10 Worst CGI Moments In Star Wars
Attack of the Clones has not aged well, and neither have the Mos Eisley edits in A New Hope...
In the right hands, CGI can be a fantastic tool to expands worlds and wow audiences, but as the Star Wars franchise has proven more than any other, splashy visual effects will never compensate for a lousy story or inert characters.
Star Wars' hit TV show The Mandalorian has also proven how much more charming practical effects tend to be than digital - could a CGI "Baby Yoda" ever match up to the tactile magnificence of that elaborate animatronic puppet?
As much as the Star Wars franchise is full of fantastic arguments for the versatile utility of visual effects, the series also frequently offers up cautionary lessons for what can happen when filmmakers become overly reliant on VFX tech.
It won't surprise anyone that most of these entries are taken from the Star Wars prequels, then, where undisciplined use of state-of-the-art CGI led to some audiences rejecting much of his aesthetic vision.
But prequels aren't the only culprits, with Lucas' insistence upon meddling with his earlier films yielding similarly off-putting results, not to ignore a few missteps in more recent Star Wars films...
10. Anakin Rides A Shaak - Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones
Attack of the Clones is undoubtedly the most poorly-aged of all the Star Wars films from a visual effects perspective, due to its set-pieces being more reliant on pure CGI elements rather than a combination of digital and practical effects as in The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith.
And so, the awkward middle chapter of the prequel trilogy is awash with janky, unconvincing CGI, not least in this wildly unnecessary aside where Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Padme (Natalie Portman) go for a frolic through the fields of Naboo.
In one moment, Anakin is seen balancing on top of a large, pig-like creature, a Shaak, before it dumps him on the ground.
Between the shiny, video game-y appearance of the animal itself and the laughably off-kilter physics as Anakin surfboards atop it, nothing here looks remotely believable.
It may be only a brief moment, but it makes an already trying scene even more cringe-worthy.