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Dated Special Effects, Set Design or Concepts in Sci-fi


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The hover bike chase from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" -- didn't look all that great when it was in theaters, still doesn't look good.

That scene looked AMAZING when it was first released in theaters. And that's not only my opinion, it was the general consensus at that time. Too bad there are so many things that the internet can't prove. I would provide scans of Starlog issues of the era if I had the time.

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I always thought the speeder bike chase looked great

The worst special effects in the OT are certain shots of the snowspeeder and rancor scenes where the matting wasn't done right, the emperor's slugs, and jabba the hutt.

All the model work is great, especially ROTJ

Something I thought looked fine as a kid but recently though looked dated was the Dagobah sets - to me now they look so obviously shot on a sound stage

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I think it always looked awesome, too. Consider how that scene was photographed and assembled at the time, then consider how it would be done these days. Strike that, don't think of such things.

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Something I thought looked fine as a kid but recently though looked dated was the Dagobah sets - to me now they look so obviously shot on a sound stage

I like it when these larger than life slightly cheesy epics look like they were shot on an artificial set. I dunno why. Makes it seem like an opera. I love the sets on Hook for this reason.

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I think the issue you have with Dagobah may be due to visual alterations. It's brighter and more colorful now, which would probably bring out the more soundstagey artificial appearance? It used to look great.

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I think the issue you have with Dagobah may be due to visual alterations. It's brighter and more colorful now, which would probably bring out the more soundstagey artificial appearance? It used to look great.

OMG you're probably right!

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Do you think people in 1933 thought that King Kong looked the most awesomely real thing they had ever seen? Or did it look like a stop motion toy?

Going back to The Last Crusade, I always noticed how you could kinda see the effect of Colonel Vogel waving his hand at the giant screen as the zeppelin took off.

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Do you think people in 1933 thought that King Kong looked the most awesomely real thing they had ever seen? Or did it look like a stop motion toy?

Probably both. You can admit that an effect is the most realistic one so far whilst still being able to tell it's fake.

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TOD and TLC both have their fair share of horrible VFX, particularly TLC. Fortunately, they've also got some real gems (e.g., the mine car chase and Donovan's death). Raiders is a little less polarized...there aren't many shots that look really bad or really good, probably because the film was less ambitious with its visual effects. Probably the most convincing, un-dated visual effect in that film is the death of Dietrich, which is delightfully gruesome and very convincing.

EDIT: I saw a bit of LOTR on TV the other day, and some of the shots of Gollum were looking much more dated than I expected. Some of the shots are great, but others (especially full-body shots) really looked very much like early-2000s mocap CGI.

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EDIT: I saw a bit of LOTR on TV the other day, and some of the shots of Gollum were looking much more dated than I expected. Some of the shots are great, but others (especially full-body shots) really looked very much like early-2000s mocap CGI.

Gollum in FOTR certainly has quite an outdated look to him. But Gollum in the other two films still continue to blow me away and impress. That is some fine motion capture work!

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The problem with the speeder bike chase is the matte-lines, the same problem that plagued that Rancor. Even in 1983 matte-lines were destracting and 'that looks fake!' has been a common reaction, much like people react to mediocre CGI effects these days (Sound Of Thunder anyone?).

speeders1.jpg

That said; the speeder bike chase has always been a brilliantly staged sequence and got a positive response nonetheless.

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That pic shows no matte lines

It's obviously a blue-screen created effect, but the pic was more of a reminder of how great the sequence is staged.

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Trees! In Star Wars! Trees!

There's just way too many familiar Earth references.

Problem?

Yeah, familiar surroundings like forests, deserts, ice, etc. made the original Star Wars films great. It used the reality we know, tweaked it a bit, and that made the Star Wars universe believable and real.

The total CGI enviroments - including digital trees - of the prequels sadly did the exact opposite.

Trees are part of the essence of what made the original films work in the first place. Funny that out of all people, Alex doesn't see that... ;)

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Trees! In Star Wars! Trees!

And those horrible anti-Star Wars green camouflage costumes! There's just way too many familiar Earth references.

250px-Yavin4_1.jpg

Star Wars has had trees since day one.

Endor speeder bike chase minus trees = Tatooine podracing

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I'm in the camp that says RotJ was a rousing and thoroughly satisfying finale to a splendid adventure trilogy. If I'd saw it back in '83 I'd have left the theatre with a great big grin on my face.

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I'm in the camp that says RotJ was a rousing and thoroughly satisfying finale to a splendid adventure trilogy. If I'd saw it back in '83 I'd have left the theatre with a great big grin on my face.

Yes :)

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ROTJ does have flaws. Many mention the muppets and ewoks, but I foremost find the whole direction of the film a bit bland. Admittedly; this is probably not Richard Marquand's fault.

However; ROTJ has always been a very satisfying conclusion to the story arc set up in SW and ESB. It does what it needs to do and contains some of the strongest scenes of the entire franchise. And it's pretty fun to watch. ;)

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Unfortunately for me Lucas has since undone all that gleeful satisfaction and replaced it with some sort of embarrassing parody.

Anyway, I take it the mine cart chase from ToD has already been mentioned? It was always ropey in places, but that didn't have any impact whatsoever on the 'ride' - it was absolutely thrilling! I still love it for what it is.

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I've been thinking on dated stuff on 2001. There's quite a few.

I wonder if the Discovery's lack of redundant life support systems is a dated concept or just an intended mistake to tell that particular story.

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II take it the mine cart chase from ToD has already been mentioned? It was always ropey in places, but that didn't have any impact whatsoever on the 'ride' - it was absolutely thrilling! I still love it for what it is.

I totally agree, although the puppets in that scene are very visible since day one.

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I recently viewed it. [ROTJ]'s far far better then anything Star Wars related that has come afterwards.

Anything? Hmmm. I disagree. KOTR I is marginally better. But you need never concern yourself with it.

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Think I know where Alex is coming from. Endor is the least Star Warsy-feeling planet in the old movies. The outfits? Deliver me from L.L. Bean. Consider that the environment was simply the easiest to reproduce when playing Star Wars as kids. Just go in the woods, it's Endor.

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It's not a flaw. It's just not very Star Warsy. The places in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back had a certain feel, look and atmosphere that I bought into right away. Even the desert, Yoda's swamp or the ice planet were highly believable or should say satisfying and very fitting for a galaxy far far away. They were exotic and cool. They are the kind of places kids and teenagers dream of to escape their own boring reality. A forest and camouflage colors (and cuddly teddy bears) just doesn't have that. It feels cheap, mundane and Star Gate SG-1-ish. It's like ETAndElliot4Ever says, everyone can play Star Wars like that. It's not about realism. It's about having that certain Star Wars Sci-Fi cool. The cool we thought it had from 1977 until 1983.

Alex

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It's not a flaw. If anything, George's notion of planets with only one type of environment is a "flaw." It wasn't until we get to Naboo that we see a planet with jungles, oceans, and plains...wow, three climate zones, spiffy.

I fail to see how a planet consisting solely of a desert with no standing bodies of water -- Tatooine -- could support a wide variety of fauna as well as sentient humanoids.

Hoth? Yea, Hoth had sparse indigenous life, but so do our Arctic and Antarctic. Being so frikking cold that even some of that indigenous life will die if it doesn't find shelter soon -- the death of Han's tauntaun, specifically -- we assume that Hoth can't support human life, and so it feels quite alien, even though it's only a short drive from being the backyard of Thor or Incanus. Which reminds me...what would Han's tauntaun have done if Han hadn't been riding it so hard during the storm when it died? And was it of exhaustion or extreme cold? Han stuffed Luke into a tauntaun to stay warm....what do you stuff a tauntaun into? No matter.

Yavin IV had trees, but since Diego left us two years ago, nobody here lives in Mexico to say "the tropical Yucatan jungle is MY backyard woods where we played Star Wars as a muchacho." Dagobah also had trees, but they were so twisted, mysterious, and swampy that it also feels alien, even though it was just a soundstage with some snakes. If anything, the snakes made it feel more Earthy.

Most of us all live in temperate zones and so the forests of Endor -- albeit with colossal Californian redwoods -- hits a little too close to home.

That's not laziness, it's taking advantage of a Californian environment. Can you imagine what the speeder bike chase would have looked like if George had decided to film it in a Coruscant-type city in 1983? Aye carumba. Blade Runner looked great because it wasn't moving 90 miles an hour down twenty miles of streets. Speed it up, and it would have looked terrible.

Star Warsy? What the hell does that mean?

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I never assume they have only one environment just because we see only one environment. However it's true that planets that are the same everywhere are pretty common in this kind of fiction.

All of these planets should be labeled as extremely Earth like. Except Mustafar, being the one that makes no sense. You shouldn't be able to breath there, and other nasty stuff.

Something interesting would be the Earth-gravity worlds orbiting gas giants that we see. That seems that would require an enormous planet to maintain a normal planet-moon ratio. Then I again, I live in a planet that defies such ratio, however it doesn't depend on the formation patterns of icy/rocky moons we know. About the radiation belts of such a main planet I'm unfamiliar, but Jupiter's are a beast to behold. You don't want to get there without an inmense shield. Except, hey, damn cheap electricity.

Naboo's core stuff is just space opera fantasy nonsense which I love. There's, however, the possibilty of inmense subsurface oceans on icy moons, even easier if it's mixed with ammonia. But that's obviously not what we see on Naboo.

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You're kinda coming at it from the wrong angle, or just a different point of view, as Ben would say. I never even consider those types of things in regards to the environments in Star Wars. Whether it's scientifically feasable or not, I could care less. It's a fantasy world.

There's just something different about Jedi and the Endor scenes. A less authentic kind of feel. Maybe it's the way it was shot. The best-looking Endor scenes are at night.

ROTJ was the first Star Wars movie I ever saw, so I am sorta biased towards it. After experiencing the other movies shortly after that introduction and rewatching them for nearly 20 years (Jesus), well...revisiting Jedi has slightly damaged my perception of it. I've said it many times, the production values in that one are just off. For whatever reason, it frequently feels less Star Wars and more like an 80s Jim Henson production with the Star Wars characters in it.

Don't get me wrong, though. It certainly raises my pulse to this day to see the Ewok village in front of Star Tours at Disney.

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I've said it many times, the production values in that one are just off.

Again, I just don't see it. The magnificent imperial opening, the sleazy Jabba's palace decor lit with that wonderfully smokey flavour, the pit of sarlacc, the excellently atmospheric night time exteriors (and interiors - Luke surrenders himself to Vader), the legendary Emperor scenes and the most spectacular space battle in the entire SERIES tells me they lavished RotJ with a blank check.

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There are many incredible shots in the final battle in ROTJ. I'm amazed how they did it with models. It still looks incredible and the sense of motion and speed is spot on

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