Star wars flaws. (letters).(Letter to the Editor)

I am responding to your Web questionnaire on digital effects in the movie Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones. You ask whether the digital effects in Episode II represent a milestone in the state of the art of filmmaking--technologically, aesthetically, creatively, or otherwise. I would answer that while the effects are certainly well done and, for the most part, well integrated; if there's one big defect, it's that there are too many of them--some scenes are just way too busy.

I'd also have to list digital projection as a major, major step backward. I haven't found any statistics on the native resolution of the film or whether all theaters with digital projection are using the same resolution, but at the theater where I saw the movie, aliasing and pixelation were so severe as to actually distract from the film, even for non-computer graphics specialists in the audience.

In addition, the flame rate was completely insufficient for a number of the fast-pan scenes; it was impossible to follow a feature as it whizzed by, not because it was a blur, but because it was an incredibly jumpy blur. Since digital projection need not be bound by the old 24HZ film standard, I would have liked to have seen at least five times the frame rate in those scenes. (Whatever frame rate was used was fine for the "less whizzy" scenes, however.)

Another question the survey poses has to do with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and anachronisms in the story and with the graphics. The biggest flaw is the most pervasive one: Namely, in a technologically advanced culture where nearly every vehicle floats and half of them can attain escape velocity, energy must be essentially free--in which case mud huts, subsistence farming, and slave labor make little or no sense. In addition, ...