Re: Episode III

Well, in Episode 1 you've got pretty much every exterior shot on Coruscant which makes it look like a planet made up of borg cubes with the occasional copy/pasted tall building, the battle scene with the Gungans at the end, the umpteen CG speaking characters that look like cartoons rather than actual species...

In Episode 2 there's the tour through the cloning facility, a lot of the bug arena shots, the sand dune Padme lands on, frolicking in the prairie on the CG pig-rhinos or whatever they are, the robot factory, the asteroid scene with Jango Fett shooting at Obi-wan...

In Episode 3 many of the shots on Grievous' ship - especially in the corridors, the shot where Obiwan jump down to confront Grievous and is surrounded by CG, the fight over the lava (the part when they're both on those little floating droid things especially), the "NOOOOOOO!" scene where Vader crushes shit with his brain...

In all of them there's a lack of interaction between anything CG and anything real. There are only a few sequences where the live action characters ever touch or grab or are touched or grabbed by anything that's CG. The light saber fights mainly just involve the jedi swinging their glow sticks around at random and having animators put droids or lasers in there for them to swing at. They rarely ever look at what they're attacking. The movies are just a really expensive version of those Star Wars Kid effects videos where people would have him deflecting blaster shots and killing little droids. The first movie has some insane bloom going on around all the windows.

There are good things, tho. In all of the movies there are a lot of good Tatooine shots, traveling through the planet core with the giant fish things looked really good, all of the evening and night shots and pretty much all of the space shots look great and the later shots of Coruscant look better than they did in the first movie. I'd say that the best shots in all three movies are the ones that are the darkest with interesting shadowplay going on. Most of the time, tho, those are shot on a complete or mostly complete set and the mattes just consist of lights in the background that get blurred.

I think the thing that throws me off the most throughout the entire series is how sterile the environments are. There are shots on Coruscant in Episode One where you see people walking around on platforms going places, only the scale of everything is so massive that they'd have to walk several miles over flat, perfectly pristine, lifeless pavement before they ever got anywhere. The lack of even potted plants is kindof crazy. How do they generate oxygen? And the planet is littered with giant, mildly stylized statues of naked, sexless people that all seem to have been created by the same guy.

I mean, they mostly look good I guess. I can't really complain about how well that stuff is rendered, but it just looks fake and wrong. The environments are all so vast in scale and yet so sparsely populated, and so well manicured. There are cracks and some wear here and there, but it's just so unsettling and bizarre that it doesn't matter how well it's rendered. It will always look fake.

Compare it to the shots of Rome in Gladiator. Huge scale, but loaded with people of all shapes and sizes and dress doing all sorts of things. A lot of the shots there are just as fake as anything in Episode One and it was made around the same time, but feels a lot more real. You look at the exterior shots on Naboo in Episode One and it kinda feels like they forgot to add characters to them.

And the animation on a lot of the CG characters kills the effect as well.

I dunno. Not much more to add, really. I, myself, couldn't have watched those movies much even if they had been decent or good. There's too much stuff in them that visually doesn't work for me. It's like the Rancor in Jedi. That thing has never worked for me, but it doesn't matter cause I only have to sit through it for that one scene. I can let it slide, even tho I don't fully buy into it. With the prequels it's like that for the entire movie and I can't let it slide.

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Re: Episode III

I always hated the comp shot of Mace Windu in the tunnel just before he emerges into the Geonosis arena. It's painfully obvious that he's just walking towards a green scree. Might as well be Cool World.

http://disparue.org/gallery/4/movies/st … 2_3414.jpg

In fact, quite a few of the Geonosis battle shots look a little 'stuck on'.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: Episode III

Forbidden AND 404 Not Found. I'll just have to take your word for it.

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Re: Episode III

dear mother of god, disparue.org is the best new bookmark I've added in ages.

Now you'll all have to excuse me as I have a night to waste.

Thank you, redxavier

EDIT: This is the image redxavier posted. That site doesn't like hotlinking.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/ … 2_3414.jpg

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2011-10-01 00:09:53)

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Re: Episode III

The funny part, to me, in that picture is the fact that the Genosian standing next to Dooku looks good, but the blending from forground to background is a off. I think it is more of a lighting issue from one to the other.

God loves you!

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Re: Episode III

Just listened to this ep. Loved it. Listening to the George Lucas stories reminded me of a recent one. Not long ago Disney finally redid the Star Tours attraction. The ride now takes place between the prequels and A New Hope. The ride has a randomized setting which has you flying over a bunch of the more famous Star Wars planets. During the pitch to Lucas, the flight went over Hoth and you had an encounter with a Wampa (among other things).

After it finished, Lucas wanted to know why there weren't any AT-ATs in the film. An imagianeer told him that wouldn't make sense as the ride's storyline takes place before the rebels ever went to Hoth.

George's response? "Who cares?"

So there was never any hope for the prequels, we just didn't know it at the time.

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Re: Episode III

The tenacity would surprise me if it weren't ol' George, but I almost agree with that. I haven't ridden the new Star Tours, but I can imagine an amazing AT-AT sequence in that setting.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Episode III

Okay, everyone brace yourselves: George made the right call here. I don't know if there are AT-ATs either in the new ride, I haven't gone on it yet, but the point of the thing is to ride through the exciting bits of Star Wars, canonical timeline be damned. You may recall that the original ride was a trip to Endor, where you became caught in a rebel battle against a completed Death Star destroyed by a trench run and photon torpedoes in the exhaust port. I don't think I need to explain to anyone here what's wrong with that, but I never gave a damn while I was on the ride. I also never took the Back to the Future ride ( sad  ) as official canon, either.

So while I appreciate that the Imagineers were thinking about the broader context, what matters is a badass ride. It's that Lucas took the same cavalier attitude to the movies themselves that created problems.

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Re: Episode III

Just curious here—has anyone besides me on this forum read the novelization of ROTS by Matthew Stover? He basically doubled the length of the story, replaced all of George's dialogue with his own, changed the motivations of many of the main characters, threw in a lot of subtlety and a HECK of a lot of awesomely written battle sequences. The result is one of my favorite books of all time. That's right, not one of my favorite STAR WARS books, one of my favorite BOOKS. Period. He actually succeeded where Lucas failed and wrote a highly convincing, emotional story of a fallen hero that affects the reader tremendously.

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Re: Episode III

neutral

I'll put it on my to-read list out of curiosity. Gonna be ready to pill the ripcord at the first sign of trouble though.

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Re: Episode III

The superiority of the novel doesn't surprise in the slightest. I used to loathe the prequel universe, but the Dark Horse comics and the Clone Wars series have proven that it can be highly interesting and entertaining. Everyone writes better Star Wars than Lucas, but then, that was always the case back in the 70s.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: Episode III

Darth Praxus wrote:

Just curious here—has anyone besides me on this forum read the novelization of ROTS by Matthew Stover? He basically doubled the length of the story, replaced all of George's dialogue with his own, changed the motivations of many of the main characters, threw in a lot of subtlety and a HECK of a lot of awesomely written battle sequences. The result is one of my favorite books of all time. That's right, not one of my favorite STAR WARS books, one of my favorite BOOKS. Period. He actually succeeded where Lucas failed and wrote a highly convincing, emotional story of a fallen hero that affects the reader tremendously.

I actually quite enjoy the book myself, and agree with Praxus. It is well written, and engaging, with excellent battle descriptions.

My one complaint is that it still has the failing of the movie in that the Dark Side and Palpatine are still painted as being right with the Jedi being in to the wrong. But, it does provide a better perspective for all the characters, as well as all the things that Praxus said.

Worth the read, in my opinion.

God loves you!

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Re: Episode III

Apparently not only is there the ROTS novelization, but in predictable Star Wars style ROTS is actually the middle installment of a trilogy, with a prequel novel leading up to the events of ROTS and setting the stage, and a follow-up novel about his first mission as Vader, which sounds like the actually interesting part of the story I wanted to goddamn see. And it's cheaper to buy the trilogy than just two individually.

So now I'm reading three fucking Star Wars novels when I finish Cloud Atlas. Just when I think I'm out.  mad

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Re: Episode III

Nobody ever leaves Star Wars Lit Dorkman...

Extended Edition - 146 - The Rise Of Skywalker
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Re: Episode III

Dorkman wrote:

Apparently not only is there the ROTS novelization, but in predictable Star Wars style ROTS is actually the middle installment of a trilogy, with a prequel novel leading up to the events of ROTS and setting the stage, and a follow-up novel about his first mission as Vader, which sounds like the actually interesting part of the story I wanted to goddamn see. And it's cheaper to buy the trilogy than just two individually.

So now I'm reading three fucking Star Wars novels when I finish Cloud Atlas. Just when I think I'm out.  mad

Well,
i didn't know that... hmm  oops
*?flees the wrath of the Dorkman*

God loves you!

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Re: Episode III

I just had to:
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/photoshop/3/9/5/1395_slide.jpg?v=2

God loves you!

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Re: Episode III

Camille Paglia, the indispensable art critic, believes Revenge of the Sith is our generation's greatest work of art.

neutral

Re: Episode III

Thereby proving the point that art is entirely subjective.

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Re: Episode III

That is fantastic. I love how enthusiastic she is about it all. Just fantastic.

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Re: Episode III

What a minute?
ROTS gets the praise for combining model work, live action and CG but LOTR doesn't?

facepalm

God loves you!

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Re: Episode III

This "intellectual" is effectively committing career-suicide in front of an audience. She's now a laughing stock. She'll only get out of this if she claims she was being ironic, or unduly provocative, or it was performance-art, or someth'n.

not long to go now...

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Re: Episode III

Camille Paglia's been saying controversial things for decades.  It doesn't ruin her career, it IS her career.

Re: Episode III

Has anyone seen this reddit post about Anakin's head morph? I thought it was interesting that the world finally noticed what Ryan pointed out back in 2009.

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Re: Episode III

My mom sent me that link, I hadn't seen it until then.

This is what my internet experience has become.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Episode III

Hooray, Internet...

God loves you!

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