Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 12 Reasons It's Better Than The Prequels
4. It Doesn't Overuse CGI
One of the most popular talking points about The Force Awakens for the cast and crew is the viscerality of the film and the usage of practical sets and effects. While CGI is an excellent and useful tool for making movies, especially sci-fi action flicks, it shouldnt replace everything. Nearly every location in the prequels had a CGI background. Sadly for Lucas, the human eye is adept at noticing fakeness: we can subconsciously tell that something computer-generated looks slightly off, even if we cant quite put it into words, and it often takes the audience out of the movie. Plus, an overuse of CGI can lead to other problems, such as actors not knowing what theyre supposed to be seeing and acting against in a shot, and actors not having enough space in the sound stage to do what the scene requires of them The Force Awakens tried very hard to get back to basics. The crew went into painstaking detail to create real models, puppets, and mechanical robots to use for shooting, and many scenes were filmed on actual locations, with backgrounds that couldnt really be replicated by computers without something inevitably looking fake. The movie still used green screen and CGI, of course, for creating several CGI characters, shooting scenes that took place in space, removing wires and cables in post-production, and so on, but the important part was that the filmmakers only used it when necessary, striking a perfect balance between the real and the digital, and their passion and hard work really shone through.
