When I saw this at the cinema the Peter Cushing avatar really annoyed me. I thought it poorly done and it distracted me from the film overall. But on the small screen it looks better, or perhaps I'm being less fussy, and on second viewing this seems a better effort.
shareInteresting point. You do tend to notice the fakeness a little more when his face is thirty feet tall.
shareI watched on a 12" black and white tube set. Looked great!
shareWhen I was a kid in the '80s, watching The Last Starfighter (1984) on VHS and a 19" CRT TV from across the room, I never noticed that there was any CGI in it (very primitive CGI, no less). I watched the Blu-ray a few months ago on a 1080p projector and 100" screen and the CGI stuck out like a sore thumb. I was surprised because I didn't know there were any movies that old with that type of CGI (completely animated CGI models for cars and ships). I thought maybe I was watching a special edition with CGI inserted later on, like George Lucas did with the original Star Wars trilogy, but it turns out that the CGI has always been there.
I don't think a smaller screen and lower quality video would help the Tarkin cartoon all that much though. Those things go a long way to hide unrealistic textures, but that wasn't the problem with Tarkin. The problem was the rubbery, unnatural facial muscle movements, particularly his mouth movements when speaking.
Good point about facial movements - looking back on it, that was the same problem with the "Jack Lord" guest appearance on the new "Hawaii 5-0."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_YCuRJyZ0
I also remember thinking the CGI was rough in "Last Starfighter," but this was after "Tron," and the first time we were seeing CGI passed off as real (vs. inside a computer world), so we accepted it at the time.
"Jurassic Park" was the watershed for that sort of thing - the first time CGI that we KNEW was CGI was nonetheless truly convincing in a big budget blockbuster.