STAR WARS: "Rise of Skywalker" **SPOILERS**

I think J.J. Abrams and his creative team realized that "rubber-faced CGI" characters were not what they wanted to go for. They did use existing faces from outtakes and just pinned them to new actors, and I think it works in very short bursts. Long dialogue scenes... not so much.

 

You think that because you saw or heard actual evidence of that opinion, or are you just speculating?

Anyway, I wasn't referring to a film directed by Abrams.

 

Abrams said many times they would not use digital duplicates for Rise of Skywalker, so what they wound up doing was using outtakes of her with different hair and costumes and different backgrounds. This thread is only about Rise of Skywalker, as far as I know. I think they were painfully aware of the criticism in Rogue One and wanted to avoid those problems.

It's funny how much viewers take people on screen for granted, but the moment we see a fake one, anybody can spot it. Digital lions and tigers and other creatures... for some reason, those all look great (as in the Oscar-nominated Lion King); people are a lot tougher to fake.

 

I don't recall J.J. abrams ever talking about not wanting "Rubber-faced CGI" characters, only that they decided early on that they didn't want to do a digital Leia the reason being as I understood it that they felt it wouldn't be respectful. I think J.J. had also looked through a bunch of Carries outtakes and was confident that they could pull it off in a way that you are seeing Carrie on the screen giving the performance rather than someone pretending to be Carrie acting as Leia or whatever. I'm sure there were also plenty of people who were really impressed with the work done on Rogue One as well. I certainly was, there are plenty of stories of people not realizing that Tarkin was a CGI creation. People who didn't know who Peter Cushing is no doubt and the tech no doubt would have been even better for Rise of Skywalker than it was on Rogue One.

 

The use of younger Luke and Leia in The Rise of Skywalker was brief and effective. And it was nice that Fisher’s daughter was the stand-in for Leia in this sequence. Disney’s other cash cow, Marvel, has also used this effectively with a younger Nick Fury in Captain Marvel.

While this technology had its obvious flaws in Rogue One, it has been improving and will only continue to do so.

When this technology eventually reaches levels of seamlessness and undetectability, like so many other special effects, the stunningly persnickety Star Wars fan base will finally get what it wants: endless adventures of Luke, Han, Leia, and company in their prime!

TV shows such as Raising Kylo, Family Tie Fighters, Chewie’s Angels and more!
Future Oscar winners like Three Bens and a Baby Yoda, Out of Alderaan, The Last Emperor II through X, and Corusblanca!

I’m not kidding; this is the future. And this is what most of the fan base really wants. I’m most curious to see how they pull it off when it happens.

Forces,

Bill

 

You responded to a post I made about a creative suggestion for The Last Jedi...

 

Right, which would be great in a Last Jedi thread.

 

So you want me to believe that, because my first comment pertained to TLJ, you pretended that my actual context didn't exist and instead made a substantive comment as if I was talking about TROS, even though I wasn't?

LOL.

The fact is you didn't read very closely, misinterpreted what you read, made a mistake, and are now creating a bizarre excuse to save face.

Just admit you screwed this one up and move on. You don't want to talk about second installment of a trilogy in a thread titled for the third? Fine - then start by not responding to ones that do. Or at least just read more carefully.

 

The Tarkin one was pretty good but the Leia one was a bit too uncanny valley. You can make the technology work in short bursts,but for long sustained scenes? It's not there yet and having long flashbacks with a cgi Luke in TLJ would have been heavily criticised.

The problem is we could have had the Sequels with Luke Han and Leia in their prime, but that's not Disney's fault. That was George's. He chose to do prequels instead.

 

Well, they may look great but do they look real? I've been completely unaware of well done special effects involving machinery, buildings, backgrounds in general..... have I ever not noticed an sfx living creature, though? I think I can honestly say 'no'. It takes me out of the film every single time.

 

Did you see Lion King? And I think a few of the creatures in Star Wars were pretty effective.

On the minus side, don't get me stahhhhted on Alita: Battle Angel...

BTW, back to the subject of Rise of Skywalker: who knew that the films had been using a scream of George Lucas' for years?

Looks Like George Lucas May Have Had A Secret Cameo In Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

 

Good in the case of Luke, but Leia looked wrong.

 

The prequels had a story - and a potentially dynamite one at that - to tell... there was never a fully-developed story for VII-IX save for a paragraph or two in a very basic rudimentary 'treatment'. George Lucas himself even has said he never had a proper story for VII-IX, and what he had scribbled down was essentially crammed into Jedi.

If I was George, I know which trilogy I would have started developing in the mid-1990's... the one that had an actual story to tell (Episodes I-III)... so in that respect, he was right.

 

From what I've seen George didn't have much of a Story for the Prequels either. He had a general idea of what he wanted to do but I think the meat of it was developed from film to film. Supposedly, the original intention was that Obi-Wan was to be the main character of the prequels. You can see this in The Phantom Menace to a certain extent but George decided to go in another direction. I also think that his idea to do the sequels came before The Return of the Jedi and he had tried to wrap up the story with the film so probably he was just more interested in the prequel story.

 

As a fan, what would you have preferred? 3 more sequels with the main cast or 3 prequels with unknown actors playing younger versions of a few characters we knew, such as Obi Wan and Anakin.

It's not easy to put myself back in that mindset of say, 1990, and remember without letting my knowledge what what has been released creep in. Having seen the 2 Ewok movies and the '80s cartoons, I do feel like I would have wanted the prequels. But I think that sequels at the point with Mark, Carrie and Harrison would have been less risky and more bankable.

 

Here's how they did the jedi training scene, plus a bunch of other special effects:

 

Yes, you can see in the case of Luke & Leia's faces, technically they aren't CGI: they're real faces lifted from another scene. It is a heavy VFX composite, but not CGI per se. Where I think the "fake-looking" issues happen is from the lighting and choices of angles. I don't think it's terrible (as the Rogue One CGI people were), but it is a little off.

It was clear to me even in first viewing that the Carrie Fisher scenes were heavily composited and they had removed the actress from other shots and placed them in new ones. The problem there is that the angles and eye-lines never quite line-up, which throws me a little bit. I think they made a Herculean effort to get it right and this is pretty much the state-of-the-art for 2018/2019 effects these days. Ultimately, all that matters is whether it tells the story... and that's a subjective call.

 

And as an update: at the Oscars, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson was asked what he thought of The Rise of Skywalker. I think some may have thought that because J.J. Abrams "undid" several plot details from TLJ, they expected Johnson to be pissed-off. But no... he had this to say:

"I had a blast, man. Made me so proud and seeing the heart and soul that J.J. put into it. And seeing my friends who were in the movie just like, bring the whole thing to a conclusion. For me, as a Star Wars fan, it was a really special experience."

Rian Johnson Professes His Love for ‘The Rise of Skywalker’: I Had a Blast, Man!

Definitely a very kind and gracious thing to say. Was he just being nice because he's still set to do several more Star Wars films in the future? Who knows?

 

What a concept, actually enjoying Star Wars.

Truly radical in these times.

 

Nah. I think he was being sincere. Say
What you will about Rian Johnson ,but the guy legitimately loves Star Wars. I mean,during the run up to the Last Jedi he unashamedly mentioned he liked the prequels and the Clone Wars series.

Outside of the Fandom Menace who somehow believes he's worse than Satan and Hitler rolled into one because he rightly referred to a few of them as manbabies,I've heard and seen nothing but good things said about him by his actors and crew on his movies and shows. He seems to be genuinely one of the nicest guys in the business.

I can easily see him sitting down with a bucket of popcorn and enjoying the hell out of TROS without reservations.

 

I think that is intentional. We find out early in the movie that they have 24 hours before the fleet of star destroyers launches, so I think the frantic pace is intentional so the audience feels a bit what the characters are feeling.

 

And now the whole script draft (131 pages) for Colin Trevorrow's abandoned Episode IX - Duel of the Fates - has leaked. Not going to link it here for obvious reasons, but has anyone given it a read, what's the general opinion of it?

I haven't read it as yet, but man, the leaked concept artwork (the legitimacy of both script and artwork has been verified by Trevorrow) is something to behold... he was really going for the jugular on this one!

Granted there would have been revised drafts of this before it went to camera, but would it have made for both a better film and closer to the Sequel Trilogy and saga overall...???

We'll never know, alas...

P.S. It would be very, very interesting to know who the leaker of the script and concept art was... Iger will hang them by their toenails if he ever finds out...

 

I didn't like the ending. I heard there were several different cuts of the film they used, each with different endings. I think Rey should have died, Ben lived and showed up at the homestead, made good for his bad deeds as Kylo Ren. They should also have brought back Luke's green saber instead of making up a whole new Leia saber for Rey. The one part of the movie I did like was when Luke pulled the X-Wing out of the water (like Yoda did in Empire). It really needed more callbacks like that.

 

[QUOTE="Time Is On My Side, post: 23219558, member: 62450] It really needed more callbacks like that.[/QUOTE]

lol...the whole film was nothing but callbacks

 

Where would one find this leaked script?