It’s also worth noting the cinematography choices made in conjunction with lighting the actors a very specific way. The combined use of visual and practical effects would come to define the aesthetic of good science fiction - all thanks to George Lucas‘s vision, production designer John Berry, and the visual effects gurus John Dykstra and Richard Edlund (whose new company, Industrial Light and Magic, was just getting started).Ī combination of matte paintings, miniatures, and an overall perfectionist approach to every part of the film created a life-changing experience for audiences worldwide. It set the standard for future Star Wars movies. This might seem obvious as a top choice, but the film that started it all did more than innovate technologically. Plot and story aside, the action sequences and practical effects in Return are some of the franchise’s best. Remember when Luke catches the lightsaber shot by R2D2, turns it on, and the action kicks in on hovering spacecrafts in the middle of Tatooine? The Sarlacc pit itself was a practical effect masterpiece, as was Jabba the Hut, and shall we talk about the Ewoks and Endor in their entirety? The last battle in space is stunning for the time it came out. (Yes, I know its not the same, but my perspective on this film specifically was much different this time around.) Just a purely objective movie-watching experience as if I were a kid in the ’80s. But, I recently went back and watched all three films, and I took the approach of watching them as if I’d never seen another Star Wars movie. I’ll never forget the feeling of watching the opening Sarlacc pit sequence and thinking “Okay, yes - I will rewind immediately and watch this again” (because yes, I wasn’t able to see it in theaters because I hadn’t been born yet). The filmmakers had tried this method on other Star Wars films for various sequences, but with Return, they perfected it. But its also worth noting that the inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, walked the length of “Endor’s forest” shooting at less than a frame-per-second. The visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund had worked on the two previous Star Wars films and came up with the idea to have a hyper-controlled camera capable of recording super-slow captured footage for VFX, into which we’ll get later. The film premiered in 1983, which was just before CGI made its big debut in the ’90s, so you didn’t have the corny, eyesore effects from something like Escape from LA or Dragon Heart instead, the technology had improved over the previous two films, while sticking to the same aesthetics and creative decisions that had made Lucas’s original a classic. There are several elements to Return of the Jedi that make it an absolute masterclass in special effects that amplify the story and the universe of a franchise already two excellent films deep. Okay now before you go click out of this article and comment about why I’m wrong, just hear me out. So, with Episode IX right around the corner, let’s look back at the good and the not-so-good. (Nobody had ever seen something like Star Wars in 1977 when the first film premiered.) Another aspect to consider is how the directors and VFX artists decided to combine practical and computer-based effects to seamlessly (sometimes not so much) tell these stories we know and love (sometimes not so much). This is all to say that VFX have gotten better over time, but, for this ranking, let’s consider the technical achievements and innovation as they were at the time of release. Some of the best-looking Star Wars films to come out in the past ten years have been fan films. With programs like cinema4D, Blender, Maya, and so on, visual effects become more accessible to filmmakers with each passing year. Now, obviously visual effects have progressed over time and are now a common staple of filmmaking. So, today the topic was “Star Wars VFX,” and I thought, what a perfect opportunity to dive into a topic nobody can get enough of: Star Wars. Here in our office, we often play a friendly ranking game called “Top 3/ Bottom 3.” We create a list of our favorite and least favorite three things under a specific topic. From the good to the great to the dear-god-please-no, here are the iconic visual effects behind Star Wars ranked - respectfully.
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