5 Things “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Should Learn from the Prequels

Top 5 Ways The Phantom Menace Got it Right


#1: The Ideal Blend of Practical & Digital Effects

Before you curse me as being a nearsighted scrap pile, hear me out – I am not saying that The Phantom Menace has absolutely no intrusive digital effects; it does. Nor am I postulating the idea that somehow the Prequel Trilogy as a whole should be praised for its excessive use of digital technology; it shouldn’t. What I am saying, however, is that people tend to forget these days that in 1999, simply creating every non-human aspect of a live-action film inside of a computer was still very much unheard of – even for George Lucas. As a result, he didn’t go as far into the rabbit hole of digital inertia he would later do with Episodes II and III.

The Phantom Menace, when taken on its own merits and not lumped in with the rest of the trilogy (like people tend to do), actually has a very similar aesthetic to the original films in that it was shot on film, used actual stunt work for its fight scenes (Episodes II and III would go on to replace this almost entirely with CGI version of the actors – and it showed), and incorporated a ton of miniatures, models, puppets, explosives, real costumes, makeup effects, and practical, hand-built sets to bring its world and inhabitants to life.

Granted, all of that changed with its sequels, and by the time we got to Episode III nearly everything on the screen was generated with a computer. But that wasn’t the case with Episode I. Just look at the behind-the-scenes footage of both films side-by-side. It’s like night and day. Natalie Portman on a set built to look like a battlefield is certainly going to more real than Natalie Portman on a blue stage, staring at nothing, digitally consolidated with a digital environment built separately by animators who weren’t anywhere near the production of the scene on the day of. But if we go back in time to 1999 and watch the production of The Phantom Menace, things were much more balanced between the practical and the digital, and you can bet that is exactly the route The Force Awakens is also going to follow.

Now, was all of Episode I‘s practical effects wizardry augmented heavily my some miscalculated CGI? Absolutely. It wasn’t perfect at the time because the technology wasn’t there yet. But a good faith effort was obviously made in the production of Episode I to follow the past SFX tradition of blending the new technology with the old. The original films did this, too. Remember Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back? Cutting-edge technology at the time. The only real difference in the case of The Phantom Menace is that its generation’s “cutting edge” was really a technology still in its awkward, pimple-faced adolescence. Yes, computers handled rendering of the spaceships just fine, but full-fledged characters like Jar Jar Binks and the rest of the Gungans just weren’t ready to grace the screen. Yet.

Now, that has changed in a big way. Digital characters are becoming more and more prominent by the year in filmmaking, and the results have gotten considerably better. James Cameron’s Avatar was really the watershed moment when it was proved possible to inhabit an entire film with CGI characters and not have the end result be laughable. But the technology utilized to get such fine results, of course, still implemented human elements such as actors giving genuine performances “beneath” the digital makeup (of sorts) to bring CGI technology over the hurdle of artificial emulation. The Force Awakens has been confirmed to be doing the exact same thing to bring new, exciting characters to life that would not have been possible even ten years ago (when the last Star Wars film was released). We should embrace this marriage of old and new once again, and get ready for the thrill ride of our lives. It’s going to be amazing.