The story doesn't start until after they land. "Special effects without a story is just a special effect."
sharehaha what? so does that same theory apply to other star wars movies? Luke trying to destroy the death star is not a story? what about 3 foot tall bears defeating a battle hardened storm troopers? the fabricated criticisms of the prequels never end!
thats prob one of the best ones I have heard in a while. its almost better than someone else saying the special effects in 1977 were better than 1999 special effects.
like I said before, I think people like to troll Prequel Fans and Real Star War Fans.
The opening shot of ROTS is just ships flying around for minutes. We're told they are heading somewhere but it's irrelevant and not even made entirely clear until they are actually at the ship. It's just a cold opening they doesnt pay off. Unless you count "Another happy landing" as the pay off
But that takes an age and in between it's unevenly good and bad for about ten plus minutes. And that was with a ton of garbage cut out.
of course...
shareAttack Of The Clones film has too much dated and plastic looking CG sets and locations with the actors floating around in them.
shareand a dude with his hand in a puppet is somehow better? haha...
shareYou're comparing a character to sets and locations. Silly.
shareI know, somehow people love 1977 technology over 1999 technology. Even the though the same person, George Lucas is responsible for both. Ironically, no one complains about 2015 technology.
Honestly, people could just be trolling saying they hate the prequels just to get a response.
They're not complaining about the technology. They're complaining about how it was used.
Look at the death star conference room scenes compared with the lifeless virtual set Jedi Council scenes in the prequels.
From AOTC? there is nothing wrong with it. it was the latest technology used in that era. Lucas was doing ground breaking CGI in the late 90's and he gets no credit for it. the entire droid army and the clones were all CGI. not even Disney was able to do something that grand. he was the first person that I know of to digitally put an actors face on someone else. in todays movies, its just a normal thing.
this is prob the most complex and beautiful opening sequence to a Lucas Star Wars movie ever, Disney even couldnt come close to this.
65" TV + Nakamichi 9.2 surround, absolutely mind blowing!
https://youtu.be/tVjYFTDOaSw
PS: this was all done in 2002
No the conference scenes in all prequel films are completely lacking in atmosphere. Unlike in the OT. I don't care if they are the first to use a technology. The results were boring.
sharethe OT, of course...
shareWhat do you want me to compare it with? The Blair Witch Project? Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies?
sharelike I have been saying for years, the OT is infallible.
basically, you grew up with the OT and then when you got older you watched the Prequels and you didnt like it because it wasnt like the OT. you are watching the Prequels with rose colored OT glasses.
there is nothing wrong with the Prequels. people just like to nitpick them because they ruined their childhood.
Can you clarify what you mean by the original trilogy using fewer practical effects than The Phantom Menace? CGI was not heavy-in-use in the '70s, and they weren't building whole characters out of computers back then.
shareThe point was that it's been documented that despite its incorporation of CGI, The Phantom Menace still used more practical effects (real life sets, models, costumes etc.) than the entire OT films combined & certainly more than TFA which in fact used more shots of CGI than TPM, despite all of the "practical effects" propaganda surrounding it, successfully fooling a lot of gullible people.
shareI knew that TFA used more CG than TPM - or at least I've heard that before (and just took it as true; I assumed that wouldn't be a lie, I guess), but I'm still confused by the statement that TPM used more practical effects than the OT films combined. When I punch in the questions, "How many FX shots were in [A New Hope/ The Phantom Menace]?" my search engine kicks back 300 shots for A New Hope but 1900 for The Phantom Menace.
I did find Slashfilm saying that TPM had more specifically miniature work than the OT films combined, but the sheer number of miniatures used in TPM isn't what (I think?) most people are thinking of when talking about practical effects. The number of miniatures in one shot or scene, for instance, might feature huge numbers of minis compared to a couple models in another film, but I think most filmgoers would just go, "Oh, those are miniatures," and consider it one effect made up of lots of littles.
That and the over-the-top waaay too choreographed fights are why I think TPM is actually the best prequel. This and ROTS are just ugly fake looking movies.
shareI've seen worse than that. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was worse than this.
shareThere's quite a number of movies from the early 2000s that have obnoxious, ugly CG. People were enthusiastic about the technology back then and it took a while for technicians to iron out the kinks, so I can forgive it somewhat.
But yeah, that Tom and Jerry factory scene was obnoxious.
It was truly awful and this is one of the worst examples of it.
shareWhat's crazy, though, is the CG used in Jurassic Park still holds up, but stuff used in the early 2000s doesn't. I've never been able to figure that out beyond that maybe Spielberg has magic powers?
shareVan Helsing from 2004 was one of the worst looking films I have ever seen. The CGI is atrocious. That movie should have been a return to form for Universal's initial Monster franchise (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Creature From the Black Lagoon) but instead it would up being a CGI mess. The "Monster Squad" from the mid 1980s looked better than Van Helsing (No disrespect is intended on my part towards the Monster Squad_ that film is a lot of fun).
shareThey're probably the worst scenes in the movie.
shareThere were some great ideas in the prequels. It's a real shame that George went overboard with the new technology. As a result, these days, the films look more like video games than actual movies. Also, George needed to hire a proper director, a good writer and a good editor to better flesh out the scripts. There were a lot of discrepancies between the Jedi lore that was in the original trilogy, and what wound up in the prequels. A good editor and a good writer could have easily prevented those errors from making it into the final scripts. Also, a good director could have been more aware of the woodenness of much of the acting. All of the actors who starred in the prequel films were good to great actors in their previous films, but here they are hollow, wooden, and are saddled with (more often than not) bad dialog. It seems to me that George simply had too many yes men working with him that wouldn't speak up. The CGI in these films (as in many of the late 1990s and early 2000s) films is just downright ugly and fake looking, and it didn't have to be. The CGI should have been used to better perfect the practical effects. The prequels while enjoyed by some, are (these days) lamented by more as a missed opportunity by most. JoWilli is a defender of them, and that's his right, but he seems to be in the minority here. Still, it's super cool that he has them on VHS. I saw the prequels at a thrift shop on VHS, and I want to kick myself for not grabbing them. They weren't good, but VHS is way cooler than DVD or streaming. So, kudos to JoWilli for that.
shareyes agree. it is overloaded. most fake scene is anakin, mace and yoda walking through jedi temple. it look so fake and stupid. yoda is sitting on flying chair and look like floating cgi gimp. why do lucas ok this scene? look like cartoon.
factory scene was put in one year after film (according to dvdi watch). it unnecessary and serve no purposes. lucas just make these sorry prequel to watch cgi. crazy man hahaha.
george lucas consumed by cgi. why? it look fake today. it always look fake when you use in every scene.