Star Wars: The Force Awakens (12/18/15)

[a-dev]

I love piano and all, probably my favourite musical instrument, but I thought it was totally out of place in a Star Wars trailer.

 

[JAWS]

I hope that you agree with me since I stole that analogy from you lol.

But you definitely hit the nail on the head JAWS, The perceived finality of the prequel trilogy definitely makes it much more painful than it has to be.

So yes everything is riding on episode seven, that movie really needs to deliver the goods!

If not, well then there is always episode eight, nine and the anthologies to look forward too.

Man are we getting a ton more SW, one of them will eventually have to be great!

You can steal from me any day Jye

LOL to your comment about the eventual Great SW film we will get!

 

[JAWS]

I love piano and all, probably my favourite musical instrument, but I thought it was totally out of place in a Star Wars trailer.

I didn't mind it.. Because it made you wait for the real music... Once the Han and Leia love theme hit when the Tie were chasing Falcon... Well Goosebumps are still on my arm.

 

[DiFabio]

That whole scene looks just as fake to me, especially when they turn in file. Even has real actors superimposed on a balcony in front of the banner just like this for crying out loud.





The difference? One is 2001/2002 computer graphics and the other is 2014/2015 computer graphics. Yeah, it SHOULD look better! One of my favorite shots in the Lord of the Rings is Saruman commanding the Uruk-Hai from atop his, you guessed it, strong hold balcony and Wormtongue crying as he sees 10,000 Uruk Hai that are about to slaughter all of Rohan. All the orcs are fake, and look fake. Faker than these Force Awakens troops, pikes and all. Still a great scene, from a great movie.

Attack of the Clones? Not a great movie. Force Awakens? Remains to be seen. Still, all three scenes with their Nazi/Dictator/army symbolism are exactly the same. All required blatant CGI, which is the only point I'm making. There is nothing more practical about the Force Awakens from their visual shots, just that they look better than movies that are over a decade old. Well no ****! Still doesn't make them any more "real".


EDIT:

And yes, Dexter Jettster was terrible. I still don't get the point of that one.

Still, one thing that nobody ever talks about is Ewan Mcgregors performance in that scene. Yes, Dexter is an atrocity, especially around the time of a creature like Gollum, but Ewan Mcgregor does sell that Obi-Wan is buds with this guy and they have history when in reality, the poor guy is talking to a green screen tennis ball.

 

[Prime Clone]

Granted here we are in the Falcon but it's all real and dingy... PT was lacking this lived in feeling.

That was a deliberate move on Lucas' part. He wanted the PT to show the Republic at its sterile height before the fall, in contrast with the backwaters of the Rebellion in the OT.

As for CGI troopers, that was to push the bounds of CGI as far as they could, to prove it could be done. Now that they've proved it, it's time to pull back.

 

[jye4ever]

I didn't mind it.. Because it made you wait for the real music... Once the Han and Leia love theme hit when the Tie were chasing Falcon... Well Goosebumps are still on my arm.

Yes, this!

 

[jkno]

When ROTJ is firing on all cylinders it utterly destroys anything ROTS related.

When ROTJ is not firing on all cylinders it still utterly destroys everything ROTS related!

As bad as ROTJ might be in some places it still trumps over ROTS with ease

 

[rushmore223]

While it should matter, I have noticed that CGI realism isn't dependent on when the effects were made. Gollum from LOTR, shot for shot, still blows away anything I have seen in cinema to this day. Dont get me wrong, there have been very good attempts, like Ceaser from Dawn of the..., but even in that movie, some shots were amazing, while others were inconsistent. Look at the opening scene of Apes, once the apes start their attack on the deer/elk, the rendering is much worse and there is no feeling of weight to any of the animals.

Go really far back, like Starship Troopers, while I haven't watched it in sometime, the bug effects in that film were better than 90% of the effects in films 10 or 15 years later.

So, what I'm getting at, is the excuse that phantom menace is 16 years old and it's effects should look dated doesnt really hold water. If an effect from such an iconic innovator and groundbreaker like Lucas doesn't look good enough to withstand 10 years of technical evolution, than maybe it shouldn't have been done in the first place. Would 70's/80's Lucas have settled for good enough? No way. And honestly, to some extent, fx from star wars and empire still look better than many films made today. OT Lucas pushed the envelope in his early days out of necessity, PT Lucas tried to push the envelope because he could, not because he should, and the films suffered for it.


P.S. include me in the camp that thinks TFA looks quite good, at least so far.

 

[jye4ever]

Come December my YT movie show will be going live (finally), thank you SW!

It will be 2 comfortable chairs next to a fireplace with a cocktail being delivered by a girl in a bikini, with my business partner and I having a nice discussion on genre cinema.

Hopefully some of the members here would like to be a guest on the show.

Cursing allowed.

 

[rushmore223]

As bad as ROTJ might be in some places it still trumps over ROTS with ease

I'll try to tell myself that next time I have to watch Sy Snootles sing in Jabbas Palace, or cutesy teddy bears yub yubbing the night away.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

While it should matter, I have noticed that CGI realism isn't dependent on when the effects were made. Gollum from LOTR, shot for shot, still blows away anything I have seen in cinema to this day. Dont get me wrong, there have been very good attempts, like Ceaser from Dawn of the..., but even in that movie, some shots were amazing, while others were inconsistent. Look at the opening scene of Apes, once the apes start their attack on the deer/elk, the rendering is much worse and there is no feeling of weight to any of the animals.

Go really far back, like Starship Troopers, while I haven't watched it in sometime, the bug effects in that film were better than 90% of the effects in films 10 or 15 years later.

So, what I'm getting at, is the excuse that phantom menace is 16 years old and it's effects should look dated doesnt really hold water. If an effect from such an iconic innovator and groundbreaker like Lucas doesn't look good enough to withstand 10 years of technical evolution, than maybe it shouldn't have been done in the first place. Would 70's/80's Lucas have settled for good enough? No way. And honestly, to some extent, fx from star wars and empire still look better than many films made today. OT Lucas pushed the envelope in his early days out of necessity, PT Lucas tried to push the envelope because he could, not because he should, and the films suffered for it.

Davy Jones from Pirates 2 still looks great, and that film came out 10 years ago. When I first saw him I thought the actor was wearing makeup, but it was all cgi.

 

[rushmore223]

Definitely, Davey Jones is another good example. They obviously took their time with their creation.

 

[RIDDICK]

Davy Jones from Pirates 2 still looks great, and that film came out 10 years.
When I first saw him I thought the actor was wearing makeup, but it was all cgi.

What's more incredible is that all of it was key-framed.

 

[a-dev]

I'll try to tell myself that next time I have to watch Sy Snootles sing in Jabbas Palace, or cutesy teddy bears yub yubbing the night away.

Actually you should tell it to yourself while watching a film that awkwardly juxtaposes slapstick droid comedy and a child massacre while ****ing up everything important and reducing the only female character to one totally dependant on her evil lover; a character who just ''decides'' to die rather than raise her two newborns.

Absolutely agree with your other post though.

 

[Python]

It doesn't matter how good a cgi character may look, they still don't look real to the eye (because they aren't) Look back at this in 5-7 years and it will be just as bad as the rubbish we got in the prequels. Practical is the way whenever possible.

 

[rushmore223]

Actually you should tell it to yourself while watching a film that awkwardly juxtaposes slapstick droid comedy and a child massacre while ****ing up everything important and reducing the only female character to one totally dependant on her evil lover and who just ''decides'' to die rather than raise her two newborns.

Absolutely agree with your other post though.

Not really defending ROTS with that post, I absolutely hate kids being harmed in any movie, I think it's cheap and distasteful, and often makes me instantly hate a film unless it was n absolutely essential plot device. The only good thing bout ROTS was McDiarmid, except for the scene where he flies on his magic lightsabers and fights SLJ. Just saying ROTJ has a lot of cringe inducing moments, which aren't made any better by the existence of the even worse PT.

 

[a-dev]

Not really defending ROTS with that post, I absolutely hate kids being harmed in any movie, I think it's cheap and distasteful, and often makes me instantly hate a film unless it was n absolutely essential plot device. The only good thing bout ROTS was McDiarmid, except for the scene where he flies on his magic lightsabers and fights SLJ. Just saying ROTJ has a lot of cringe inducing moments, which aren't made any better by the existence of the even worse PT.

Ah. Fair enough

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

What's more incredible is that all of it was key-framed.

I didn't know that. That film has aged really well. Critics didn't like it, but it's one of my favorites.

It doesn't matter how good a cgi character may look, they still don't look real to the eye (because they aren't) Look back at this in 5-7 years and it will be just as bad as the rubbish we got in the prequels. Practical is the way whenever possible.

That's usually true, but I think there are exceptions. Also, I think the same can be said about practical effects sometimes. There's a difference between real and believable, imo. Do practical effects look believable...or just real? If I see Kermit the frog, I know he's real because he's a puppet, but he doesn't necessarily look believable. I can think of some practical effects in films or puppets that look real in the sense that they are physically there, but it still looks like a puppet, a guy in makeup, or a practical effect like in some horror films. I think the combination of practical effects and CGI is the best way. Don't get me wrong, I've been fooled by practical effects, like in Terminator 2, when the T-1000 was cut in half by Uncle Bob. I always thought it was CGI, but it was a practical effect.

 

[Python]

That's usually true, but I think there are exceptions. Also, I think the same can be said about practical effects sometimes. There's a difference between real and believable, imo. Do practical effects look believable...or just real? If I see Kermit the frog, I know he's real because he's a puppet, but he doesn't necessarily look believable. I can think of some practical effects in films or puppets that look real in the sense that they are physically there, but it still looks like a puppet, a guy in makeup, or a practical effect like in some horror films. I think the combination of practical effects and CGI is the best way. Don't get me wrong, I've been fooled by practical effects, like in Terminator 2, when the T-1000 was cut in half by Uncle Bob. I always thought it was CGI, but it was a practical effect.

That isn't quite so simple imo. Of course some practical effects are bad, just as plenty of cgi effects are. that is a different matter and hopefully a movie like this will have the very best effects however they are created. However a good practical effect is completely convincing. A very good cgi effect still looks fake, because it is and it doesn't completely fool the eye. I'm not completely against cgi at all, it can be very useful when used right, but if practical is an option I would choose that every single time.

The original trilogy looks better than the prequel trilogy in most areas for me, ESB is probably the most aesthetically pleasing Star Wars movie so far.

 

[DiFabio]

Davy Jones still looks incredible. Gollum from Two Towers has aged, he looks better in the Hobbit in the Riddles of the Dark. Andy Serkis' performance and the work of Weta in Two Towers and Return of the King is still incredible though.

My only point was, fake is fake. Force Awakens has plenty of CGI that isn't fooling me. Yes, there are nice landscape shots, characters in front of practical sets, etc. etc. but there is plenty of CGI. I'll bet money that there are more computer visual shots than the Phantom Menace. No matter what fuss they make, our eyes can tell. The emphasis on "we're going practical" and shoving it down everyone's throats is a buncha BS.





CGI used well isn't evil as long as it's just a tool like anything else.