Why Does Attack of the Clones Look Like a Video Game?

An extended look at the visual effects of the awkward middle child of the Star Wars prequels.
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The Empire Wreckers actual play podcast:
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CG Model credits:
Anakin Skywalker model by Stym:
sketchfab.com/Stym
Obi-Wan Kenobi model by sidgara
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Jedi Council Chamber model by olcaytoibili
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If you'd like to dive deeper into the Star Wars Saga's development history yourself, here's all the behind-the-scenes sources I usually pull from:
pastebin.com/NthWEvbG

[@Zooumberg]

Sorry but I have to vehemently disagree that Watto was digital. It was quite clearly my mother-in-law.

[@davisjacobs5748]

Do we have the same mother in law?

[@Zooumberg]

@@davisjacobs5748 I dunno, since I got rid of my ex, she has been engaged four times.

[@calebford6318]

Source?

[@SonOfTheChinChin]

marriage jokes = funny + relatable+ W

[@MLBlue30]

Boomer humor

[@ChaplainDMK]

I think a lot of the "it looks like a videogame" things also come from more video-gamey camera work - lots of complex panning and following shots that don't feel real because they're just a digital camera flying through a digital model. Real cameras can't really do it so it ends up feeling unnatural to us, but it's the norm in video games, so we associate it with those.

[@rustyshackelford4224]

Exactly

[@beavisdoge237]

The star wars movies by Lucas explicitly do not do this. When they do, it's for emphasis. Most shots in all 6 star wars films are static, wide, slow, formal.

[@keith6706]

That's what made the first Pacific Rim work: even in the all-CGI shots the digital cameras were placed where you'd be able to put a physical camera to follow the action if the thing was really happening: on on the ground looking up, in aerial shots as if a helicopter (or drone, these days) were watching, and so on. If the camera was one set on the ground, then it didn't track along to follow the jaeger or the kaiju, it panned as the subject moved past the camera and it had to rotate to keep it in view. Godzilla 2014 did a similar thing: when the male MUTO flew across the screen to attack Godzilla, the camera didn't follow it, the camera was at a distance, as a real one would be, in order to see what was happening.

[@boyishdude1234]

George's Star Wars movies are shot like documentaries, so the goal of the cinematography is to make everything look like it was "caught" by the camera as opposed to being staged for it, which is where most of the impression that it looks like a real event that really took place in another galaxy is created. Also, you'd be surprised just how many models and sets they actually built for the prequels. There are objectively more practical effects in The Phantom Menace alone than the entire original trilogy combined.

[@mishynaofficial]

Exactly, the cinematography of the prequels is very ugly.

[@sweepingdenver]

I worked on this movie! Wow, great video, you absolutely nailed it. One thing that's hard to fully appreciate -- and explains a lot of the quality control issues -- is how incredibly difficult and time consuming it was to actually review final frames. You couldn't pull up the high-resolution composite on your machine and play the entire thing in real-time, unless if it was a very short shot, maybe 20 frames or less. You could play a low-resolution proxy video (which already was quite revolutionary compared to just a few years prior), or you could painstakingly step through the high-resolution frames one by one as they slowly loaded into memory, but there was neither enough memory nor enough I/O speed to just stream 2k final frames to your monitor for review. In order to review the frames you either had to transfer them to a custom type of review hardware that could play them in real-time, a transfer which could easily take 30+ minutes, assuming you could even book one of the few available review stations, or you had to send the final frames to film and review them in film dailies 12-36 hours later depending on how fast the shot was developed and delivered back to the facility. All of the combined to make it very difficult to catch the kinds of errors you point out for the volume of work that was being done, i.e. hundreds of shots in progress every day at any given time.

[@erikouwehand]

Thank you for your work, it is one of my first movies i watched in cinema as a kid. Had a great impact on me. Its easy to critique this movie in 2023 when every home computer these days are super computers compared to 22 years ago.

[@MrJustinOtis]

Thanks for your work on this movie! Even with all of the flaws, it's still a groundbreaking film in so many ways. It's good that you point out the limitations of being able to look at renders of scenes, and that the equipment to do so was in so much demand during the production. I can imagine that there was a lot of trial and error on the IT side of the house in trying to set up digital pipelines for handling all of that data, and that building the IT infrastructure to handle all of that data must have been an enormous engineering challenge.

[@CielBlanche]

You guys did an amazing job bringing the amazing designs of the concept artists like Feng Zhu and Dermot Power to film, especially with the restrictions you were under. Regardless of the imperfections, the overall gestalt of the movie comes through clear and it's a beautiful vision from all involved.

[@gabrielbrennan4149]

Thanks for your work! There’s so much to love about the movie, including many of the affects.

[@russelledwards001]

Come on dude it’s terrible. At least Mando looked better due to actual real sets.

[@Percival917]

I miss the days when Attack of the Clones was the worst Star Wars movie.

[@prydain4131]

The Phantom Menace is worse than AotC, it's only the duel in the end that holds PM up but AotC at least has good action throughout, interspersed by awkward narrative and dialogue.

[@SenhorKoringa]

still is but TRoS does come close

[@littleredruri]

I genuinely find Phantom Menace to be harder to get through. Like, at least I could roughly follow the plot of Attack of the Clones my whole life. I didn't know what the plot even was in the Phantom Menace until I went to see the re-release in cinemas a couple days ago, and I went in with the intent to actively try my absolute hardest to understand what was happening.

[@optillian4182]

It still is.

[@SneakyCaleb]

@@optillian4182guess you haven’t seen anything Disney

[@jodanger37]

It’s crazy how our brains register all these so small details without us realizing, and it’s so fine tuned anyone can see it, but almost no one can describe it. Very fascinating.

[@haydenarias]

Uncanny valley

[@calebford6318]

Source?

[@wildfire9280]

@@calebford6318 -He made it the fuck up- Human physiology. Our perceptions are geared considerably more for boosting survivability than accurately portraying reality. So even if our sensations pick up, say, a concave face, our perceptions will pick up a convex face where there is actually an concave one. There’s a video on here with a literally paper-thin dinosaur model that demonstrates this effect. Trust me, even knowing that ahead of looking at it and altering/gearing my expectations accordingly, you’ll still perceive an illusion that feels more correct over the reality that looks plain wrong. This is because perception itself is top-down and not bottom-up like sensation is. A brain’s interpretations of ambiguity actively force an illusion. What I’m getting at here is that the animation in Attack of the Clones was so bad the *brains of fans had to intervene to protect them.* You are now free to “🤓” me.

[@schmoo3309]

​@@wildfire9280🤓

[@jinchoung]

in all probability, your brain did NOT register most of those small details without you realizing it. most of the very small things he was pointing out was stuff that's visible only if you adjust the brightness and contrast so it looks far brighter and flatter than it does on screen not to mention blowing up the frame to several tens of times larger than they would have appeared on tv or in the theater. there's more obvious reasons like the animation quality or just motion in general. we're not subconscious geniuses.

[@shmehfleh3115]

Learning that Lucas meant the prequels to be essential tech demos really puts a lot about them into perspective.

[@elstcman5]

Also means a lot when the central storyline of AOTC is about the reproduction of a benevolent army which eventually becomes the enemy

[@skywalkerorder2839]

Well that was one of it's purposes yes. It wasn't the main purpose though, Lucas still had a story he wanted to tell as shown through the majority of the behind the scenes material.

[@MrJustinOtis]

Much of Lucas' fortune was built on being the best in the business at special effects work. The money made from ticket sales on the prequels would have covered the cost of developing those tools, which would then be used in other movies by other film makers. Lucas is not the only one to do this. James Cameron used/uses exactly this business model for his company Digital Domain. Same can be said for Avatar. It's not a movie so much as a massive special effects demo reel showing off cutting edge digital effects work that other studios can pay to use in their productions.

[@skywalkerorder2839]

@@MrJustinOtis True, but that wasn't the main point of the movies. If you look at all the behind the scenes material, (especially behind the scenes books) then you'd find that Lucas did also indeed have a story/narrative he wanted to tell while also wanting to develop the technology. It's why he used digital cameras for Episode II which were actually a hassle for him to get too according to The Star Wars Archives 1999-2005.

[@russelledwards001]

Yes - a warning about dictators - while at this very moment trump and his lawyers are trying to turn your president into a king. Or dictator.

[@Tomhyde098]

I actually prefer to watch the prequels on DVD instead of on Blu-ray or 4K. The lower resolution helps hide a lot of the imperfections

[@ozmond]

Phantom menace looks good in 4K cuz it was shot on film

[@Tomhyde098]

@@ozmond yeah but it was finished in a 2K DI and the 4K disc is upscaled. A movie shot on film doesn’t matter if they downscale everything to a lower resolution. The 4K disc would look better if they scanned in the original camera negatives and redid all of the special effects. But that’d never happen because it’d cost millions of dollars for something that a vast majority of people wouldn’t care about or really notice

[@rmn070]

@@Tomhyde098 The disc suffers from very heavy DNR as well, feeling like it was an attempt to match the look of the later two.

[@veedeejoe8440]

@@Tomhyde098 What really makes Phantom Menace look way better than Clones and Sith is that they used a lot more practical effects, model work and sets. Clones and Sith leaned a lot heavier on digital effects. The backgrounds in the Jedi Temple look especially bad. Even though it's a subpar transfer with too much DNR, it looks way better than Clones. The CGI got a lot better in Sith, but they moved away from model work, sets, costumes and miniatures. So the Clone Troopers still look fake, the Jedi Temple backgrounds still look fake, the shots of the ships look worse, Mustufar doesn't look as good as the light beam room, etc. Another thing is Clones was shot in only 1080p on very early digital cameras.

[@marekkos3513]

I prefer to watch LOTR in HD , rather 4K.

[@oggsyunwin9000]

The lack of real clone troopers is almost the biggest problem i would say. Outlandish creatures and worlds, there we can suspend or disbelief. The armor that we know what it's supposed to look like we can't

[@EdgeO419]

idk Genosis battle always made me feel ill because of all the uncanny valley ness going on.

[@cheerleadersonsafari]

I think you'll find practical clone troopers look worse in the disney shows. Cgi is what you need for a mass army of perfect copies

[@mvolestrangler]

I agree. The clone-trooper crowd scenes work ok, but the individuals generally have an over-acting style, giving them a "Power Rangers" feel. (see the scene when Padme falls from the transport onto the sand dune).

[@thevoidlord1796]

@@cheerleadersonsafari I don't think we've ever seen practical clone troopers in Disney-era Live Action stuff, but even if we include stuff like the Stormtroopers, the practical armour is miles ahead of the CGI clone troopers, ESPECIALLY with the weird, floating heads that you see in AotC and RotS when they take their helmets off. The Night-Troopers in Ahsoka were fine when they were practical (in terms of visual quality, I'm not talking about their aesthetic appearance), but when they became zombies, and were covered in CGI (for some reason), they were still bad, but better than AotC thanks to the technology having developed a lot since.

[@swissaviation]

⁠​⁠@@thevoidlord1796We have seen practical clone troopers in Book of Boba Fett, Mandalorian, Andor and Ahsoka and with today's technology CGI clone troopers would definitely look better than what we saw in these shows.

[@jvgreendarmok]

It was The Guy From The Banking Clan who first really stood out to me as a character who was clearly not in the same physical space as the live actors.

[@prodbp]

Yea I think that shot was the worst as far as the cgi looking unrealistic. It literally almost looks like it could be from the clone wars animated show

[@calebford6318]

Source?

[@timewarpdrive77]

@@calebford6318 He's talking about personal expirence

[@drewwhitney7327]

You mean the Bill Maher alien?

[@Jdb63]

​@@calebford6318Are you ok?

[@ldeming]

As a VFX Supervisor myself, this is a very good breakdown

[@logocuber2516]

Yes❤❤

[@titoxavier326]

As a commenter myself, I can comment that this comment is very comentative.

[@kittennoodlesyar8490]

I appreciate the double meaning

[@legendaryblob8227]

69th like

[@sgtpepper91]

ok.

[@Foggen]

I think the video-gamest shot in Attack of the Clones is when Yoda draws his lightsaber. There's a dramatic, swooping, mathematically perfect camera move that completely betrays the unreality of the moment while also exposing the flatness of the floor. It's the opposite of the modern style, which is to "shoot " CG moments as if there are physical cameras, treating them as real subjects.

[@LordJagd]

I think that shot is possible with a curved dolly track, but yeah like you said it’s too smooth

[@Groucho27]

On the full HD edition of revenge of the sith, during the elevator scene at Grievou's ship, Obi-Wan's hair reflects the green screen

[@hunteralexbrown7723]

What's so interesting to me is how Attack of the Clones looks in relation to the other Prequels. Together, they feel like they're each from different stages of CGI. The Phantom Menace was groundbreaking in its scale of CGI, and while there is a lot of CGI in the film, plenty of practical effects were still there because they just couldn't do everything with computers like they could later. By the time Revenge of the Sith came out, the technology was mature enough to look great in every shot, and could be used consistently throughout the film. Attack of the Clones, on the other hand, feels like the awkward stage between them. There's a sense of empowerment that CGI can do anything, but they don't have the technology or manpower to do it all to the level of success they would hope, so it's stuck looking really artificial and not very impressive.

[@witoldwitoszekrecords3253]

The Revange of the Sith CGI also look like shit at times.

[@miscfiles]

​@@witoldwitoszekrecords3253The R2 vs Super Battle Droids scene on the Invisible Hand are a particular low point. So oversaturated and fake looking...

[@michaeldionne4732]

I hate sand

[@dangerens]

They tried to do very much with computers in Phantom Menace already. And the big scope CGI stuff like the battle between the Gungans and the droids holds up very poorly today. Like, have you seen the grass when the battle droid transport ships arrive at the battlefield? AotC looks splendid in comparison.

[@samiamtheman7379]

@@witoldwitoszekrecords3253 A lot of the effects in the Original Trilogy look like shit at times too. That doesn't discount the ones that look amazing.

[@exarcoom]

This is the best Prequel CGI analysis I have ever seen. I have watched hours and hours of BTS Prequel content, seen the movies more times than I can count, yet you managed to show me something I'd never seen before every 60 seconds! I really hope you do more Star Wars videos like this as this was an absolute joy to watch, thank you :)

[@TSL73]

I have to agree. This guy’s analysis is on par with what the guys at Digital Foundry do for real time video game graphics.

[@amsrremix2239]

I mean a major thing … is that non of these characters have any subsurface scattering- at least that I can see. That would do wonders for lighting of skin .

[@Michael-jj8gz]

You're not a real Star Wars fan

[@notNajimi]

@@amsrremix2239he mentions that in the video

[@adriancastaneda786]

I feel there’s always a lot of “make them watch this hand, instead of this one” is used. What I mean is, that I myself never caught any of the mistake even though my brain knew there was. Things either moved too fast, or my attention was focused elsewhere in a shot instead of what is an obvious mistake. It’s funny how the brain knows something is off, but not too sure exactly what it is. Interesting video, I learned a lot here!

[@IronMan3582]

I actually remember an article in Maximum PC magazine in sometime in 2002 after Attack of the Clones in theaters was released, it was a roundtable about the new graphics cards from nVidia and ATI and the graphics engines that would leverage them. At the time, the Yoda model was the most sophisticated piece of CGI set in a "realistic environment" the world had seen, and one of the statements were saying "in 10 years time we should be able to run the Yoda model in real-time and make it interactive in a video game," so yeah that kinda plays into the whole subject matter here. How about that, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[@FilmCore]

Incredible video man! was mindblowing to see all the vfx errors left in the movie lmao

[@calebford6318]

Source?

[@mattmurphy7030]

@@calebford6318weak troll. Sorry about the lack of friends

[@deshrektives]

M’lord, as his highness clearly explained, these were not FX efforts but rather producing errors.

[@beayn]

99% of us wouldn't notice any of the flaws he pointed out, but it's still interesting.

[@boyishdude1234]

I mean, can any movie that's ever been made to be said to have no VFX errors? If anything, the fact that most of the VFX errors in the prequels are so miniscule that you have to meticulously comb through them frame by frame in order to even find any proves just how good the movies actually look. Revenge of the Sith looks so good that it looks better than a lot of modern movies do despite being made with the VFX technology of over 15 years ago. The majority of the errors with Attack of the Clones' VFX are honestly explained by the fact that many of the VFX in question were experimental in nature. The technology was still relatively new, and George wanted to push the technology forward and use it to tell his story the way he envisioned it. I think it's aged fairly well for an experimental film that came out in 2002.

[@ProjectHeadCanon]

That detail about Anakin's fidgeting was pretty neat. I wonder if that was a deliberate choice by someone or if it's just an accident that worked out well.

[@squashgaming9279]

18:27 Is this why episode 3 yoda looks significantly better than episode 2 yoda?

[@maxvelichkin]

I am a 3D artist and an AR/VR developer, I worked as a VFX compositor. What a wonderful video! Exceptional breakdown quality.

[@warsincs]

Still better than the effects in The Flash

[@nikohanisch6411]

And Flash Gordon

[@rustyshackelford4224]

​@@nikohanisch6411The Flash's special effects look so abysmal, LOL!

[@andrewmurray1550]

I was just watching "The Meg" the other day and while some will say it's a Jaws rip-off (kind of agree on that one) I think the shark "looks better" (tongue-in-cheek sarcasm :). They even had "we caught "A" shark....not "THE" shark moment......

[@realAdamClinch]

Most valuable piece of info I got from this video was that Anakin fidgets with his hands a lot (which I hadn't ever realized), connecting that line about finding comfort in fixing things to a detail in Hayden's performance that subtly keeps the character's trauma real. Yet another detail showing how well Anakin was portrayed. Whole video is pretty dope though +1 sub

[@silvrfruit]

Or he just isn’t a great actor and didn’t know what to do with his hands.

[@realAdamClinch]

@@silvrfruit Hmmm nah my idea's cooler

[@Fiveash-Art]

@@silvrfruit Watch Shattered Glass .. he's a good actor ... Lucas doesn't know how to direct. 😂

[@jjoe7078]

This is what I call looking wayyy too deep into something. he was not that good as anakin. Not due to him, but the horrendous writing.

[@realAdamClinch]

@@jjoe7078 He wasn't written as well as he should've been I agree, but I think it's good to find details within the films that you can appreciate to make the experience more enjoyable

[@SianaGearz]

There's a way to cheat hair simulation that would have potentially worked for a lot of Yoda back in the day: simulate it as a low polygon softbody and apply that as deformation. Then of course cluster simulation etc. But this being a late 90s production, they didn't really have something off the shelf and the possible options were for sure not all too well researched. There also isn't a rule that says CG cloth has to behave incorrectly. The underlying model even back in the day is a mass spring system, but there's nothing to say that the spring weights have to be isotropic, indeed you can just model cloth that either does or doesn't stretch diagonally to the weave that way. You can even imagine vertex painting a spring stiffness mask to harden up those bits of cloth supported by a seam, such as to not make collars swim away too badly. It's not specifically computationally intensive, it just requires that extra iteration experimentation and effort, and engineering as well. Differences between specular and metallic reflections were not particularly well understood back then either, the easiest distinction is that metal colour affects reflection, and every metal has its own shade, while other reflective surfaces cannot modify reflected colour. The shading model of the era is effectively layered, superimposing a perfectly matt surface with one that selectively creates highlights, while real surfaces don't behave this way. Another problem was that when you have specular, the light reflected there needs to not be available to the underlying diffuse layer, but the classic rendering models neglect this conservation of energy. This may sound a little abstract and the corrected model is even usually difficult to tell in direct comparison, but problems like these do all add up. That being said there's rarely a time when i look at a modern CG heavy movie and think that it doesn't look like a videogame cutscene - not that it bothers me, i'm used to it, but i do think we have medium traits sort of leaking into each other this way, where they converge. There's something about special effects heavy 60s to 90s films that we lost, but what is it exactly? Why isn't a film like Barbarella or 2001 filmed today?

[@keithartworker]

What a very balanced presentation, well done. I saw Ep ll in IMAX and it was almost unwatchable, especially the speeder chase. I teach after effects and bring up black levels all the time. If Lucas is so eager to "improve" the original trilogy, he should consider this film as well. I wish they had shot film stock alongside the rinky-dink 1.56 megapixels. This movie was the sacrificial lamb to move the industry forward.

[@Double-R-Nothing]

I hear the IMAX version was heavily cut down due to the limitations of theater projectors of the time. Do you recall anything being cut from that screening?

[@keithartworker]

@@Double-R-Nothing if the movie was cut down a bit, I didn't notice. It was a long time ago, in a theater far, far away. 😊. If there is a limit, my guess it's due to the size of the platter the film sits on.

[@_MaZTeR_]

Even if the CGI doesn't hold up well, damn the soundtrack even 20 years later is really damn good

[@Jiub_SN]

The CGI holds up great

[@hellerart]

@@Jiub_SN Yes 80% is quite well, but one studio messed up rendering the clone troopers. Probabaly no Global Illumination or other simular fake technices at the time. The clone troopers look very CG at times. But not always.

[@user-xx6vy9ri8p]

John Williams is the legend.

[@nagger8216]

​@@Jiub_SNYes and no. Some of it aged better than others, but I just can't stand how flat the backgrounds look. Like, zero depth whatsoever

[@timewarpdrive77]

Whats funny is minority report and AOTC have practically the same soundtrack..

[@LobsterOfDeath]

As a digital compositor, I noticed this video in my recommendation and thought "Hey, what can it possibly say that is new to me?", but I love Star Wars so I watched it. And by God, I was wrong. This video is amazing, watched it breathlessly. Bonus points for mentioning that every delay by every other departments makes our work harder.

[@yomart105]

Wow I had no idea that Anakin’s hand touching Padme’s hand was cgi

[@TheJRob96]

It would be cool if they release a remastered version of the prequels with modernized vfx. I would definitely see a rerelease

[@Nick-ue7iw]

Nah. Leave them alone. The "special editions" showed how poorly that kind of thing ages. Leave them be as projects of their time, appreciate them, and apply those lessons to newer products. Of course disney is making AOTC look good these days, so......

[@ThurstanHethorn]

There also looks to be an issue that everything is in focus, lacking motion blur, lacking dof blur, grain is minimal and no subtle fog, dust general atmosphere to denote depth. Again would be interesting how more time/people could have solved much of this perhaps even at the final compositing stage

[@francesco7168]

Therapist: Ripped Yoda isn't real, he can't hurt you. Ripped Yoda: 9:09

[@jetjazz05]

A testament to the practical effects in episode 1 and 2 is the scenes that get misjudged as being cgi when they were practical. A great example is the halls on camino, everyone thought they were cgi, and while the camino character walking with obi wan was the entire set was practical. It was just so well made and sterile it looked "fake".

[@peterroe2993]

If the practical effects looked too sterile wouldn't that make them bad?

[@notNajimi]

@@peterroe2993only if that wasn’t the intent, which in this case it was

[@peterroe2993]

@@notNajimi why would you ever want anything to look fake?

[@monikitike34]

@@peterroe2993 for thematic purposes for example. Lucas contrasts the Kamino with Naboo constantly… seeing how passionate he was about digital cinematography and animation he could have constructed Naboo solely with visual effects as well, but he deliberately shot these scenes on real places (Spain and Italy) to contrast nature with technology and industry. If you watch his more experimental films (THX 1138 or everyone lived in a pretty how town), you’ll notice this was a recurrent topic he addressed. Is not that he is lazy or anything, this was pretty much well-thought and used as a contrast to expose his themes. The prequels are actually way better than what people give Lucas credit for

[@jonathanbirch2022]

It wasn’t entirely practical, a lot of it was, but a lot of scenes had Ewan Mcgregor in front of a blue screen and then digitally composited onto a digital hallway for wider shots

[@ericaceous1652]

Excellent breakdown. It isn't just VFX having to do more with less - think most workers and industries can relate these days! Stuck in a constant squeeze.

[@cstick2664]

TDLR: It was a very ambitious and experimental movie pushing what could actually be done 20 years ago. Somebody had to go first and figure it out, mistakes and all. Also I really appreciate this breakdown. So much prequel criticism ignores the context the movie was made in or what they where trying to do. Many people just say "CGI looks bad" and leave it at that which is ignorant, intentional or not. Great video.

[@Ryuk45]

"you were so concerned with whether or not you could you never stopped to consider whether or not you should" George did all this CGI shit so he could let the computer make the movie for him in post-production and he didn't have to actually direct a movie, and this style of filmmaking led to the mass-produced CGI marvel slop we get so often today.

[@seileen1234]

​@@Ryuk45Bullshit, don't project your lazy ass into others jobs, and calling George Lucas lazy is one of the most ignorant thing one can do, so

[@Onezy05]

​@@Ryuk45Oh. Source? Or is that what you like to think?

[@emoxvx]

@@Ryuk45 Such an ignorant take, lol. "The computer" didn't make the film for him. He wrote the film, he directed it, it was his story and he had a lot of collaborators, thousands of people worked on these films from the most overlooked things like cooking meals for the crew, to designing a wardrobre, to designing characters, composing music, sound design, VFX artists who worked on CG, VFX artists who worked with the practical sets and effects, etc. This was the combined work of thousands of people to serve the story of someone who wrote his own stories exactly how he wanted to and self financed his films. It's not at all comparable to Disney Marvel stuff.

[@cdz3210]

@@Ryuk45fun fact! The prequels had far fewer VFX shots than the sequels did! The only reason anyone complains about CGI is because it was new technology at the time and George and the industry as a whole wanted to push the boundaries of what we thought was possible with computers!

[@Toasted_Failure]

Shhirtless Yoda can't hurt you he's not real Shirtless Yoda: 9:09

[@leonrussell9607]

He's so fucking sexy

[@Hydorior]

I didn't expect him to be this jacked 😳

[@nematic529]

Now this is what I love to watch KZbin for. A well versed professional explaining details that regular people do not know. Great video.

[@CallousCoder]

As a former SFX and VFX Artist (TD) I agree with the animations. But the biggest “video game” feeling are the poor textures. Color saturation often is too much or too little, the occlusion isn’t there and it all lacks surface imperfections- that also goes for the characters. Skin is very blotchy and certain areas are well bled through and have more rose (or olive in case of a yoda I guess) and others don’t. And little pores, little freckles and little bumps all the imperfections add up. When I worked in SFX make up, it was very easy to add those. And initially when you literally dissolve wax clay and put it on a chip brush and flick it on, you get a heart attack, because your modeling looks terrible. But you noticed that when you continue and vary the amount of solvents and later those imperfection and then gently blend them in, instantly adds realism. This is not (still not) easy to do in digital. And color matching is a lot easier now, I actually wrote plug-ins for Nuke pipelines to automatically set black, white and rgb levels based on a reference block. Which only require the smalles (artistic) changes from an compositor. But that’s only as good as the imperfections, in the shader and material. lol: you get to the occlusion now 😂

[@SBIMEZM86]

Honestly, this is the thing that takes me out of it; none of the other stuff.

[@Robbyrool]

Exactly!

[@Robbyrool]

It isn’t just terrible in comparison. It was just plain terrible back then. And not due to many imperceivably small imperfections and animation flaws. Major things like textures of characters in the foreground. These should have been live action. There’s no reason a few troopers in foreground couldn’t be live. It came across as cheap, lazy, or rushed, forced overuse of cgi, not caring about the audience. The clone troopers looked so fake. As did Yoda. As did many other things. It killed the realism and made us not care about the characters or outcomes. It absolutely looked like a video game or animated feature, not live action. Even if video games of the time weren’t up to this level yet. It just looked like a higher quality video game. Very fake. I watched episodes 4-6 over and over countless times. Episodes 1-3 i didn’t care if i ever saw again. Not because Jarjar was annoying and ridiculous. Or the pod race was too long. Or the bad acting. It was because the extensive use of bad computer graphics killed the realism and made me not invested or interested.

[@richardgillette5759]

they even managed to make the miniatures look like cgi

[@HydratedBeans]

I'm always happy to see someone else that appreciates Hayden Christensen's acting. I think he did a great job of portraying a weird teenager forced into these kinds of situations.

[@youtubeviolatedme7123]

Yup. The reason why people think Hayden acted poorly was because the dialogue he was given kept demanding that he shift from an extremely grounded performance to an extremely theatrical performance, and it's usually easier to strike a balance between the two than it is to keep flip flopping between them.

[@ImperialCaleb]

this is a complete fallacy, there are movies with awkward teens that people/critics love. star wars isn't one of them because it wasn't a good performance. it was awkward acting for an awkward character. you didn't crack the nut that everyone else couldn't.

[@youtubeviolatedme7123]

​@@ImperialCalebOh no, I agree that the acting wasn't good. I'm just saying that I don't think many actors could have done a better job due to how differently Anakin was written from scene to scene. It's like Hayden had to play two completely different characters and it's hard to bridge that gap.

[@numetal_samurai]

I don’t think most people hate his performance now. Movies this awful on a fundamental level couldn’t be saved by any actor. Not his fault at all.

[@HydratedBeans]

@@ImperialCaleb ☝️🤓 “ummm sir that’s a fallacy” The funniest part here is that I didn’t even commit a logical fallacy, and even if I did, you yourself are committing the Fallacy Fallacy. Fallacy isn’t a magic “win the argument” button.

[@romxxii]

Another thing to consider is that most people's experience with the OT today is from one of the many special editions, where they cleaned up a lot of the compositing artifacts inherent to physically layering two film strips on top of each other and copying the resulting image. If you manage to land a copy of the actual 1977 release, you'll really feel its age.

[@konserwowy1092]

Such copies do exist (google Empire Strikes Back Grindhouse Edition for example) and they still look superior to Attack of the Clones. There is some organic tangibility in practical and optical effects that makes them age more gracefully than digital. Unlike CGI they don't look cheap, they just look vintage.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Funnily enough, I liked some of those better than the "cleaned-up" ones. My school library had the early editions of the Original Trilogy DVDs, with the (an?) remaster on Disc One and the original on Disc Two (IIRC it's not quite Laserdisc original, but close). I always preferred seeing the "halo" around the lightsabers, and the slightly dodgy outline around the speeder and the X-wing.

[@EdgeO419]

Nah I grew up watching the CBS Fox released OT movies with all its imperfections, still enjoy them because they where working within limitations of the time, the prequels where clearly the result of a man who had all the resources possible to make better art even at the time, but who CLEARLY didnt care. With all the errors in color correction and compositing and CG and tone in all the prequels come from pure laziness.

[@mechadeka]

Yet for some reason no special edition has yet to fit the obvious frame bounce that happens whenever someone ignites a lightsaber.

[@xBINARYGODx]

@@mechadeka good, at least some of the wonkiness remains.

[@vesselinkrastev]

I definitely hadn't consciously picked up on most of these things. If I were asked to describe what was wrong with the CGI in this movie I'd probably say things like "animations look floaty and unnatural", "surfaces look weirdly smooth", "a lot of the backgrounds are too obviously CG and the real elements stick out ". This was an enjoyable and interesting video to watch. I'm definitely subscribing.

[@TheMokeleMbembe]

I was waiting for the bit on light. I'm a traditional artist & was taught that the most small detail will be evident on an object where it transitions from light to shadow - and your example of backlit Obi-Wan's robe vs. CGI Yoda is a perfect one. Most of the lighting in general in this movie seemed kind of soft to me - that's what stood out most, personally - perhaps that was in an effort to hide the lack of small detail which would show up more with harsher lighting? (Or maybe it's just an artifact of how the comparatively lo-res, not-as-high-poly-as-today models look, even when lit 'realistically'?)

[@JimijaymesProductions]

I do wonder if its intentional, harsh lighting would make the lack of ambient occlusion and digital shadows even more obvious compared to the real shadows.

[@tsukopara2054]

Always loved the way Clones looks, it's such a fascinating time capsule of the transition from early CGI to something closer to what we have now. You can feel Lucas and ILM really trying their hardest to break the barriers of what was possible. Clones' awkward visuals result in the trilogy being uneven, with Menace being a gorgeous, filmic, mostly practical film and Sith being a masterful use of CGI to make the world feel immense and detailed. But at the same time it also provides such an interesting view of the transition of special effects in those years the Prequels were being made. Oddly enough, Clones also has some of the franchise's most beautiful shots despite being so uneven.

[@scush]

i really disagree with describing any of these films as “gorgeous” or “beautiful” at really any point but it certainly is _interesting_ to have three films from the same series to see the steady change in technology. another similar case would be the matrix films; crazy auteur, vfx-obsessed, boundary-pushing directors and all, too. i’m still not convinced that in either case the end result were good movies or a better situation for vfx in general. progress … but at what human cost? vfx artists have desperately needed a large scale industry strike for years, too, now - and in a way we can certainly blame these early director pioneers for treating their artists like disposable meat bags whose labour power stood in the way of cost-cutting for the contemporary sweat shop situation we have. i know prequel defenders like to portray lucas as a benevolent and misunderstood visionary but the lucas from this time has always seemed to me more like he had become the very thing he was critical of at the beginning of his career; one of the greedy materialistic capitalist overlords that ruined the world and produced the dystopia we see in THX 1138.

[@Onezy05]

​@@scushHow?

[@barkley8285]

phantom menace is ugly as fuck dude. ROTS is probably the best CGI movie ever made but even then has some really rough moments. The force awakens and last jedi are the most beautiful and visually pleasing Star Wars movies by far. Probably the only reason to watch them at this point.

[@novustalks7525]

​@@barkley8285phantom menace is gorgeous. Best cgi movie ever made? You've clearly never seen the transformers films. Episode 7 and 8 were forgettable visually. There was nothing interesting or unique going on

[@obsu]

​@@novustalks7525The cinematography of 8 was amazing. It has a lot of really beautiful shots in isolation. Unfortunately in context they don't mean anything, as the movie itself is hot garbage. For me, the visuals are the only thing the movie has, which is unfortunate considering they could have been powerful had the movie made any sense, but I do think the movie is visually gorgeous. I strongly disagree that it's forgettable.

[@Jack655321]

Cause it was filmed on crappy turn of the century digital cameras. That's why the Phantom Menace looks so much better than the other 2 prequels, it was the only one that was filmed on film.

[@TheCynicalAutist]

That's not entirely the case, though. Yes, most of EP1 was done on film, but the final cut was still done at the same resolution as the other prequels, and was even DNRd to hell, especially in the 4K release, which didn't even bother re-scanning the non-digital footage into a native 4K presentation. Film, when treated properly, will hold up better, but sadly that's not the case here.

[@High-Tech-Geek]

Anakin's shadow on the Tatooine home was a critical moment in the film. There were movie posters advertising the film that had this shadow isolated and it was a silhouette of Darth Vader's helmet. It was a bit of foreshadowing and chill-inducing. Brilliant!

[@TheCapedWanderer]

Further, the shadow of Padme facing him is also familiar; combined they form the exact silhouette of Vader & Leia’s first meeting in A New Hope.

[@VictorBalestrin]

You mean this Episode I teaser poster? i0.wp.com/www.weidmangallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/WG00963-1.jpg?fit=800%2C1186&ssl=1

[@squidapus3609]

I think the fact that I watch this movie oh a vhs tape as a kid made this movie look so much better

[@drachenzahne9262]

Same here!

[@ginogatash4030]

That goes for a lot of movies.

[@illinoismotionpicturestudi5065]

"It's so dense every single image has so many things going on"

[@13371138]

This is seriously one of my favorite videos on youtube, please make more! It's so stimulating to think about the intersection of reality, animation, and technology

[@Demigodish4o3]

Fantastic video, I love how well you highlighted the VFX in question, and how well you explained certain principles.

[@passionoflovers]

4:12 wait.. my sarcasm sensor is acting up. 8,4 million hours? That's close to 100.000 years of render time. And they did it in 3 years. These people are overworked indeed

[@AnnDVine]

Processor hours to render. One hour on one core is one processor hour. ILM presumably has render farms, possibly millions of CPU cores working in tandem like a supercomputer (a million cores rendering at once for a single real-time hour would be counted as a million processor hours). And that's just for rendering out the film-ready image, not the workspace environment they assembled the scene in, which would be significantly less resource intensive. They're basically saying it took a lot of computational power to render, not necessarily that it literally took a long time (though I imagine it was still days, if not weeks, in real-time).

[@AnnDVine]

Just looked it up. ILM's render farm is called the Death Star and it had around 3000 processors... in 2005. They don't talk publicly about it so we don't actually know about its current configuration but it's safe to say it's significantly bigger than it was 19 years ago. I was exaggerating when I said "millions" but honestly, it wouldn't surprise me.

[@aeliusdawn]

As a full time VFX compositor, the breakdown of the shot at 23:37 is so relatable it almost gave me PTSD haha. It's exactly the kind of stuff that would keep someone like me working overtime for days. This kind of 2D comp stuff is usually what takes the longest to do, just a lot of rotoshapes and 2D patches.

[@MrTaitanz]

Totally non-related, I'm an optometrist, but this is what I was thinking about too, like "dude imagine working for hours, if not days, if not weeks, if not months, doing something like this, and then, years later, to the 2023 VFX artist, your work is broke down and errors are found when back then it was basically most of the best work "

[@aeliusdawn]

@@MrTaitanz Actaully, if that happened today, I would chuckle and get some satisfaction that my leads doing all this internal tech check still didnt catch that. Sort of a "gotcha!" moment. Like trust me, as soon as the shot is approved we really don't care if you find something like this.

[@Einheit101]

Imagine having to do such a film with software that is not much better than Microsoft Paint

[@aeliusdawn]

@@Einheit101 The software available at the time was still much more advanced than microsoft paint. Something like After Effects 5.0 or Shake

[@dwsel]

27:43 😱

[@panqueque445]

One thing that helps hide Yoda's helmet hair is that he has that thin, combed back, old man white hair going on, which is already kinda helmet-y in real life.

[@handcoding]

This analysis is simply exceptional, and I would love to see more content along these lines. You absolutely nailed it.

[@ChrisPTenders]

So interesting. I actually feel similarly about Clones as I do Hope. I've watched both so many times that I notice things that look slightly off and I always get the same feeling. This movie feels like somebody made it in their garage and that makes me want to do the same. That's not an insult to the movies, just a testament to human ingenuity and imagination.

[@calebford6318]

Source?

[@Ethan-wr2os]

@@calebford6318 Source to what? It's a comment about his opinion on the matter. Do people just say "source" to sound clever or something

[@david-jonballinger6638]

​@@Ethan-wr2osthey're a troll. Just ignore them.😊

[@cultofsucc5807]

In all honesty watching a new home in original quality like through a old 8mm archive makes the visual effects far more impressive and makes you realize how good they were for the time

[@Fiveash-Art]

@@cultofsucc5807 "A New Home" .. awesome movie about a young family purchasing their beautiful starter home with a dream of prosperity and a family to call their own. Great film! 👍🏻

[@skrounst]

Also this channel is CRIMINALLY undersubbed. I've watched a couple videos so far, and have decided to binge all your videos today! Keep it up dude, you're going places.

[@jager297_]

Brilliant video! You can tell you put a lot of work and passion into it and you’re very knowledgeable without crapping on the vfx limitations of the past.

[@felipegvferreira]

Amazing video, amazing reasoning, amazing attention to details and understandings of animation and animators struggles. Thanks, this is truly beautiful and inspiring.

[@ParchmentOfPower]

You are my favorite video essayist on KZbin. I always love hearing what you have to say about production.

[@jerankorak7997]

This was an absolutely fascinating video. Huge credit to you and I really hope more of your videos get favored by the algorithm. It's EXTREMELY rare that I watch a video with no particular connection to the subject material, and yet finish it completely.

[@tvsonicserbia5140]

Excellent in depth analysis, but I gotta say a lot of these issues are things I'd allow and corners I'd cut if I were director, but the light levels and ambient occlusion are the things I'd pay most attention to as it's what brings the image together and makes the rest easier to swallow.

[@dungeoneering1974]

I got to go to a reception when Attack of the Clones came out and I was surprised at how many practical models they had on display! It is just that the digital is so in your face and noticeable it is hard to appreciate how much of the movie was real sets and props.

[@Inyaole]

Excellent video. Put into words things I had half-noticed from when I was a kid, but could not articulate at all. Next maybe you could explain why season 3 of The Mandalorian looks like a car insurance ad.

[@DurgeDiggler]

So refreshing to watch a critique of a Star Wars prequel that's actually well-researched and in good faith. While I think the imagination and experimentation of the trilogy eclipses its technical flaws (I'd even argue that its video-gamey qualities are an assured aesthetic ripe for cinematic analysis), I very much appreciated the perspective of somebody who knows how it all ticks. Very much excited for your Transformers video!

[@Mega-Brick]

I'd second that argument, Attack of The Clones feels the "weirdest" out of the three movies, but that means it's left the biggest impression on me, and I'd love to see something able to match it somehow.

[@numetal_samurai]

Technical flaws are the least of the prequels’ problems, unfortunately 😢

[@DurgeDiggler]

@@numetal_samurai Thank you for your 2009 ass opinion

[@incog.nyto.]

"well-researched and in good faith" = "it doesn't contradict with my pre-established opinion"

[@boyishdude1234]

@@numetal_samurai There are no compelling arguments for why the prequels are bad movies despite the fact that people have had over two decades to make those arguments. I seriously doubt you'll be the first person to make that argument given how nearly all of the criticism the prequels have received is just a giant circle-jerking echo chamber made up of original trilogy fanboys who don't have a solid grasp of what Star Wars even is or was intended to be.

[@owenbowsher7595]

This is so fascinating and educational thank you, can’t wait to check out the rest of your videos

[@0bits_1]

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I still think that practical visual effects generally look and feel better. They add an element of realism, both in the way they have to be worked with and when you view behind the scenes videos and learn that they were practically done in camera and/or on-set. Not only that, but - as you alluded to in the video - there are multiple added by-products that you get for free when doing things practically as opposed to CGI. Alongside this, often times, it produces much better performances from the actors and actresses as well, because they're actually reacting to something that is present in the moment during the take. I think the advancements in computer generated visual effects have actually made filmmakers either lazy, less creative or likewise, it's been a case of having too many toys to play with that has dulled their creativity. Likewise, the people above them, Executives etc, have seen an opportunity to pump out more films and shows in quicker succession in order to make more money. It's essentially 'hustle culture' and 'crunch culture' on a massive scale with a downward trajectory that ultimate hits the CGI artists hardest and leads to movies and shows that often lack quality in terms of story and characters and likewise either look same-y or just bad/unfinished in terms of the CG elements, which - even when done well - are also often blatantly CG elements because the sequences being shown couldn't realistically be done in any other way. To use a couple of James Cameron films as an example, the first Avatar movie is visually impressive (overdone in my opinion), but the story - as I recall - is really quite thin and, to me at least, always felt like a lazy retelling/rehashing of the old 'American Army versus Native Americans' Westerns. By comparison, T2 feels way more grounded and real, and a large part of that is because they used practical visual effects and augmented/enhanced those effects with computer generated elements or otherwise used CGI very sparingly in order to complement the movie in areas where a certain effect was needed and couldn't be created any other way. Likewise, the characters are so much more believable, the story is richer, and you're generally more engaged because the story of the movie is driven by the characters and the events of their world, both presently and still to come in the future. Ultimately, you're not thinking 'Ah, that's probably done with CGI' instead you're thinking 'Oh my God... that's a scary thought/image...'

[@Skydrag.V60]

Man, I’d never picked up on the outlines of the shot of Padmé and Anakin at the homestead before this. Now they’re clear as day lmao. Still an amazing effort and a hugely important film for VFX

[@andrewlavigne44]

The most underrated video essay channel on KZbin, imho. Seeing this pop up brightened my day.

[@knightsofthepagelesslibrar6320]

Man, this is a great video. I know ZERO about visual effects, other than as a consumer. I do however know when stuff doesn't look quite right, or feel quite right and I always appreciate it when someone with inside knowledge breaks it down into words I can understand. Thank you for this

[@LunarPictures]

This might be my favourite video on the internet, I come back to it all the time.

[@samwallaceart288]

Honestly this film more than any is deserving of a remaster. Not to replace the old, but as a new option we can use to compare how far VFX has come. Redo some of the animations, expand background detail, fix the damn light levels, maybe use AI upscaling to add some texture back to the rotoscoped areas. Even disliking the movie, I'd watch the hell out of that

[@SalivatingSteve]

I agree.

[@mishynaofficial]

Won't happen ever. Under the terms of the contract, if Disney change anything from episodes 1-6, all the profit goes to Lucas. And remastering AOTC would cost millions Disney, they'll never do that. Pray for AI to redo it on your PC soon.

[@turrican4d599]

It was filmed in 720p, so the real sequences would stilll look not good. Goerge should have filmed analogue. Instead her smeared all over Ep.I

[@APinchofBazel]

Because of the OT special editions went _soooo_ well.

[@allluckyseven]

It would definitely be interesting to see a Special Edition of the prequels. But I don't think they will ever try to do that with those movies.

[@sankharaYT]

Amazing breakdown! I had noticed obvious flaws like with the animated cloth, but lots of this was new to me. Thanks for the education!

[@spekticat]

This is amazing - for me it drives home just how hard you can work, how much effort and brilliance you can bring to vfx, and STILL fall short of the human eye. The people who created these effects are so so clever and yet we can subconsciously see the strings. Thank you so much for this really fascinating analysis:)

[@WesDoesGames]

This was so well done!

[@YungJunko]

This was a very insightful video and very well done. Really glad this showed up in my feed, especially since I literally just watched Attack of the Clones last night with someone who hasn't seen it since around its release.

[@SearNRivers]

What's really crazy, is I didn't notice any of this when I watched the movie. Even though, as you highlight in this video, these are all entirely present in the movie. It's crazy how a trained eye can see entirely different things than an untrained eye.

[@hughcards]

With the exception of a tiny few number of “stars”, everyone in the entertainment business gets squeezed till the pips squeak, not just the VFX crowd.

[@somdov]

Well done on this video. Best presented and structured video essay I've seen, maybe ever. Well done.

[@aceshighdueceslow]

really cool video, a couple things that occurred to me, the first being your point towards the beginning of how the eye will start to always notice things after they have been exposed to it. I think this is just how our brains work because it happens with sfx too, the Wilhelm Scream being a great example. It is an iconic stock sfx, and in things like Star Wars it now feels like a tradition for it to be featured (though it also feels like in some of the newer movies and shows the production team tries to hide it, either if they are ashamed to have to use it, or as a fun game for the fans to find) but in other media it can either be a leo-pointing.gif moment, or a moment of guffawing because the watcher feels it was an inappropriate moment to use that particular stock sfx. My personal favourite for that is canned cheering, specifically the "YAA WOO WOO" crowd cheering sfx. Growing up, that specific clip featured in a lot of games of questionable quality, but we didn't have money for the newest and greatest games and so I played the heck out of whatever we had, even if that included things like Streets of Sim City. As years have gone by, I have viewed clips like that as "well, it's stock, so it's very easy to add and if you mix it properly, your audience may not notice it's there at all" and usually let it go in media that is either super cheesy and hammy, or stuff that has that feeling of "yeah that's probably what they could afford". But when I hear it in CBMs or other super high budget media I have reactions similar to how people reacted when they noticed the Na'vi translations were using Papyrus font. Something of relatively high quality is cheaping out or cutting corners in a very obvious way, and it ends up having an effect on your digestion of the media. On a completely different note, your point about Hayden's hand movement reminds me of something I have seen stage directors talk about, one in particular referred to it as "spilling over". This would be an extraneous movement (shifting your weight from side to side, fidgeting with your hands, any kind of over-correcting movement in your limbs) that may not seem noticeable in the moment the actor does it, but is very noticeable to the audience. This director explained it as a combination of factors, but it ultimately boiling down to 1 key issue, inexperience. This can be inexperience from the acting side, where the actor hasn't had as much experience as their colleagues and haven't developed enough discipline to be aware of when they "spill over", or they are in a production that has ratcheted up their stress and anxiety for any number of reasons, or they are working with a director that does minimal blocking and they, again, lack the discipline to control their whole body when they have so little to do. In the case of Hayden's fidgeting, I think this is more of a direction problem, and that isn't surprising based off of lots of things cast and crew from the PT have said over the years. George Lucas is not an actor's director, his directions are either too basic or unnecessarily complicated and so most of the blocking and acting is put on the shoulders of the actors. It is entirely possible that Hayden had ideas for how Anakin would act in certain scenes (most of the examples of his fidgeting are also when Padme is in the same room or even directly interacting with him) and George either didn't have a problem with it, or didn't have the ability to communicate if he wanted Hayden to tone it down or not do it at all in certain scenes. In some scenes it works tremendously, Anakin's "tantrum" where he tells Padme he killed every Tusken in that settlement is actually brilliant because of the context.

[@cattrucker8257]

It's really interesting to hear a professional who's also a fan take it apart in detail like this. I do know the feeling you describe but now I actually understand it, and that feels very good indeed. Thank you.

[@MaryBrownIsTheBlairWitch]

A fan wouldn't draw attention to the film's 'faults' - a detractor feigning 'constructive criticism', on the other hand..

[@rustyshackelford4224]

​@@MaryBrownIsTheBlairWitchElaborate please

[@MaryBrownIsTheBlairWitch]

@@rustyshackelford4224 What's to elaborate upon? A fan wouldn't instigate criticism of something they purport to like.

[@JayL-]

@@MaryBrownIsTheBlairWitch Well, I can only speak for myself, but I've been obsessed with Star Wars for nearly 24 years now. I adore the prequels, with Revenge of the Sith being my favorite Star Wars movie overall. I think the criticisms in this video were pretty valid and fair (specially from a VFX technical standpoint) but they don't affect my enjoyment of the movie at all. Btw, I would have gone crazy as a kid if we had games with graphics like AotC's back in 2002.

[@Hoshino_Channel]

@@MaryBrownIsTheBlairWitchA real "fan" can point out faults all they want, you can enjoy a movie and be a fan despite said faults. And this video is more of an analysis/breakdown of the movie effects rather than the writing/story.

[@wijck026]

Nice detailed breakdown! 🙌 The work that these artists put into the movie with the resources they had is incredible though! It is still one of my favorite movies ❤

[@joshuagrados9837]

You made me excited for this one again! Great Review!

[@lobstervortex]

Wow, this was really a joy to watch. Great work!

[@isabelc6522]

All good points aside, anyone else notice how frickin jacked Yoda is in 9:08?

[@xlmxlmxl]

I was checking to see if anyone else noticed.

[@TheOldMachines]

Amazing that it was all done in less than 1080p. Really a great job and you only notice the "issues" under a fine tooth comb..in theaters you would have been blown away and as a theatrical experience it would have achieved the goal. Only with hindsight can we critique it so precisely....

[@OTOss8]

Dude, good video. It helped me understand the weirdness of those Star Wars movies but it also helped me figure out just what the heck some of the settings mean in my favourite video games. Cheers.

[@herrmajor2310]

It's all those little things you masterfully pointed out. The low res textures, blurring, shadows and lack of shadows, CG characters and clipping. It does give the overall film a playstation 2 era kind of vibe to it all. All those tiny things that you don't consciously notice, but they're still there and just leave you in disbelief. Although, with all that said and done I still find it astounding they were able to accomplish this feat over 20 years ago. They really pushed the limits and made possible so much of what we take for granted today.

[@Witnaaay]

This is an awesome video - would you consider making more VFX breakdowns on other movies like this?

[@felix6142]

the amount of information and knowledge on the topic is truly mindblowing, every artist should watch this video to learn from. you got me in awe.

[@lmAIone]

Thanks for making this video bossman!

[@bakubread9308]

A major difference between Attack of the Clones and videogames is that Attack of the Clones will probably never get a random, high budget remake that makes it look like a modern movie so they can re-release it

[@roddersrodders]

Great video. Amazing breakdown.

[@crestofhonor2349]

Great video and shows how much further we've come in terms of technology in both film and even video games. It's especially surprising to see video games which typically have to render a scene in 33ms or less produce more convincing characters and lighting than a movie could with hundreds of hours worth of rendering on a mass of computers. Shows how much work has been done in just lighting and texturing alone.

[@kookiespace]

I've been kinda learning VFX in Blender over the last few months and this video is REALLY good for training my eye to notice these smol things. Not to tear apart a movie or anything but just to... understand why a shot I might be working on doesn't "feel right" or something that might be missing that I just don't see yet.

[@Ramix09]

This was amazing. You should do one on the Volume and Star Wars Disney+ shows, Ahsoka looked off sometimes and I don't know why

[@worldcomicsreview354]

I went into a big electronics shop in Japan, showing off the latest 4k and 8k TVs. They were playing the droid factory sequence from Episode 3 and I really did think it was a videogame cutscene! Even the live actors looked... "off" somehow, I assumed they were deepfaked into the "game" because the real actors have aged.

[@sepalot100]

Excellent. Good Work! Instant Subscribere over here. What I liked the most is that you're a quite talky but not that kind of usual Suspect when it comes to detailed, accurate Information. Listen tok you talking about the Stuff you really like that much, that you're really really into even when it comess naturally with your Job. Keep up the good Work - Your newest bigestest Fan and Listener. Frank

[@sorryifoldcomment8596]

8:48 I was waiting to see how you'd talk about my favorite scene (and characters) from the movie and glad you agree! The arena creatures were my favorite. Although I have to admit, the sound really put it over the edge for me...specifically the noise made by the big crab walking dude. It's burned in my memory. That sound further helps distract from noticing any flaws with the CGI character...maybe its fast movement too? IDK, but I think that creature is the one that holds up the best. The crab dude ❤ and the smaller cat creature that goes after Padme.

[@XTHHedgehog]

Wait a sec, wasn't Episode 1 Yoda a puppet originally, and it was the re-releases that added the CGI?

[@rustyshackelford4224]

Yes

[@andrewmurray1550]

remote control/animatronic yes, but not a "muppet" like in ESB. Mostly because much of Yoda we saw was in the Jedi Council Chamber or in Palpatine's office where he could conveniently sit in a chair and not move much.

[@littleredruri]

The shot he's talking about was originally the only shot where Yoda was CGI in TPM. In every other shot, he was a puppet, until the re-release.

[@Madtography]

Wow, your script and attention to details is spot on! You made every line of your analysis count!

[@austinromero6636]

Thank you so much for making this video. I remember watching Clone Wars right after Phamtom Menace during a movie might, and wondering why Phamyom Menace looked better in a lot of ways despite coming out earlier. This video definitely helps to explain a lot of why it felt that way.

[@tgs7515]

For me, when I first saw ATOC in the theater, the thing that killed my immersion and made me feel like I was watching video game cutscenes was the Zam Wessell scenes in Coruscant - specifically the ones where the actor is clearly in front of a blue screen with all of the neon signboards and advertising. It immediately reminded me of the cutscenes from the Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2 video game which had come out only a couple years earlier. Obviously the movie had far better renderings and resolution, but the jarring bluescreen effect of "something real in front of something fake" was immediately apparent, and that carried through all of the prequels.