SW gets pass... on horrendous creature effects

The baby does look a bit jerky, but he's much more articulate than the original Yoda was, and they're careful to make him as realistic as possible. Puppetry has actually gotten a lot better in the past 30 years, if the Dark Crystal series is anything to go by. I would like to point out that the Child is very small, like, the size of a loaf of bread. Small wonder he wouldn't weigh much. Remember that he is not human, and obviously isn't built as densely as our babies. That, and I have picked up lightweight human babies, so it's possible for him not to weigh a ton, despite his small size.

Now in the case of the giant pirhanas with legs, they look real, despite their cartoonish faces, and I got to watch the behind-the-scenes on how they filmed the riding scenes. The actors were on these rigs that were suspended over the ground of the set, and riding on mock-up pieces of these creatures, since they needed something physical for the actors to sit on. The rigs bobbed and moved similarly to the creatures Quiil used for transport on his planet. I always assumed they had leathery skin, which works for their dry, alien environment. If you look at some earth animals with leathery skin, their skin often does not look very real either. People often mistake the Rhinoceros, for example, of having "armor," when in fact their skin is leathery and just has folds on it that create the illusion of armor.

In the case of the squid faced jerkwad aliens, I'm guessing either the tentacles were CGI, or a puppeteer was operating them with a remote control while the actors were being filmed for the scene. That's how they get the mouths and eyes to move on Mon Calamari head prosthetics when they are talking in a scene. I noticed that one way they made it cheaper was to have that one Mon Calamari facing away from the camera while talking to the Mandalorian at the dock. Less work with the prosthetics that way.

In the case of

The best creature effects are usually achieved by the hybrid approach of practical methods digitally touched up in post production. In the Jurassic Park movies they use actual physical mockups for the parts of the animals that come in contact with other objects in the frame, for example they would butt a life-size raptor head against the side of a car and draw in the rest of it with GCI. Likewise with the feet of a T-Rex as it stomps across muddy ground. The contact interface between dinosaur and background makes all the difference between something that looks overlaid and something that looks like a living breathing animal actually in the frame with the actors.

Puppet creatures can be retouched to give their skin more authentic texture and make their movements look more lifelike, based on computer models of skeleton and musculature. Lighting can be adjusted to match the on-set source, distorted reflections of the creature can be drawn onto metallic objects in the scene, etc. There's an art to good CGI.

If you watch the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and compare it with The Hobbit series, you'll notice the older films look a lot better. That's because they used live action including scenes with thousands of extras, practical creature effects with CGI employed in all the right places to make a good image perfect, and simulated monsters like the underground fire demon that couldn't possibly be done with animatronics or puppetry. The Hobbit by contrast was almost entirely CGI. The dragon looked pretty damn good but creatures that walked on the ground and had to be combined with real footage appear more like video game characters.

Obviously The Mandalorian is trying to duplicate the distinctive old school Star Wars look with its alien races. It's retro on purpose. But cost is a factor too - expert practitioners of live action creature effects can deliver good results much cheaper than what you'd have to shell out to make them absolutely flawless with digital augmentation. And the show already costs a boatload of money to produce.

Good stuff.

Yes.