Frank Oz Defends George Lucas' CGI Yoda in the STAR WARS Prequel Trilogy
The CG animated Yoda that George Lucas opted to go with in the Star Wars prequel trilogy was the least of the film's problems. I actually never really had a problem with the CG version of Yoda, but when those movies came out there was a lot of discouragement among the fans due to George Lucas ditching the practical effects for lots and lots of green screen and CGI work.
During an interview with ScreeRant, Frank Oz, the voice and puppeteer of Yoda, was asked what he thought about Lucas giving the iconic character a CG makeover for the prequel films. He actually came to Lucas' defense saying:
"As a filmmaker, George needed to tell a particular story. And this story that he needed to tell was a big fight with Yoda. And he could not do that with a puppet. It was impossible. To he had the choice to either dump the story or stay with the story–which he felt strongly about–or change Yoda. So he did what any storyteller would do."
He makes a good point here, and I've gotta say, I really enjoyed watching Yoda fight! When I first saw the character in The Empire Strikes Back, I always wondered what it would have been like to see him in his heyday fighting the evil Empire, and the prequel films gave me that.
I should also remind you that Lucas originally used a Yoda puppet in The Phantom Menace and it was so awful looking that he replaced it with a CG version of the character. The CG character was definitely easier on the eyes. You can see a side-by-side comparison below:
The site also talked to puppeteer Dave Goelz, who is best known for his work with Gonzo The Great, and he weighed in on the matter and talked about the pros and cons of real puppets versus CG-created characters:
“They’re all just valid forms. There all just ways to get something onscreen that doesn’t exist in real life. And they have their pros and cons. CG can mean total freedom of the camera, total freedom of the subject, the lighting, everything can be manipulated anyway you want. And that’s a great strength. It’s hard to animate characters with realistic movement. You’ve probably noticed that. That’s why motion-capture came along. It helps to improve on what you can do as an animator to get realistic motion. But then on the other side of the coin, what we do is very crude and primitive. What the Muppets are very simple figures; they’re not sophisticated. They’re not complex, but they’re really there. It really happens. You can touch ’em. You can interview them. And you can talk to them. You can shake hands, and it’s really happening, whereas anything that’s done digitally with animation never happened. It’s not that one is better than the other. They’re equal. For a given project, you might choose one medium over another…I don’t see them as competitive. They’re just tools, different tools to do the same kind of thing."
I'm a huge fan of practical effects, and it's great when we see movies using them these days, but I have no issues with CG work either when it needs to be used because it's just getting better and better. One day we won't even be able to tell the difference.