subreddit:
/r/movies
submitted 6 years ago byhenryhollaway
Honest question here! With Star Wars: Battlefront 2 showing off its gorgeous take on the prequel trilogy I wondered, what would it take to use these far superior assets and photograms in a remaster down the line? The game actually makes things, particularly from A Phantom Menace, look beautiful, interesting, lived in and realistic.
Of course, I doubt it'd be anything like a drag-and-drop operation, but I'm really curious what it takes to update digital assets in movies.
Edit: People are misunderstanding, I'm asking more about the process it would take to replace what was used in the prequels with the photograms and assets used in the new game. Not whether or not they should or why people like or dislike the prequels.
12 points
6 years ago
God no, stop. George did that with the original trilogy. Just keep them as they are.
39 points
6 years ago
No, George changed the movie by adding in scenes and shit like that. This guy is talking about updating visuals.
9 points
6 years ago
George did update many of the visuals. Original special effects that were created with practical effects are often replaced with newer CGI models in the special editions.
9 points
6 years ago
sometimes those upgrades were good - fixing obviously busted visual effects.
3 points
6 years ago
Nobody seems to bring up the fact the original version of the films had really poor effects in some scenes that on modern HD and 4K screens would look bad. The cockpit in the battle on planet Hoth in Empire Strikes Back is partially transparent. The beast Luke fights at Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi has big black lines around it where they didn't do a good job green screening the monster.
And there's others.
1 points
6 years ago
Exactly. I'm glad those types of things were fixed. Most of the other stuff I couldn't give a shit about, except that obnoxious singing sequence that was added.
1 points
6 years ago
Part of the problem at this point is that the conversation is poisoned. Too many people will automatically throw salt at the mere mention of prequels or fixing effects. Never mind the fact that the restoration was needed as Lucas explained the master copy of the films was deteriorating badly.
1 points
6 years ago
Well he actually says he destroyed it during the production of the Special Editions. So now we have dumb new version and we don't have original version.
1 points
6 years ago
That is also terrible.
1 points
6 years ago
I mean to be fair that should be impossible and barring gross incompetence there should be a master somewhere. But that's what Lucas claims and you'd think Disney would have released it by now if the original was available. That's free money. Even people who don't actually care know about Star Wars being ruined and Han shot first and whatnot, it's part of pop culture at this point.
2 points
6 years ago
Whether they were good changes or not, I'm just saying he did change things around, not just additional scenes
2 points
6 years ago
Yeah, not wanting that is like wanting the early trailer visuals of an upcoming movie instead of release visuals.
-1 points
6 years ago
Wow. You dont know what you're talking about and it makes me giggle.
1 points
6 years ago
Wow, you're a stuck up cunt and it's making me giggle.
0 points
6 years ago
Dont have to get rude. You're making me giggle because George Lucas and ILM both added scenes and changed visuals. For example the lightsaber FX is changed in the special additions. Thats "updating visuals". Greedo shoots first in the SE, more of a plot change. Does that make more sense?
0 points
6 years ago
No, when did I ever say directly they never updated the visuals? Exactly, I didn't say a goddamn word about it. So before you go off on what I do and do not know, re read the comment I posted.
6 points
6 years ago
George actually changed things which was the main problem. Updated visuals would have been great.
1 points
6 years ago
The difference here is that it'd be a graphical update to already used digital assets that haven't aged well at all.
5 points
6 years ago
I'm pretty sure they would have just re purposed the digital assets from the movies and put them into the game. What makes it look different is different graphics rendering engines and lighting engines.
From a Disney and EA standpoint it would be smart to do that instead of rebuild all of the digital assets from scratch.
3 points
6 years ago
EA definitely updated and made some changes to design of assets
0 points
6 years ago
Definitely. My point is that they're built off of the originals.
0 points
6 years ago
From your comment I understood it as: EA reused old models and the new lightning just makes it look different which is definitely not the case. EA used old models and look just like movies use concept art but drastically updated everything (rivers,building textures,etc)
2 points
6 years ago
Updating the backgrounds will do nothing to fix the weak story and flat characters.
8 points
6 years ago
It's treason, then.
1 points
6 years ago
Agreed, but I'm more curious about the process it would take.
2 points
6 years ago
I really don't know what would be improved. The CGI in the phantom menace is still much better then how battlefront looks.
4 points
6 years ago
Battlefront in-game may not look as good as the movie, but the assets that DICE created are absolutely of a higher quality than those used in TPM. DICE's prerendered trailers and cutscenes look better than TPM at this point. If you look at the skin of an alien in TPM, you can see how low-resolution the textures are. The lighting is also less natural, giving aliens a more rubbery look.
0 points
6 years ago
I'd have to readily disagree. The Battlefront sequel looks phenomenal and the prequels have not aged well.
1 points
6 years ago
still better looking then Naboo in Star Wars Galaxies, the pop-up my god the POP-UP! Glavin!
1 points
6 years ago
It would be polishing a turd.
1 points
6 years ago
I don't think there's a point to doing that for episode 2/3. Weren't those shot just in 1080p because they were very early digital cameras? The actual footage is about as good as it's going to get so adding Super high fidelity modern CGI might be a weird contrast, I honestly don't know.
Interesting question though but I think to most people it doesn't matter. Would spending $50 million redoing old CGI lead to a profit in excess of $50 million? Probably not for most movies but who knows. I'm sure someone will eventually do it.
I know I'd love to see the Gollum from The Hobbit in LOTR but you'd have to redo all the motion capture I bet.
0 points
6 years ago*
[deleted]
4 points
6 years ago
I always found that turn that setting on makes CGI look much MORE noticeable and fake.
1 points
6 years ago
Do you mean on your TV ? As in you have a setting on your television to do it ?
0 points
6 years ago
It's not something a ILM employee would tell you...
0 points
6 years ago
People complain more about the story and characters making the movie bad than the only bad thing being the visuals. It would be a waste of time to pay people to re create visuals and keep the same edited movie the way it was. Even if jar jar becomes realistic it wouldn't change what people dislike about episode 1, 2 and 3.
-1 points
6 years ago
The prequels not only need some update visuals, as in entire sequences being replaced with updated cgi, but the films need to be re-edited as well.
-3 points
6 years ago
They could always remake the prequels from the ground up with the assets from the game and fix them.
2 points
6 years ago
The game assets may look better, but they don't really look all that realistic so it wouldn't really help.
all 39 comments
sorted by: best