[Commodore]

I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End the other day when I had a thought: why are the alien effects in the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy so damn bad? Industrial Light And Magic has created some truly convincing and fascinating creature effect for other films, like the Pirates trilogy. Why in the PT do we get this...



when we could have had this?



I know that Davey Jones was a major character while Kit Fisto was just window dressing, but couldn't the effects team have managed something better than a glorified Halloween costume? Many, many people have rightly pegged the PT as being massively over-reliant on special effects; given that, why do some of the effects suck so damn much?

[HK 47]

We also got this...



...when we could have had this:

This post has been edited by HK 47: 06 October 2008 - 08:30 AM

[civilian_number_two]

I know some disagree, but I think the PIRATES followups also relied too much on special effects. In fact, I don't think they were any better than the STAR WARS prequels, except that, yeah, they were prettier.

[Vesuvius]

I know some disagree, but I think the PIRATES followups also relied too much on special effects. In fact, I don't think they were any better than the STAR WARS prequels, except that, yeah, they were prettier.

Nice! I too thought the Pirates movies were rather shallow. Only a few scenes out of each film were worth watching, much like the PT.

Gotta agree with you, Civ.

[Commodore]

The Pirates sequels are largely garbage. I just want to know why Lucas et al would choose to use cheesy costumes that look like they came from the Target dollar rack. Obviously ILM is capable of very pretty effects, so why would they not be properly employed in Star Wars, their 'home' franchise? Considering Lucas's obsession with CGI, the CGI in the prequels really isn't very good.

[Gobbler]

First time I saw it, I was very annoyed when the second Pirates cut off so abruptly.
But then we sat down one evening with all three movies on DVD and watched them, and I really can't say that they were that bad. Sure, some stuff was repetitive and the "CAPTAIN... jack sparrow" part was really a thorn in your side while watching, but overall:
Very good trilogy, nice atmosphere and brilliant character portrayal, and the CGI was awesome, can't say it any differently.

Definitely better than the Star Wars prequels, they also did a better job of sticking to the general theme.

The Star Wars prequels mainly focused on using really well designed, but extremely sloppy executed CGI effects, like with all those blue-screen scenes. I wouldn't have minded those if they weren't so goddamn obvious, I think they let some intern handle that, that's how bad it was. The light saber effects were brilliant on the other hand, but seriously, from a professional point of view... those are the things that the intern could have actually handled. Somebody just made some really bad choices there.

Pirates on the other hand integrated it all perfectly, they had enough real footage and actors and only stuck one major role to a fully rendered character, and he looked plain awesome. The animated thingies weren't even distracting that much, they just made sense, looked good and helped fleshing out the atmosphere.

This post has been edited by Gobbler: 11 October 2008 - 04:46 PM

[Vesuvius]

Yes, I'm willing to accept the awesomeness of the Cracken in the pirates film, especially after learning that ALL the clones from EP II and III were all CGI.

CGI for the droids in EP I, okay, understandable, but every clone, every where?! That's absurd.

That Cracken was cool!