Why did George Lucas shoot everything in CGI?

Well before we start bashing George to much. He still a man that has push the industri in some good ways.

Like 24P videocams and NLE.

And even if i hate CG they are getting better and better. Some stuff in E3 really looks good. What actually give it away is the "impossible camera moves".

What he did in EIV is actually the best way. He took stockfootage from WW2 of fighter planes attacking a bomber. And cut that to a sequense. He then did a perfect copy of that scene for 4 tiefighters that attacked the falcon. (You can se it on EIV-VI box)

As far of the LOTR series i think the 2 last films also overused CG. Not only Gollum but the battlescenes aswell.
 
We can go in circle about how succesful he is; ILM and the creation of STAR WARS and his digital endorsements and blah blah...........

That's ancient history. I dont care if he's rich, I dont care that at one time he did bring us Star Wars (which he has since ruined). Don't even start with those takes. Coppolla used to be cool too and he ain't done anything since Godfather 2.

Get the drift?

He's lost it in my world. And no; so what if he wrote Raiders. You know how they wrote Raiders? They told Kasdan they had X amount of action scenes they wanted to do and that he needed to craft a story around them. Spileberg is Indiana Jones; Lucas get's far too much credit for Indy

Lucas is a *****. I'll recant the day he actually does something great again (which hasnt been since Star Wars; er about 30 years ago
 
It's all subjective...

I personally gained a great deal of human insight on several levels...spiritual, psychological and several that I cannot label in any known way. If it weren't for these movies, and by that I mean THX1138 and Star Wars 1-6, I would be a lost chicken in high weeds and not even know it. But I would caveat that with the fact that I was in many ways schooled and primed for it during the time between the originals and prequals and would not have gotten nearly as much from it were it not for several life experiences having prepared me for it.

I can understand how people would have the above views if they are only watching them as "movies", but if you bring a little more to the table there is far more value to be mined from them than something as silly as being miffed over the inclusion of Jar Jar...which, by the way, was an instrumental part in some of the deeper insights I've discovered.
 
Well put

See; for me its an issue of being an original Star Wars baby. Okay? i was'nt like 14 or 15 when the Anankin Baby Episode came out. I was like 29. I was pissed. I was let-down. And not in an overly hyped kind of way. It just sucked for me. And the subsequnet films, even though they get better they just pale in comparison to even Jedi's magic (doesnt help genius is shooting E V E R Y T H I N G in front of a blue screen)

I don't know. Just they don't do it for me I guess. Totally let-down. But I love the first 3, THX and American Grafitti
 
See; for me its an issue of being an original Star Wars baby. Okay?
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I can definately relate to that...the first one was the very first movie I ever saw on a big screen....I was not yet 4 years old, yet I can very clearly remember the opening and several scenes. I was a storm trooper that very Halloween! My mother took me and my older female cousin to see it at a theater that no longer exists. I was majorly mind blown. I saw each of the rest of them with my father, all the way up to Episode III. Again, I can 100% relate to being a Star Wars baby, more or less literally!

When my son was 2 years old he caught a glimps of R2-D2 over my shoulder as I was watching ANH on my computer and asked "What's that blue robot....I waaa see blue robot". So I let him watch it with me and he was an instant fanatic...I mean big time! I showed him the rest of the movies that were out up until that point (Episode II) and he dug them so much.... He calls them:

ANH = Jawas
ESB = Doggy Doggy Robot Feet (the AT-AT's)
ROJ = Ewoks
TPM = Lukes Daddy When He Was A Little Boy
ATOTC = Lukes Daddy
ROTS = The Star Wars We Saw On The Big Screen

Yes, I had the great pleasure of taking my now 4 year old son to see a Star Wars movie on the big screen....he begged me to take him over and over (we went together 5 times...money's tight).

We still watch at least 2 of the DVD's together every week and every time (and this has been since the beginning) he asks the most amazing questions about what's going on. His insight into the actual drama is growing to profound levels for his age, and he is also enthralled with countless little details. So, the Star Wars Baby lineage continues!
 
Rich Lee said:
Hey Hudson, you like to fluff pillows?
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???

I think I get your drift? I'm not trying to fluff; I hate the new ones, I hate what George has done to the whole vibe of SW. I think he needs to 'Let Go...' (Obi Wan voice) and move onto other things.

It's a bummer the new ones suck hard.
 
It seems to me that when George is left to do what he wants, he's terrible. Star Wars IV and American Graffiti were both highly collaborative films (read: people actually said 'no' to him), brought about by his not being accepted yet. Outside of those two films, the only other one he directed, THX, which he seemed to have full control over, was f'ing terrible. I mean just godawful. You can not defend this film unless you are a pretentious USC or NYU film school grad, in which case I would never have the same opinions as you about film anyway.
 
John_Hudson said:
It just sucked for me. And the subsequnet films, even though they get better they just pale in comparison to even Jedi's magic (doesnt help genius is shooting E V E R Y T H I N G in front of a blue screen)

I don't know. Just they don't do it for me I guess. Totally let-down. But I love the first 3, THX and American Grafitti
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Cant argue with that....
 
On Lucas

On Lucas

I was three when episode 4 came out.

When my parents got our first VCR (I was 10) and it looked like a cross between the milenium falcon and a Woody (easy - I mean the car fellas). Seriously. It was gigantic and silver and actually had wood panneling on the sides!

Anyway -- our first two movies (no rentals you had to buy then) were bootleg copies of Star Wars and Annie (for my sister).

Yes those movies rocked -- Look at Lucas's career directorially, in reverse order:
Starwars ep 1-3
Star wars ep 4
American Grafetti
THX 11blah blah blah

So that's all the dude has done as a director -- he didn't even direct ep 5 & 6
And that's basically it as a writer -- he's done stuff like Ewok Christmas here and there but if you really look at his IMDB writing, it has 34 or so writing credits and most of them have (characters) by his name not (screenplay), and Raiders credits him as (story) ans Kasdan is the actual scriptwriter. Story can mean he said to Kasdan "so he's this archeoligist professor that's really good with a gun and a whip because he's always getting in to these adventures - which he hates on the surface - but really enjoys deep down once he gets into them -- and oh yeah something about the Nazis in there" who knows.

My point is he made THX actually kinda sucks. Yeah its ambituous and the Filmmaker with capital "F" is saying something important, but between watching it again and staring out my window on a Saturday afternoon I'll pick the later.

Grafetti was an the filmmaker with a little "f" telling us a story that was close to his heart and telling it well.

Now with Star Wars he created a well thought out mythology and had the ingenious idea of placing that in the context of Sci Fi. But he really filled in archetypal mold here. Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings are all the same damn story and mythology. They all involve:
  1. A) a boy (or very boyish character) who leads an unremarkable life, but who has been made special by a brush with evil (vader, voldemort, the ring) but who posess inate courage and goodness while being average in most other respects, and who will at first resist the call to adventure as is typical in Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey.
  2. B) the boy is mentored by a father figure who develops the special ability or skill the boy has developed via his exposure to teh dark side
  3. C) there will be a pull felt by the dark side
  4. D) the boy will meet and enlist friends to help him on his journey
  5. E) at the moment of truth, when all is lost, the boy will save the day by using his special ability, but it is his innate goodness and courage (that which is best in humanity) that will allow him to triumph over evil where othershave failed.

So yeah he put a freash spin on that with the space thing but...

Ok so here's my point finally:
young lucas = hungry noname filmmaker with innovative ideas/hack director/hack writer with producers and mentors around him that would keep something like Jar Jar from happening.

old lucas = the producer of Howard the Duck, and now the 500 pound gorilla in the room who directed one pretentious film, one honest good film, one pretty good film that was a sensational idea (and soon two suckass films and one pretty good one), but being the 500 lbs gorilla who created Star Wars "ooh ahh" and Indiana Jones "ooh ahh" isn't be second guessed. Everyone knew he could **** on a pixel and it would make millions and millons world wide. That's how the seemingly impossible happens i.e., a hundred trained creative professionals watch either in silent horror or cultish devotion as Jar Jar makes it from concept to pre production to set to final cut -- AMAZING!

Imagine Fincher direct episode II and III as intended and/or Kasdan had written these scripts too, then we might have films as iconic and essential to our culture as 4-6.

At least he was smart enough to bring in Tom Stoppard to do a polish on the heightened language dialogue (all the royal and love stuff) in IV so you wouldn't have to use your popcorn bag as a barf bag like in I & II.
 
On CGI

On CGI

I echo comments that Lord of the Ring got it right.

Instead of thinking we can do this the easiest way (for the people that make that decision i.e. directors, producers, studios) LOTR considered the best way to pull of each effect.

Practical, CG, bigatures, miniatures all have there advanatages and disadvantages and some look better than others.

Gone are the Clash of the Titans days. You just can't screw with the film-goer anymore and expect them to accept anything other than photo real imagery because "that's the limit of cgi" or claymation or making paper plates out of flying saucers.

Part of the problem is that Lucas is a technofile - and yes I echo others comments that the benficial impact this has had on the film industry (ILM, etc.) has far outways 3 crappy movies even if those movies are important to a lot of people, myself included. But the dude just has a hard on for digital, which is sort of an old fashioned way of thinking.

CG was thought of as the BEST way to do things because it was NEW FANGLED. But even Jurrasic park used a combo of practical dinsaour parts.

Even Rodriguez who is a digital madman uses a combo (except in his kid stuff and that's an aesthetic choice) but when cheech marini looses his eyball in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, they used a rubber dummy so you coud dig in and get the eyeball, and then had cheech lay in the same spot as teh dummy and then composited teh dummy eye with the real cheech.

At anyrate -- seems like we are almost post CG madness and filmmakers and audiences are reallizing that there is no one best way and expect everything to look real.

Also -- I think for the scale of films we are talking about, CG, and models, matte paintint, etc. are comparable expenses with CG = tons of man hours and practical = tons of man hours and materials.
 
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