4. CGI Yoda In Episode I
Another prequel entry, this time one that has a movie wide effect. When The Phantom Menace first hit cinemas the Yoda puppet used oddly looked worse than the one featured twenty years earlier in the original trilogy. Obviously Lucas and co. wanted to honour the green aliens origins, but for a film that otherwise still looks visually resplendent in both CGI and practical effects, this puppet stood out. Of course, in amongst the rest of the complaints about Episode I, the poor Yoda was low on peoples priorities and ended up an oddity when the character became a much more nimble CGI creation for the last two entries in the saga. Things eventually changed. When prepping for Revenge Of The Sith, a movie that features more Yoda action than ever, the VFX team went back to Episode I and redid the puppet with the CGI model as practice for the more complicated sequences to come. And, when the Blu-Ray came around, it was decided to put the computerised effort into the film. And what an improvement. Now we have a consistent Yoda throughout the prequels and one that leads into his original appearance quite well.