A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away....
STAR WARS
MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU
A BRIEF REVIEW OF CG
George Lucas created a masterpiece which would inspire millions of people in a variety of ways. Amongst the CG industry the Star Wars films are considered to have raised the bar on CG, especially early on. When Star Wars: A New Hope was released CG was not yet commonly adopted in the movie industry. When looking at the original films through the lens of CG, one might assume that most of the films were CG. After all, there's space ships, robots, laser fire, and... light sabers. And while all of those were VFX marvels in their own right, none of those were CG in the original releases. So where was the CG? In A New Hope, a Death Star simulation was used in General Akbar's briefing. This was done in CG and is credited to Larry Cuba. However Larry Cuba was not a one man team. You'll find that Dan O'Bannon, Jay Teitzell, and John C. Wash were also computer animators for the original movie of the series. Surprisingly, that is all for the original releases. Until this time in cinema history, there were relatively few examples of Computer Graphics, so while it may seem minimal to our modern minds, it was in fact revolutionary for it's time. Mr. Lucas has said in interviews that he was waiting for technology to catch up to his vision. In the 1997 rerelease, ILM(Industrial Light & Magic) was brought on board and many things were reworked and done in CG to bring the films closer to George Lucas' vision.
You can watch this little documentary on the topic here:
https://youtu.be/yMeSw00n3Ac
More recently Rogue One: A Star Wars Story raised this CG bar again by resurrecting an actor from the dead to play Grand Moff Tarkin. In this age, computers are often used to generate digital doubles of actors or their body parts. But the reason why doubles have always worked throughout film history is because they only have to look close enough to the original to be convincing in silhouette, or distance, or other camera trickery. In the case of Grand Moff Tarkin, there is no "good enough," it had to actually look like the actor. This is an impressive feat, and one that brings the art dangerously close to the uncanny valley. Perhaps ILM actually did overstep that boundary in this film. You be the judge. This is not the first example of bringing the dead back to life on film, but it is the most extensive. Other examples include films such as Gladiator, and 7th installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise. It's even been done in commercials.
Of course there has been SO much CG used in the Star Wars series. Much, much more could be ( and has been ) said on the topic.
Star Wars continues to be a trend setter, and promises to keep doing so. But more importantly it continues to have a huge impact on our culture and aspirations.
May the Force be with you!
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