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Whenever i'm watching a Lord of the Rings DVD, I notice that the picture looks SO MUCH MORE realistic. Like ur watching real life, and when I switch to star wars, it looks almost animated. Like changing from Geonosis arena, to helms deep. It looks like "Fake" to "Real". Does anyone else agree?

Yes.

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/f38/t335340.html

Who really cares? We know it's fake, why bother griping about it?

Could it just be easier to view realistic, although massive, castles than giant fungus, domesticated riding lizards, and immense battle cruisers?

I thought Coruscant looked like it could be real. Alderaan looked good but was the scene was edited so quickly you could not take time to note what was good about it. When Braveheart came out, I not only liked the story but was caught up in the scenic background settings of Scotland. Beautiful full open vistas, mountains, and open fields, lovingly filmed and edited to let you take it all in. Batman Begins did this with the opening scenes of a Tibetan glacier/mountain range. For some reason, GL decided to edit his pan quickly through the worlds he drove his FX team so hard to create. I think he mentions it to some of the ILM crew when he was filming as I recall in the Making of ROTS book. Like, "...this is a great background, too bad it will only be on screen for two seconds..you just get where it is and go right to the main theme of the story (Anakin's fall)..."

Until I get the DVD and watch it as often as I have LOTR, I will have to say the FX did not suck. It was bogus to use animated bodies for the clones with the Jango Fett actors head though. How much could it possibly have cost to make one or two full scale uniforms? It just would have blended in better. You don't see Peter Jackson CGI'ing leather and animal skins on his main Orcs.

That's because Jackson has more better control over his use of CG over practical effects. Lucas is stupid.

I prefer ShadowKing's reason. It actually has a good, thought out explanation. No offense.

There were some terrible CG shots is both films...

I like how Lucas doesn't spend too much time on establishing shots in this film. Yeah, they may look cool but they slow the pace down and are really pointless. This is something I think he learnt from Episode I and II...

Episode III was much better, I thought, effects wise.

Also, Lucas did the movie in three years. Jackson did all three over the good part of a decade.

Star wars effects have always had a certain style to them, they never were about 100% realism they were about being epic. lotr was going for realism. the geonois arena is a miniature so i don't see the problem there.
lotr was also shot on film which has a graininess to it, star wars 2+3 are shot on digital video which doesn't. The film grain makes visual effects look realistic easer. it gives the illusion of detail for miniatures and cg better because of this.

I agree with that. The Gungan battle at the end of Episode I looks much more realistic than the Geonosis battle... because it was shot on film.

I disagree about the films having a certain style. It would be absolutely foolish for George to not go for a realistic as possible.

also most people over look the films design

ShadowKing said
Could it just be easier to view realistic, although massive, castles than giant fungus, domesticated riding lizards, and immense battle cruisers?

which is true, lotr could acuallay shoot locations of new zealand or at least get good referece, in star wars george wants to see alien world the can easilay be distingushed from each other. Hes used nearly every real world loction in the first 4, so by episode 2 be has to creat them form scrach basically. design wise these newer places dont exist ie kamino that weird planet in episode 3 or courasant or its dam dangerous as well like mustafar. for mustafar they did get real volcano footage though as well as minitures.

i thought Kashyyyk was very well done because they got real life footage and still for some of it and minitures for the rest it thought it was very belivible. geonossis was hard because george didn't want it to look like tatooine, which would have been easy to do, so its much more alien and red.

Kashyyyk was pretty well done. I was very impressed with Mustafar, I thought it looked great.

The things about the VFX that bug me are the use of digital doubles (mainly for the jumps). They just don't look realistic. And also the digital Clonetroopers look really bad in many shots.

Shots that bugged me in particular: Plo Koon's death - way too cartoony, it looked awful; The Jedi on the speeder bike's death - ditto; a particular shot in the Kashyyyk battle looked really bad; some of the shots of the ships looked too cartoony; Obi-Wan being thrown by Dooku - the worst shot of the film.

sorry for my leactures but im not very good at getting points across

Originally posted by macgeek2005
Whenever i'm watching a Lord of the Rings DVD, I notice that the picture looks SO MUCH MORE realistic. Like ur watching real life, and when I switch to star wars, it looks almost animated. Like changing from Geonosis arena, to helms deep. It looks like "Fake" to "Real". Does anyone else agree?

this coming from the same guy who becomes personally hurt and offended when anyone so much as jokingly pokes at ep3? mesa confused...mesa VERY confused oh man i didnt just speak in jar jar did i? damn...time for a memory wipe.

I agree with the fact that LOTR looks more "real"

but i also agree that SW has always had a style to it. it looks "real" but its not supposed to look 100% real. its supposed to look almost surreal. its an epic space fantasy film. its not as gritty as LOTR is.

Originally posted by Captain REX
Who really cares? We know it's fake, why bother griping about it?
I'm with you on this one.

If you think Star Wars special effects suck, then I'm afraid any other movie with cg effects is going to be pretty much spoiled for you.

It makes me wonder though. What would Star Wars be like if it were COMPLETELY animated.

Who cares, they are two different movies. Some shots lokk good in both movies, and some do not.

are you on acid the afects are great

if he was on acid, I dont think he'd complain.

WHEN WILL YOU GET IT RIGHT PEOPLE...LOTR IS BASED ON A WORLD THAT WE CALL EARTH...STAR WARS IS A WHOLE UNIVERSE, THOUSANDS OF PLANETS...THE TROLLS IN LOTR LOOK AS REAL AS THE REEK OR AN ACKLAY, MUSTAFAR LOOKS AS REAL AS ANY VOLCANO IN ACTIVITY, KAMINO`S ENDLESS SEA AND STORM MAYHEM LOOKS AS REAL AS ANY REAL STORM IN "REAL LIFE", CORUSCANT IS A CITY AS REAL AS IT CAN BE......

YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS...YOU HAVE ISSUES OF TRYING TO FREE YOUR MINDS...YOUR NARROW VIEWING MINDS.

FIX THAT ISSUES YOU ALL HAVE...THEN WRITE A RATIONAL THREAD

OK?

man, people suck, the effects are great in star wars
LOTR, didn;t have color like star wars, thats why
Hobitts suck, the shire should burn

Originally posted by Lord Darth Gabe
WHEN WILL YOU GET IT RIGHT PEOPLE...LOTR IS BASED ON A WORLD THAT WE CALL EARTH...STAR WARS IS A WHOLE UNIVERSE, THOUSANDS OF PLANETS...THE TROLLS IN LOTR LOOK AS REAL AS THE REEK OR AN ACKLAY, MUSTAFAR LOOKS AS REAL AS ANY VOLCANO IN ACTIVITY, KAMINO`S ENDLESS SEA AND STORM MAYHEM LOOKS AS REAL AS ANY REAL STORM IN "REAL LIFE", CORUSCANT IS A CITY AS REAL AS IT CAN BE......

YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS...YOU HAVE ISSUES OF TRYING TO FREE YOUR MINDS...YOUR NARROW VIEWING MINDS.

FIX THAT ISSUES YOU ALL HAVE...THEN WRITE A RATIONAL THREAD

OK?
No.

This film has problems with the VFX. The thing is, it SHOULD look real. And it doesn't all of the time. If you can't see that then so be it. But you can't force your opinions on others.

This film has some bad effects shots. Simple as that.

I agree with you Robin Darkside

I don`t want you to agree...I just want you people to be less punishing with this movies...stop the comparison

But why? Is it harming anyone to compare the movies? I really don't see why some people are so defensive...

I'm not saying the VFX necessarily affect my appreciation of the films... they just could have been better, and I expected more from a company which is supposedly one of the frontrunners in the industry...

agree cause its true
Lucas put more money into starwars than whoever produced LOTR, Jackson or some guy

And yet, the effects aren't as good...

I likes LOTR, dont get me wrong, but its nothing compared to star wars.
Recall that Lucas wrote star wars according to what can be done on screen. Which the PT was all about, Lucas probably figured he could accomplish anything.
For what he did accomplish with the PT, he deserves alot of credit, effects wise

man, the effects in LOTR were horrible though, wtf am I thinking

I think Lucas was overconfident in what he would be able to pull off with CG, which lead to the film looking very cartoony in parts. The fact is the technology is NOT up to the standard needed to make these films as Lucas thought.

Example: the digital double work. Horrendous. Lucas thought he could pull it off seamlessly, but he didn't. The technology isn't there yet...

come on, he accomplished what he can with today's technology
Its not perfect, but what, would you rather wait another 20 years for Cg and shit to become perfect.
Its good enough for me

No, I'd rather he did what the technology was capable of doing. Peter Jackson did it very well with his use of miniatures instead of CG... Lucas could learn a lot from him.

He doesn't have to wait for the CG to become perfect, just don't use CG for frickin everything! Many of the fake looking shots could have been fixed easily by using other methods....

umm, I dont know cause how do you really know it could have been better for other methods. Lucas had to maintain the CG look of the whole movie, so any changes would have looked stupid, because it wouldn't apply to the CG look of the movie.
Lucas made most of the movie mostly digital, more digital than EP I and II.
The amount of colors involed, made the way the movie looked, any changes would be a change in mood of the film

Special EFFEcts (weird incessent nerd snarl)

this thread is screwed too

Many people have talked about the films purposely having a cartoony 'CG' look to them, which I disagree with. I don't think it was ever intentional for it to look that way.

I think that the use of more models would have lessened the cartoony look a helluva lot. For example: I know there were models built, but some of the shots of the shopd looked very bad.

Like I said before, the thing that annoys me the most is the digital doubles. The shot of Dooku throwing Obi-Wan almost made me wanna puke. (not literally of course). It was worse than Legolas scaling the Elephant in ROTK (which was also awful). I maintain that the shot could have been achieved better by other methods.

Also - the digital Clones. Just horrible. Could they not have made at least ONE suit? And I guess your point kinda comes into play here: they couldn't have made just one suit, because it would have made the fact that the rest of them are CG even more obivous.

I think Lucas made some great moves on this film... but he also made many bad ones...

Originally posted by Robin Darkside
umm, I dont know cause how do you really know it could have been better for other methods. Lucas had to maintain the CG look of the whole movie, so any changes would have looked stupid, because it wouldn't apply to the CG look of the movie.
Lucas made most of the movie mostly digital, more digital than EP I and II.
The amount of colors involed, made the way the movie looked, any changes would be a change in mood of the film

Sorry about that the Ast Rofan kid was beginning to annoy me with his... "down syndrome logic"

i think the movie rocked

^ What an insightful post...

srry

It is often the lighting and the motion in the scenes in LotR which hide the obvious cartoony look associated with cg. Just look at gollum, he looks really cartoony sometimes. And the digital doubles in scenes don't really look better in this either, like in the legolas shots.

And what else was george supposed to use miniatures for in the prequels? He used them as much as he could, I don't know where else he should/could have used them.

And with the clones, I never knew they were digital in Attack of the clones until I found out they were. The thing that makes the clones look cartoony is the way they move. The actual digital models of them are very good, especially in episode 3.

Jackson used visuals only when he had to, with goluum and all, it did look good, the color aspect going along with gollum suited the environment. It was a dark gray look. With Star Wars, they used there best with all colors, Lucas was no pussy.
Many sceens with LOTR looks phoney, whenever they had to place a small little hobbit with the rest of the human croud.

Jackson used the kids to fill in when anywhere next to Gandalf, Aragorn, or even the little dwark.
Froto and the rest of the hobbits looked even more Fake, when they were next to the big people. they looked liked very small kids.

So, not using CG stuff in LOTR, made it look stupider

I love star wars

I agree that some of the shots of the hobbits next to the bigger people looked pretty bad, but I think it would have looked even worse if they used CG people. They just can't create photorealistic people usig CGI yet, and until they can I think they should stop doing it. But there are other methods Jackson could have used to create the difference in size, rather than using kids.

As for the Legolas digital double, I've already said that looked very bad. And I beleive that the shot could have been achieved much better using a real actor. Again, I will say that the technology has not yet reached a point where it can be seamlessly integrated into a live-action performance.

But I shouldn't really complain... Because the thing is, without these films using this technology in the way that they do, the technology would never grow or get better or get to a point where they can create photorealistic digital humans...

I just wish George had made some better decisions...

However the Cgi for the battles were really good though. Thats were CGI counts in huge movies. Sw had great effects and the battles in Rotk were great to look at. The huge battle at the city was great. Both movies had bad shots. However Rotk is better then Rots because the acting is better, much better. 9 for Rotk and 8.5 for Rots.

In some spots they were not great but overall if you said that the special effects really sucked I would show you to the drug rehab center.

no way who cares about the cgi the movie is still good

episode 1 hardly any cgi
who cares episode 1 sucks big time

uhh, yeah.... excellent rationalisation dude



And for a second there I thought we might be able to have a serious discussion... what a fool am I.

darht?

they dont suck. the cgi is nicely polish. I like it.

'polished'... and no it isn't.

... unless you mean it comes from Poland

why are you following me?

Because I enjoy making fun of you.

i goin to report you! now leave me alone.

I'll leave you alone when you stop making stupid statements without explaning them or even trying to back them up!

lol, Devil Dodo, poland

anyway, as you were saying before
How can you replace the Legolas digital character with a real character, with such extreme shots?

I believe it could have been done. They could have shot the actor climbing over a bluescreen mound or something, and with clever camera work, I think it would have turned out better. But then, I'm no director, so what the hell do I know?

yeah what do you know?

It would look fake either way, CGI in star wars is all good