The next Star Wars film will eschew CGI in favour of real locations and models wherever possible, according to Kathleen Kennedy, the film executive in charge of the sci-fi adventure.
The LucasFilm boss made the comments at a Star Wars convention, where she also revealed that composer John Williams would return for the upcoming JJ Abrams-directed Episode VII.
"The conversation we're having all the time now about Episode VII is how much CGI," Kennedy told fans at the Star Wars Celebration Europe convention in Essen, Germany. "We're looking at what the early Star Wars films did; they used real locations with special effects. So [for Episode VII] we're going to find some very cool locations, [and] we're going to end up using every single tool in the toolbox."
Kennedy revealed that the DIY approach adopted by Star Wars fans when designing home-made costumes helped inspire the move. "I was amazed yesterday, looking at what the fans are doing," she said. "Using model makers, using real droids, taking advantage of the artwork that you can touch and feel – we want to do that in combination with CG effects."
Kennedy's comments were well-received by fans at the convention. George Lucas's trilogy of prequel films between 1999 and 2005 were heavily criticised for over-relying on CGI.
Kennedy also revealed that the iconic composer Williams would return to oversee Star Wars: Episode VII. In a clip posted on the Star Wars website, Williams said he expected to weave familiar themes and motifs into the new score. "Of course, I haven't seen the script," the composer told The Hollywood Reporter. "The story is still unknown to me, the new story. But I can't imagine that there will not be some references to the existing stories [which] we know would necessitate … the use of some of the earlier themes."
Kennedy said Abrams and screenwriter Michael Arndt are currently working on "story and character" for the new film. After buying all rights to the series through its acquisition of LucasFilm for $4.05bn, Disney announced a trilogy of new Star Wars films in October, with Lucas agreeing to step aside after more than 35 years in charge. The stars of the original trilogy, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Harrison Ford (Han Solo), have been tipped to return in Star Wars: Episode VII, which is being shot in the UK next year for a 2015 release date.

What's the worst bit of CGI in the prequels?

My favourite 'worst bit' is the rubbish trade federation landing sequence in episode 1. There's a ship that lands in the trees. It's just awful.

I thought it was a strange decision to make all of the clone troopers in episode 3 have CG bodies and the actors head. It was quite out of place (and that is my favorite of the prequels)

None of the cgi in the prequels is worth complaining about as far as I am concerned. Only truly bad cgi warrants serious derision:



When anything in the prequels looks remotely that bad, let me know.

So you're saying reality will keep getting more real-looking to out pace CGI.

That or film and video resolution will go up. Yeah let's go with that.

But you'd expect it to get "good enough" at some point that you're at least out of the uncanny valley. You don't need atom-level detail for a film that's only 1080p. But I'd expect video resolution to leapfrog simulation detail so you'd have an ever losing battle of trying to get "good enough."

Compared to the average summer blockbuster, all three Star Wars prequels were pretty good movies. They get an undeserved amount of hatred from butthurt fans that think they deserve something from George Lucas.

I'm not going to go into the Plinkett thing again, because I think it's fairly well known around here that I think that guy is a pedantic douchebag.

I can basically agree with that. My dislike for the prequels mostly comes from high expectations and a warped perspective nurtured by my idea of what the Star Wars universe should "feel" like after having played so many hours of Tie Fighter, SWCCG, and everything else that rehashed the the crafts, planets, species, and costumes almost directly from TESB and ROTJ.

Old CGI just doesn't age as well as puppets/miniature models/real sets do. Episode 1 looks awful to my eyes, worse than Episode 4 and 5 in visual appeal.

I'm not going to go into the Plinkett thing again, because I think it's fairly well known around here that I think that guy is a pedantic douchebag.

It's a ****ing waste of time, and it doesn't add anything to the proceedings. It just causes people to dislike something more than they already did, or in an even worse case, causes them to dislike something they were perfectly okay with before.

Simulation accuracy is the hard part. And it does matter, even at 1080p, since the color of a pixel is supposed to be the weighted average of all of the visible points inside the frustum subtended by that pixel.

The fact that George Lucas is a terrible dialogue director/writer is to blame for a good bit of the flaws of the prequels. The proof of this is Natalie Portman delivering the three worst performances of her career.

Somehow several of the actors managed to overcome this, most notably Ewan Mcgregor, who is easily the best thing about the prequels.

Yeah but it is it really much worse than a Shia La Bouf Transformers movie?

Other supporting evidence: all of ​The Mummy Returns

I was sad that Terrance Stamp didn't have a larger role.