A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Revenge of the Sith
Rogue One
Anything else is just shitty fanfiction and doesn't count.
Sorry but the real star wars films = star wars 77, empire & jedi.
The prequels were insufferable when they came out and still are insufferable today. Not a single warm character in those godawful films. The sequels being even worse than them shouldn't make the prequels look any better. And the spin offs are shit.
Like it or not, the prequels brought in not only a new generation of Star Wars fans (though I was a fan even before Episode I came out), it also reignited interest in Star Wars during the millennium and even spawned a new franchise for BioWare, where we get to see a time in the galaxy's history when things followed different events, but a lot of the stuff we love about the Star Wars universe hasn't changed. (And KK has no control over the Old Republic stuff at all, a fact I love).
The Prequels also gave us the ability to see the Star Wars Lucas had always imagined, with CGI to help, rather than silly models and puppets. We got to see some combat that was even more epic than the original trilogy could offer. We were even introduced to new alien species that we'd never seen before. Complain all you like, but the prequels were also groundbreaking in another area too: completely CGI characters, which had never been done in cinema before. It won't mean much to you, but the prequels also made some fans more interested in costuming.
Yeah, I wasn't satisfied with parts of the 3 films either. But at least it was Lucas at the helm instead of assholes who didn't care about the source material at all and wanted to subvert expectations, or please fringe groups of people who didn't even like the franchise. At least with Lucas, the prequels feel more like they belong with the first three films than that shitty sequel trilogy.
Yeah, they weren't perfect. Yeah, they didn't focus on what happened after Return of the Jedi, I get it. But people wanted to know how it all started, how things got to where they were, and Lucas gave us our answer. Disney did not. Live with it, watch the movies you like, and shut up.
with CGI to help, rather than silly models and puppets
At least the CGI was better than the shit you saw with Marvel movies 20 years later.
shareI think that's because Lucas gave ILM two years to do the CGI for the prequels. With that amount of time, it's no wonder it looks better than stuff more recently, which I'd guess are on a schedule.
With CGI I don't think it ages too much. The T-Rex breaking its way out of its enclosure in Jurassic Park still looks very convincing today.
I figured out why the older CGI (at least the good stuff, we did have a few stinkers now and then *cough*Super Mario Bros.*cough*).
1.) The human eye registers film movement naturally at 25 frames per minute. Therefore, the films with groundbreaking CGI of the 90s and early 2000s kept the movement at that rate. The problem is, somewhere along the line (most notably after 2009), someone in the graphics and post-production world forgot about that and now the framerate is much too fast, causing many films to look more like video games than something realistic and almost tangible for the minds of the viewers.
2.) Film-makers back in the 90s and early 2000s used a combination of green/blue-screen, models, actors in special suits, mock-ups, and even actual puppets, and used them together with CGI put in during post-processing. That way, the visual effects artists not only had a solid point of reference for, say, a person, a creature, or even some kind of supernatural thing happening, they could meld it all together into something that truly does fool the human eye into thinking it's real, even if the audience knows it's not.
3.) Yeah, studios back in the day would give graphics designers time to perfect the images they had to build in the computers, as well as polish up the scenes to make them look amazing. Disney has made the mistake of pushing their visual effects people way too hard, with 5-6 films a year instead of 1 or 2, with only 3-6 months to do post-production work on some of them, in addition to abusing their graphics department's employees. Small wonder that the quality of their films have suffered both story-wise and visually.
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing. Some good points in there.
The best use of CGI I've seen is T2, Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers and Iron Man. I think if films just use minimum CGI and focus more on the characters and script, then the sfx have more impact when they come up onscreen.
Guillermo Del Toro was known for that with his films in the mid-2000s. He tried using as much of the traditional special-effects he could get away with before ever resorting to using CGI. That's one reason films like "Hellboy," its sequel, and "Pan's Labyrinth" were so well-received by movie-making nerds. They knew that he respected the older crafts instead of always resorting to the newer tech all the time.
shareJon Favreau as well, who said he wanted to use as little CGI in the Iron Man movies as possible.
Tom Cruise's films I've noticed tend to go for a lot of practical stunts & set pieces as well. It's important not to saturate films with CGI.
I think the best prequel was Phantom Menace, precisely because it used the least CGI, and therefore didn't look so synthetic like the other two.
It's true. While Phantom Menace did use ground-breaking special-effects that came to define the prequel trilogy, if you watch Behind-the-Scenes videos of certain scenes being filmed, you would see that there was still a ton of stuff that was real. A fine example was a palace in Casserta, Italy, that was used for interior shots of the Naboo Palace, or using actual sets built in Tunisia for the Tattooine scenes (hearkening back to Episode IV, of course), things like that.
There are some shots that simply couldn't be done with practical effects, such as outdoor scenes on Coruscant. I mean, I don't think earth has enough landmass for even one mock-up of buildings for those outdoor sets to be built, do you? And I doubt there was enough money available in Lucas's budget to set up both an entire stadium as well as the entire racetrack for the pods, never mind building life-sized racing pods that could look real enough to fool the audience. Plus, Tunisia doesn't have the landmarks required for scenes from the podrace. It's too flat and sandy, and you see Anakin racing through canyons full of stalagmites and stalactites and rock arches for part of it.
I actually didn't realize John Favreau directed the first few Iron Man movies, though that explains why the first few were so good.
Yeah I used to have the dvd of phantom menace and I remember the making-of well. They built sets for every scene, they filmed on location in Italy, England & Tunisia (while revenge of the sith had zero on location filming - filmed entirely on green-screen ridden soundstages). It makes all the difference to a film. It was also the only prequel shot on film, while the other two were shot digitally.
For Coruscant, I think the movie Blade Runner did a better job at showing a future sci-fi city using models and miniatures.
The first Iron Man is a great film. The second was ruined by studio interference (as told by Favreau in his film Chef).
Reason No.2 is huge. I think this is why a lot of the stuff in Lord of the Rings holds up today but the Hobbit CG didn't even look great at the time.
shareI know the Hobbit Trilogy movies weren't as good as the LOTR trilogy, but frankly, I'll take them over that shitty "Rings of Power" shit show any day of the week.
shareI never watched it. I heard some people liked it, some hated it, but I couldn't get the stupid, online political fighting out of my head. I know if I watched it, I'd be going in with a lot of other people's troll voices in my brain and I couldn't engage with it on its own terms. If I can't give it a fair shake, I don't think I'm going to bother. Maybe I'll try it some day.
shareI can't watch it, due to hearing the actors' condescending, insipid voices, in my head, as well as the horror of listening to those idiotic paid shills from England. That, and the storytelling sounds so bad that even a 5-year-old could have written it better.
share1.) Film was, and still is, shot at 24fps. The only outlier (that I know of) was The Hobbit, which was shot at 60fps at 4k, and was shown on select screens at that format.
2.) All still done today. There are some full CG shots, but there is plenty of reference to work from. On a side note, we’re not called ‘graphic designers’ - that’s a term used for 2d stills - print/web work. The correct term is visual effects artists.
3.) This is all true. The post-production schedule has become more and more compressed, and that is causing some films to look sub-standard - absolutely.
Oh cool! A word from an actual visual effects artist, yay! :D
shareI agree with you that the models and puppets are far more interesting, entertaining, and creative than the glut of CGI in the prequels. With that said, I don't agree with your assessment of 3D animators. Many of them are true artists and are bringing creative, imaginative, and effect art to the screen. Movies like WALL-E and Rango or television series such as Love, Death, and Robots bring great work to the screen. If a megacorporation like Disney orders up a bunch of generic CGI to populate whatever IP they bought this week, and they rush the animators and give them strict guidelines so everything looks the same as their other franchises and matches toy design, I don't think that's a black mark against those animators.
shareYeah, you're right. Maybe I was a bit too harsh on digital animators. I'm sure many are very talented. I was kinda copying what Plinkett said in the prequel reviews "here's thousands of computer animators and their sheer passion for... collecting their next paycheck" hehe. I'm sure many are not like that.
I guess I'm biased towards the films I grew up with as well, most of which used practical sfx.
But I am okay with films that use digital sfx sparingly.
Plinkett's comment is funny, and does quickly convey the lack of real artistry in most of the PT's visual FX. A lot of that stuff does look fairly bland, and even though it was cutting edge and broke a lot of ground, it didn't serve the story or the characters and seemed more like a tech demo than cinematography.
I'm also sure that it changes from job to job. Plenty of CG artists probably start out going, "Oh, let's try X and Y and Z!" and then get told, "Don't do that. Just copy-paste a bunch of battle droids in there." And some are probably just grinding cheques.
I prefer a lot of FX from older films, too. There's more imagination in Harryhausen's work than in most CG stuff out there. On the other hand, I appreciate that CG does things that other effects can't, and if used always with the story in mind first, wind up working well.
it didn't serve the story or the characters and seemed more like a tech demo than cinematography.
Yeah. It was pretty obvious that Lucas was just as interested in pushing FX technology as he was in making a narrative arc for his heroes. The biggest problem with the PT was that the rise and fall of Golden Boy Anakin Skywalker should have been far more affecting, moving, and artfully handled, and it was meandering and strange.
share"The biggest problem with the PT was that the rise and fall of Golden Boy Anakin Skywalker should have been far more affecting, moving, and artfully handled, and it was meandering and strange."
I agree with this. I feel the films failed on a basic character and story level. This is why I also feel each of the prequel films got successively worse, not better. Contrary to the popular wisdom, Phantom Menace I find the least bad of the three, mainly because I wasn't really all that interested in Anakin and his stupid whiny problems, I just liked the world and the Jedi battles. Once it was clear what shape the story was taking and the arc Lucas was putting Anakin on, the less interested and tiresome the films become... for me.
Yeah. The Prequels are Anakin's story, but for some reason, The Phantom Menace feels like Qui-Gon Jin's story. This makes it feel weird (because I feel like I'm watching a "side-quest" in many ways) but it also sorta detaches TPM from the other two.
For my own perspective, I don't really have favourite/least favourite Prequels. They all sort of exist as different kinds of bland.
There are a few films out there that had such a good story, I was willing to excuse the cheesy special-effects, because they did what they were designed to do (to move the story along and enhance it), and they were a product of their time. Such films include:
- Coneheads
- Fantastic Voyage
- Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
- Forbidden Planet
Fantastic Voyage is a really great movie. I have a huge soft-spot for that picture.
share"it didn't serve the story or the characters and seemed more like a tech demo than cinematography."
"Plenty of CG artists probably start out going, "Oh, let's try X and Y and Z!"
"I prefer a lot of FX from older films, too."
Droid factory is a pretty good example, yeah. I always think of the opening shot of Revenge of the Sith. It's really cool looking, it obviously took thousands of hours of work, and yet I don't care. It's hinging on us knowing and caring about everything going on in the Clone Wars, but because Ep.II set everything up so poorly, none of it matters. They have to get "General Grievous". Okay. So what?
The realistic FX or in-camera FX are also typically far more interesting, creative, and fun. I recently watched the Wes Anderson Roald Dahl short films and they make great use of effects that are almost all in-camera. They're terrific.
I always think of the opening shot of Revenge of the Sith. It's really cool looking, it obviously took thousands of hours of work
It's hinging on us knowing and caring about everything going on in the Clone Wars, but because Ep.II set everything up so poorly, none of it matters. They have to get "General Grievous". Okay. So what?
The realistic FX or in-camera FX are also typically far more interesting, creative, and fun.
"They have to get "General Grievous". Okay. So what?"
Lucas made a huge mistake there: from EP II to EP III, you were supposed to watch The Clone Wars animated series to know who Grievous is, and to see how he kidnapped Palpatine, and to see how this event was orchestrated, etc. But Star Wars films (all films) should stand on their own. You didn't need to read comic books to fill in on the Emperor's backstory to understand RotJ. His mere appearance (and how he was set up already in a scene in TESB) speaks for itself. Using clear visual language and acting was the right amount of setup for Palpy in the OT.
But here, we get references to Grievous as if we should know who he is. He's got ZERO setup in Episoed II - as he is not mentioned at all - and now he is supposed to be this big bad guy? His appearance is nothing special, just another CGI creation to be added to the pile, and they tried to make him special with the strange voice and the coughing, but he looks like a cartoon villain - and that's not me throwing shade on the Clone Wars series, but he was kind of introduced in a cartoon... So a total mess, in which Lucas forgot that he should never expect the viewer to do homework to understand a movie.
And that's sad. I personally think AOTC and RotS are better than TPM - i.e. they have fewer problems - but they still have a lot of problems in terms of plot, structure, character arcs, etc. And the very beginning of RotS is one of them. I love the space battle sequence visually, but shame it doesn't have a better movie that comes after it.
Oh, yeah, it was a big fumble there. Requiring me to go outside of the source material to understand everything means that the primary text (or, in this case, film) doesn't work. I love LOTR, and I love the extra lore. But if I had to read The Silmarillion and the Book of Lost Tales and what not to understand who Glorfindel is, then LOTR is poorly written. I get *more* out of Glorfindel if I've read the other lore, but I don't need to read it to "get" it.
The OT works well because each episode builds on the previous entry. Both the PT and ST have the problem that the films often feel disconnected. Plenty of people have pointed out that starting with AOTC leaves out no story from TPM that is required to understand it. As you've just pointed out, RotS builds on material that isn't present. It might build on AOTC, but it's actually not the direct sequel. The ST is even worse where each new entry almost gleefully jettisons the previous film's main points.
And you're right: visually, the opener is good. It's just that it's disconnected from any story tissue that we care about.
Plenty of people have pointed out that starting with AOTC leaves out no story from TPM that is required to understand it. As you've just pointed out, RotS builds on material that isn't present. It might build on AOTC, but it's actually not the direct sequel. The ST is even worse where each new entry almost gleefully jettisons the previous film's main points.
As I'm sure you remember, I'm one of those people. Leaving out TPM, and starting the story when Anakin is around 19 would have been the right decision that would have allowed us to
- See more of Obi-Wan's training methods, and the situations they find themselves in together
- Understand the mindset of Anakin - his conflicts with the Jedi Council, Yoda, his relationship with Padme and how the other Jedi are frowning upon that, etc.
- Go into more details regarding the politics of the Clone Wars. This scenario would be salvageable, if we knew what exactly is the ideology these many fractions (separatists) are subscribing to. Because it is essential that getting rid of the Republic is not and end, it's just a stepping stone towards something new. But all of these fractions somehow see eye to eye on a really complex issue - what should come after the Republic? This is way, way more intriguing than what we got in the films, and seeing this process of how Palpy manipulates them towards this goal of building the Empire, would show us how he is a master manipulator, hiding his sinister intentions from absolutely all of his contacts.
- Go into more details on how the Jedi Council thinks - I refuse to believe they are that stupid as they are depicted. Maybe include some suspicion towards Palpatine from Yoda, Windu, etc? The novelization of RotS tries this, and goes into more detail on Dooku's motivation, etc., all of which I was shaking my head that Lucas did not put in the effort to include (or at least something similar to what Matther Stover, the author came up with).
I could go on :-)
You're dead right on everything there.
In-particular, I love that last bullet point. I also thought the expansion of the Jedi lore was some really shoddy worldbuilding. We got odd rules like how the Jedi cannot marry, we got Yoda as a general and a warrior (he's lived for ~880 years thinking war is good and then learns, "Oh, Wars *not* make one great...!" between RotS and ESB? Come on), and as you say, the absolute stupidity of the council. The treatment of Yoda is especially egregious, where he behaves in such a myopic, politically-motivated, foolish way, and it just tarnishes the wisdom he is supposed to represent.
Forgot to react to your comment about how the OT is building on each entry, whereas the PT and ST are really bad at consistency...
It's a curious and baffling situation - we have three trilogies here, three set of three films, and
- The OT is consistently building the plot movie after movie, keeping the big picture in mind
- The PT tries to do this, but fails, as the entries are not as cohesive, not as connected to each other.
- The ST doesn't even try to do this, as its entries are actively working against each other, due to some "subverting the expectations" BS, in which the director of each new entry tries to one up the previous guy, while winking at the audience - "You thought X was the case? No, it's actually Y! Got ya!!!"
Baffling to see this unfold with the largest movie (and other media) franchise on Earth that the result of this childish tug of war was actually presented to us, the viewers as the canon Sequel Trilogy...
Yeah. The PT I get how it happened. George Lucas had a story in mind, wrote it out, and never had anybody edit it or give him critiques (not ones he took seriously) so the plot holes of a first (maybe second) draft create the goof-ups we see.
The ST has no excuse. I get that they just spent $4 billion on Lucasfilm and they needed to start production going, but just audition some writers. Get them into the room, have them pitch you a plot arc for three movies, and when you get one you like, buy it and start writing. All of that yo-yoing on plot points - and THEMES! the THEMES aren't even consistent! - would have been avoided.
The OT pulled it off because Lucas wrote one story. Literally just one movie, and executives made him redraft it until it was as clear and precise as a proton torpedo into an exhaust port. Then, when Star Wars took off, Lucas figured out the next two movies' stories and hashed the scripts out with a writer. So the story evolved and flowed naturally. They built on the foundation they had and moved forward. It wasn't just trying to undo everything.
I feel like the ST was constantly in damage control mode. The Force Awakens was an over correction/shield against all the anti-PT backlash. The Last Jedi was a damage control response to "it was too derivative of A New Hope," from a (small) section of TFA viewers. And Rise of Skywalker spent about half its runtime doing "take backs" on the stuff that upset people about TLJ. Ironically, I think the ST was the opposite problem of the PT: instead of one guy not listening to anybody, we had endless committees trying to please too many people and winding up tearing it into three disappointing films.
I never said the 3D animators were crappy at their job. I'm saying that in the last 10 years, (particularly the last 5), they often were not given enough time to get their work done properly so that it looked good for the final cut of the films they were working on. If you take a look at the process used to merge CGI with live-action shots in a film, it takes a while to get it to look right. You gotta do shapes, shadows, layering, take into account light sources, the proper movement for the subjects in your shot, as well as not messing with the image of the live-action footage to a degree that the audience is gonna notice.
Heck, if you saw the rough cuts of a 3D cartoon film, it looks almost as bad as a child's drawing, because the animators often have to start with the most basic figures and movements. I remember watching a BTS on Shrek and an animator showed an extremely rough cut of the "rescue the princess" scene where Shrek and Donkey were running down a hallway from the dragon. They both looked like extremely simple toys of themselves, and they weren't moving, save for just floating down the half-burnt stone hall, which looked like it was made of plastic. And the reason the animation looked so beautiful in the final cut was, the animators were not only given time to finish properly, they also polished the scenes and made sure they looked good for the audience.
There is also an open secret in Hollywood that it's common for animators, whether they work on cartoons, or CGI, are often treated like slaves or dirt under the producers' and studio heads' feet. They work long hours, are often yelled at, sometimes sexually harassed, and even fired over the smallest reasons. There's a reason why Don Bluth studios died in 2000, or that Disney Marvel Studios had a vast exodus of 3D animators in the past few years. It was due to all the abuse and rushing of projects.
A fine example of how bad it was can be shown in the She-Hulk streaming show. They had so few veteran animators left that the producers had to run to the nearest animation college and bring in students (who hadn't finished their training and had no proper experience in an actual film yet) to finish the CGI work. And as you saw, She-Hulk looked like crap. Although, to the animator's credit, even if there had been good CGI in the show, the story-writing and characters were so bad, honestly nothing could save that dumpster fire.
The Empire Strikes Back (unaltered)
Star Wars (unaltered)
Return of the Jedi (unaltered)
The Force Awakens
Rogue One
The Last Jedi/The Rise of Skywalker (tie-ish?)
Solo
The Empire Strikes Back (Special Edition)
Star Wars/A New Hope (Special Edition)
Revenge of the Sith
The Phantom Menace
Never seen Attack of the Clones or SE Return of the Jedi, nor do I care to.
The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars (A New Hope)
Return of the Jedi
Rogue One
Revenge of the Sith
The Force Awakens
Solo
The Last Jedi
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
The Rise of Skywalker
The real bad ones start at The Last Jedi which is a weird movie... because I actually think that half of that film is very good... and the other half is god awful... So I guess that makes it a very mediocre film... a bit like Solo which was okay but nothing great... I think the Force Awakens is quite good... even though it is kind of a repeat of the original Star Wars... but still a good return to the Star Wars universe.
I loved Rogue One and that is the only one which is close to the original trilogy... Maybe I rate Revenge of the Sith a bit high but I do love The Emperor and he plays a big part in this one... There still are some of the horrible dialogue which plagues all the prequel films... but I did enjoy it... It actually think the prequels have a lot of cool bad guys Palpatine, Dooku, Maul etc., but I think George made a big mistake in making Anakin so young in the first film and don't even get me started on Jar Jar and as previously mentioned the dialogue in the prequels are just god awful.
The worst one of all the Star Wars films is to me The Rise of Skywalker... bringing back Palpatine (one of my favorite characters) was a huge mistake... and the entire film is a mess... Partly because of The Last Jedi... and in general the prequel trilogy issue with not having a set story arch from the get go makes The Rise of Skywalker suffer the most.
Pretty good list. I'd probably move ROTS down a couple of spots but otherwise it's close to how I'd rank them. I'd stick with the original theatrical OT movies too, not the Special Editions.
shareYou are probably right... and as I mention I likely rate ROTS to high based on Palpatine is awesome in that film.
I also would always pick the OT original versions and not the special editions.
Star Wars (1977)
Revenge of the Sith
Return of the Jedi
Empire Strikes Back
Phantom Menace
Rogue One
Attack of the Clones
1) A New Hope
1) Empire Strikes Back
3) Return of the Jedi
3) Revenge of the Sith
5) Attack of the Clones
5) Phantom Menace
7) Rogue One
A tie for first and a tie for 3rd and probably a tie for 5th. But, the order remains.
Rogue One can stay where it is.
And yes, the other SW's films don't exist (even though I just mentioned them).
Whatever. You're not even a real person.
share