Effects ineffective. (letters).(Letter to the Editor)

I wanted to add my thoughts to the Star Wars effects survey you cited in "Far-Reaching Effects" on pg. 6 of the July 2002 issue.

Readers chose Yoda as the best digital character "because he gains a greater range and subtlety of expression yet retains his original puppet-like appearance." Maybe you all should see a doctor. Yoda looked good, but compared to the puppet, there was no charm, no heart--just digital coldness. I wasn't seeing Yoda on screen--I was seeing some computer-generated thing whose face was too animated to be Yoda's. It was no fun. Using a digital version of him during the fight scene at the end of the movie would have been enough.

You also refer to the "tall, doe-eyed Kaminoan cloners on the water planet, Kamino, because of their graceful movements and realistic clothing simulations." Those things looked like computer-generated imagery right from the start. They moved smoothly, agreed, but they looked just horrible.

One of the answers to your question, "Which were the most innovative action scenes?" was the fight between Obi-Wan and the bounty hunter Jango Fett on the planet Kamino. That fight would have been effective if the scene didn't feel as if it had been cut from 10 minutes down to 5. In fact, the cutting and the photography for that scene were so bad, it was hard to know where the characters were at any given moment.

Then you asked "Which ...