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Episode II Attack of the Cartoons

#1 Guest_Just your average movie goer_*

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Posted 08 April 2004 - 06:00 AM

I remember when watching the first Lord of the Rings, how impressed I was with the performance of the veteran horror actor Christopher Lee. A really powerful actor with a great voice and the talent to use it.

And when I heard that he would be in Episode II, I had a faint hope that maybe the film would not be as bad as I anticipated... then again, I had also been expecting that Jar Jar Binks would not appear again (as everyone HATED him) and we all know how that went...

But when I finally got to see Christopher Lee, he was talking to a room full of cartoons! I couldn't believe it - not a live actor anywhere in sight.

And that's the thing about this movie that really wears me down. Nothing is real... nothing even pretends to LOOK real. And it is amazing just how little emotion a bunch of fake looking CGIs can get from the viewer.

And it went on - I now learned that the Death Star was designed by a bunch of cartoon termites. And that in the past, people didn't even fly on real ships. They just flew in cartoon ships as well.

And on the subject of ships, could Lucas at least TRY to make ships in the prequel trilogy look as though they could have come from the same galaxy as the one in the original trilogy?

This is supposed to be a prequel to the trilogy we all saw when we were children. But there is not one second where it feels like that is the case. The only indication we get that this is a Star Wars movie is that they put Star Wars in front of the blurb at the start of the movie. And this is where any resemblance to the original trilogy ends.
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Posted 08 April 2004 - 10:04 AM

QUOTE (Just your average movie goer @ Apr 8 2004, 06:00 AM)
And that's the thing about this movie that really wears me down. Nothing is real... nothing even pretends to LOOK real. And it is amazing just how little emotion a bunch of fake looking CGIs can get from the viewer.

Agreed. I think that's the single most embarrassing and dissapointing part of the prequels. It's all so lifeless. It's just Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in space. It worked great in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? because that was the gimmick and it was a silly fun movie. Star Wars movies aren't supposed to be silly.

Some of the costumes in the original trilogy were less than spectacular but you still had a much better sense that Jabba the Hutt was real when you saw him ACTUALLY interacting with the actors. When Princess Leia touched Jabba the Hutt you weren't spending all your time thinking "(she's interacting with nothing and they just superimposed a character over it after the fact". You were just thinking that she was interacting with something that was actually there because she was.

Everything done by the CGI cast is so exaggerated as well. Just watching Jar Jar walk around with his head bobbing back and forth and his rubbery arm movements reminds me of a Goofy cartoon, not of how a real living creature would move.

The whole reason GL elected to use CGI is because "you could do things with that technology that you can't do in real life". Maybe that's a bad thing. Perhaps the limitations of actual Earth physics lend a certain amount of believability to a movie. I would certainly prefer that. Use your precious CGI for the cityscapes and the ships... it looks GREAT for that. Just don't make every character be created and exist entirely as CGI.

Unfortunately Lucas just isn't half the director that Peter Jackson is. I'm not even really a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies but I can certainly appreciate how well they were done and how well they use CGI. Particularly after suffering through two Star Wars prequels.

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#3 User is offline   Mike Mac from NYU Icon

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Posted 08 April 2004 - 10:04 AM

Actually Joe there is probably just as much CGI in LOTR as there is in ATOC. The wraiths, Gollum, various creatures. I don't think CGI is the chief culprit in the failures of ATOC. I do agree that CGI is rapidly being overused in movies today jyst because of the cost effectiveness of the method. Hulk and Spider-man are good examples of movies that overuse CGI.
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Posted 08 April 2004 - 10:38 AM

QUOTE (Mike Mac from NYU @ Apr 8 2004, 10:04 AM)
Actually Joe there is probably just as much CGI in LOTR as there is in ATOC. The wraiths, Gollum, various creatures.

You're probably right. The main difference is that in LOTR they use the CGI to enhance the environment/characters that they have. In TPM/AOTC they use it to create an environment and characters. EVERYTHING in the prequels is CGI. It's just the actors and a green screen. At least they relied on actual Earth scenery in LOTR by filming in New Zealand and just enhancing it with CGI. That really creates a much more believable final product. People interacting with actual things.
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#5 User is offline   Vwing Icon

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Posted 08 April 2004 - 09:38 PM

You're absolutely right Chef. And as if that wasn't bad enough in itself, the fact that nothing is real screws up the actors because they have no real reference points. So this drains any leftover emotion out of the scene because of bad acting. This is why Ewan McGregor and Liam Nissen are great actors. They still do very respectable jobs with nothing to interact with. It's also why Hayden and Natalie aren't, because they don't do respectable jobs. It's even worse with them, because in the scenes they're excruciatingly horrible in, they don't have too much CGI and have each other to interact with. But getting back to the point, CGI can be really good. There are even some instances in the PT where the use of CGI was pretty cool. But as you guys have said, using it for everything just makes it lose any realistic qualities and emotional impact.
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#6 Guest_Just your average movie goer_*

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Posted 10 April 2004 - 08:07 AM

I also find something terribly distracting about having too many CGI characters. Every scene that suffers from having too many CGI characters seems tainted. I can't really think of too many scenes that were any good to begin with... but I'll do what I can for the sake of an example...

In Episode I when Qui Gon and Obi Wan meet Anakin in that little shop on Tatooine, I thought everything looked really quite authentic. The shop looked appropriately old, the street seemed real enough and it felt wonderfully like the Tatooine that we saw in Episode IV (the one actually filmed in the exotic Tunisia). But unfortunately, Lucas chose to insert the CGI character of Watto, who for all intents and purposes looked like a really large cartoon mosquito.

Watto looks silly. His manner of conversation sounds silly. He is not in any way realistic and is really annoying (not Jar Jar Binks annoying, but still really annoying).

And so all the pain-staking created realism in this scene was destroyed... and it became another one of those scenes that I never wish to see again. It's a lot like making a really nice painting and then letting a five year old draw all over it with crayons.

If George Lucas had restrained himself in the over-use of CGI, he may have had a few scenes that were not too bad. If the prequel trilogy had been able to maintain some level of believabilty, and convince us that what was going on could actually have happened in the same universe as the original trilogy, then I think maybe it would have turned out a lot better.
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Posted 10 April 2004 - 08:56 AM

Did any of yall see this coming when the SE's hit? I did. Soon as I saw what he did to A New Hope, I knew exactly what Lucas was gonna do with The Phantom Menace. Add a bunch of unneccessary shit to the background....Someone said a long time ago that he became a kid in a candy shop now that he had CGI to work with, and that was some of the realest talk I've ever heard.

Just what is Lucas' fascination with CGI anyways? I mean, a few scenes here and there are cool, but to film entire movies in that manner is inexcusable. Just because you CAN do it, doesnt mean you SHOULD do it. I truly believe if he had built real sets, and had someone else write the dialouge, Episodes I and II could have been above average/great films. Dammit!!!
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#8 Guest_Just your average movie goer_*

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Posted 10 April 2004 - 09:54 AM

Actually, that's a really good point you made about the Special Editions. I guess that should have been a warning to all of us...

I can remember vividly what a mess he made of one particular scene in A New Hope. It was the one where Luke and Obi Wan arrive at Mos Eisley and are pulled up by the storm troopers. In the Special Edition, Lucas put in a heap of tall slow moving reptilian creatures for Jawas to ride on. And in this particular scene, he inserts one that wanders across the FOREGROUND of the scene, blocking the viewer from seeing what's going on. And I remembered thinking that when a film-maker is shooting any given scene, the camera needs to focus on the main action of that scene. This means that the characters who are speaking need to be well portrayed in the frame of the picture, like any well-composed photo or painting.

And the scene was fine - it did all that. But then Lucas stuck a slow moving CGI dinosaur in front of it.

Shame really - some of the additions he made to the original movies were actually cool. I have to admit (yes, I am guilty) that I got excited from seeing that new shot of the Mellenium Falcon flying out of Docking Bay 94. And I got a kick from seeing the new shots of the Bespin cityscape in The Empire Strikes Back. And speaking for myself, I was quite happy to see the alternative ending to Return of the Jedi (I never felt that sentimental about the silly Ewok party song).

But overall, he ruined the films by sticking all those stupid CGIs over them - like all those flying droids that appeared in Mos Eisley. They were like motorized mosquitoes, those things. I had to fight the urge to swat the movie screen every time they appeared.

And of course, there were the unnecessary extra scenes (CGI Jabba in A New Hope, and Darth Vader landing in his Star Destroyer at the end of the Empire Strikes Back... that last one just seemed to ruin the momentum of the movie at that point). And Greedo shooting first....... (for the love of God, WHY????)

But I digress... I just wanted to say I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Special Editions. You're right... we were warned.

And I guess we were also warned in 1983 by Return of the Jedi that we probably would never see a Star Wars film that lived up to The Empire Strikes Back ever again. By the way, does anyone know how it is possible that the same man who made Episode I and II made a film as good as The Empire Strikes Back (or Raiders of the Lost Ark)?
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Posted 10 April 2004 - 10:19 AM

What made TESB so great was that it wasnt just Lucas handling an entire project by himself. He had other people helping him and giving input. In these new prequels, he's taken on the sole responsiblity of being the director, screenwriter, and other shit as well. I mean, you just can't do that. It's a recipe for disaster. There must have been a point where Lucas knew that fans were questioning whether he could top TESB or not, and he decided to try to do it all by himself to prove he could it. As we can all see, he has fallen flat on his face by doing this.
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Posted 10 April 2004 - 11:37 AM

you all should register. other than the laughter on my end anyway. tongue.gif
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Posted 10 April 2004 - 04:30 PM

QUOTE (Just your average movie goer @ Apr 10 2004, 09:54 AM)
And I guess we were also warned in 1983 by Return of the Jedi that we probably would never see a Star Wars film that lived up to The Empire Strikes Back ever again. By the way, does anyone know how it is possible that the same man who made Episode I and II made a film as good as The Empire Strikes Back (or Raiders of the Lost Ark)?

I had originally decided after JEDI never to see another STAR WARS film. I didn't watch the EWOK movies, but I gave in to curiosity and watched TPM. I wish I hadn't.

How could EMPIR and RAIDERS be any good? They are not George Lucas films. Lucas was not on the set of EMPIRE for most of the film. he took pride in lettng go control. He reversed this habit for JEDI. As for RAIDERS, who cares whether he was there or not? That was a Spielberg film, and he's be damned if he was going to give up anything, even to a creative partner.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#12 User is offline   Vwing Icon

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Posted 10 April 2004 - 08:18 PM

Well I mean speaking for myself I do think ROTJ lived up to ESB, but we won't go into that. And Civ, even though Kershner directed, I do think Lucas was on the set a lot. Not through the whole film, but he was definitely a presence. Personally, I think it's quite logical that someone who did ESB (and in my case ROTJ) could go to do Episode I and II. He just became fascinated by special effects. Don't forget, in the time between ROTJ and Episode I, he really didn't make too many movies at all, and certainly wasn't too active in any movies he did make. So what did he focus on? His companies. ILM and THX, Lucasarts video games, all the things that didn't have to do with movies, but did have to do with special effects. It's amazing how many films had and still have ILM special effects, and now almost everything has THX sound, and Lucasarts has become a leading force in the video game industry. Lucas focused on all of this stuff for 12 or so years before turning back to the prequels, which he started focusing on in 1999. By that point, though he still wanted to make a good movie (because I don't care how crappy a filmmaker's films are, you can't tell me he doesn't want to make a movie people enjoy), he was so detached from the industry that he didn't know how anymore. So he used what he did know: special effects. He decided to try to make groundbreaking effects movies again, only this time with CGI. But even though he was very effects-oriented in Star Wars, he still knew how to make a movie without them, having just come off American Grafitti. Now, he is effects-oriented without the knowledge of how to write good dialogue or deal with actors, because he had been away from that part of the industry for such a long time. And so from that we get Episodes I and II.
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Posted 10 April 2004 - 11:09 PM

From reading Pollack's book, "Skywalking," I'd say it is precisely ESB that which did Lucas in. He did not have a lot of control (or so he felt) on ESB, and I think he resents it now that ESB is considered the best of the SW filmology. He had some serious stress issues when he found out the film was going over-budget, Kershner was re-writing portions of his script, Prowse was revealing secret script info the public, ILM wasn't getting Special Effects done on time, etc, etc.... So, him taking control over on ROTJ, removing Kurtz from his position as executive producer, hiring a weenie director Marquand, isn't surprising as it was his reaction to all that happened.

How sad. That is a man with too much pride....
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Posted 10 April 2004 - 11:33 PM

Sounds like someone needs a designated director. sleep.gif

("It's ok George, just give me the keys...")
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#15 User is offline   Just your average movie goer Icon

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Posted 12 April 2004 - 12:32 AM

That stuff about Lucas reacting to the way he lost control of the Empire Strikes Back was quite interesting... a lot of this background information was new to me.

I also found out that in the Empire Strikes Back, there was a woman involved in the writing process called Leigh Brackett. Tragically, Leigh Brackett died of cancer before the movie was completed.

This makes me think that perhaps The Empire Strikes Back was Leigh Brackett's movie. What do you guys think? Has anyone else heard about this writer?

Also, the point that was raised about how Lucas is now very driven by special effects makes a lot of sense too.

I wonder if Lucas had today's technology available at the time the original trilogy was made, what would it be like? Would we have seen the movies that we all love or would we have seen a CGI overload with a cast of characters who we really didn't care about?
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