Why Does Attack of the Clones Look Like a Video Game?

An extended look at the visual effects of the awkward middle child of the Star Wars prequels.

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CG Model credits:
Anakin Skywalker model by Stym:

Obi-Wan Kenobi model by sidgara

Jedi Council Chamber model by olcaytoibili

If you'd like to dive deeper into the Star Wars Saga's development history yourself, here's all the behind-the-scenes sources I usually pull from:

[ChaplainDMK]

I think a lot of the "it looks like a videogame" things also come from more video-gamey camera work - lots of complex panning and following shots that don't feel real because they're just a digital camera flying through a digital model. Real cameras can't really do it so it ends up feeling unnatural to us, but it's the norm in video games, so we associate it with those.

[sweepingdenver]

I worked on this movie! Wow, great video, you absolutely nailed it. One thing that's hard to fully appreciate -- and explains a lot of the quality control issues -- is how incredibly difficult and time consuming it was to actually review final frames. You couldn't pull up the high-resolution composite on your machine and play the entire thing in real-time, unless if it was a very short shot, maybe 20 frames or less. You could play a low-resolution proxy video (which already was quite revolutionary compared to just a few years prior), or you could painstakingly step through the high-resolution frames one by one as they slowly loaded into memory, but there was neither enough memory nor enough I/O speed to just stream 2k final frames to your monitor for review. In order to review the frames you either had to transfer them to a custom type of review hardware that could play them in real-time, a transfer which could easily take 30+ minutes, assuming you could even book one of the few available review stations, or you had to send the final frames to film and review them in film dailies 12-36 hours later depending on how fast the shot was developed and delivered back to the facility. All of the combined to make it very difficult to catch the kinds of errors you point out for the volume of work that was being done, i.e. hundreds of shots in progress every day at any given time.

[jodanger]

It’s crazy how our brains register all these so small details without us realizing, and it’s so fine tuned anyone can see it, but almost no one can describe it. Very fascinating.

[DardSBr]

The opening scene for Revenge of the Sith, the Battle of Coruscant, is still one of the most incredible VFX scenes ever

[shmehfleh]

Learning that Lucas meant the prequels to be essential tech demos really puts a lot about them into perspective.

[jvgreendarmok]

It was The Guy From The Banking Clan who first really stood out to me as a character who was clearly not in the same physical space as the live actors.

[Tomhyde]

I actually prefer to watch the prequels on DVD instead of on Blu-ray or 4K. The lower resolution helps hide a lot of the imperfections

[hunteralexbrown]

What's so interesting to me is how Attack of the Clones looks in relation to the other Prequels. Together, they feel like they're each from different stages of CGI. The Phantom Menace was groundbreaking in its scale of CGI, and while there is a lot of CGI in the film, plenty of practical effects were still there because they just couldn't do everything with computers like they could later. By the time Revenge of the Sith came out, the technology was mature enough to look great in every shot, and could be used consistently throughout the film. Attack of the Clones, on the other hand, feels like the awkward stage between them. There's a sense of empowerment that CGI can do anything, but they don't have the technology or manpower to do it all to the level of success they would hope, so it's stuck looking really artificial and not very impressive.

[ancientstraits]

It's unbelievable that the movie cameras they were using had less resolution than 1080p! I know the movie came out in 2002, but it still feels so weird that the camera would be so low-resolution for such a high-budget movie.

[Foggen]

I think the video-gamest shot in Attack of the Clones is when Yoda draws his lightsaber. There's a dramatic, swooping, mathematically perfect camera move that completely betrays the unreality of the moment while also exposing the flatness of the floor. It's the opposite of the modern style, which is to "shoot " CG moments as if there are physical cameras, treating them as real subjects.

[ldeming]

As a VFX Supervisor myself, this is a very good breakdown

[ProjectHeadCanon]

That detail about Anakin's fidgeting was pretty neat. I wonder if that was a deliberate choice by someone or if it's just an accident that worked out well.

[oggsyunwin]

The lack of real clone troopers is almost the biggest problem i would say. Outlandish creatures and worlds, there we can suspend or disbelief. The armor that we know what it's supposed to look like we can't

[maxvelichkin]

I am a 3D artist and an AR/VR developer, I worked as a VFX compositor. What a wonderful video! Exceptional breakdown quality.

[Groucho]

On the full HD edition of revenge of the sith, during the elevator scene at Grievou's ship, Obi-Wan's hair reflects the green screen

[Zooumberg]

Sorry but I have to vehemently disagree that Watto was digital. It was quite clearly my mother-in-law.

[LobsterOfDeath]

As a digital compositor, I noticed this video in my recommendation and thought "Hey, what can it possibly say that is new to me?", but I love Star Wars so I watched it.
And by God, I was wrong. This video is amazing, watched it breathlessly.
Bonus points for mentioning that every delay by every other departments makes our work harder.

[francesco]

Therapist: Ripped Yoda isn't real, he can't hurt you.
Ripped Yoda: 9:09

One item you missed wrt people thinking the movie "looks like a videogame" is that the screenplay *feels* like a videogame. Walking around while getting a lore dump, platform jumping, on-rail driving level, mandatory arena fight and so on. When people see the action as videogamey, it's easy to see the visuals as videogamey.

[nematic]

Now this is what I love to watch Youtube for. A well versed professional explaining details that regular people do not know. Great video.