Why Does the Podracing Scene Still Look So Realistic After 20+ Years? 

Thank you for watching! - And for sure, this scene needs to get much more love than it gets!

@@CGWHY Your other videos are also really great too and I'll make sure to help spread them!

@@JihadiFemboy Thank you very much! I checked out your video earlier - I very much enjoyed it 😁

@@CGWHY Thx! There's gonna be another for AOTC once I finish the analysis for it too. After that, there'll be one for each of the OG 6

Fantastic, well I've subbed so I'll see it when its out 👍

this

The prequels still have some of my favorite sound design of all time.

Honestly Ben Burtt at his peak. And that's saying a LOT.

Sebulba's pod...such a cool sound.

The sound design of the entire prequel trilogy was incredible. Nothing in the SW universe since has come close in this aspect.

My dad built a custom home theater system and he loves to play the podrace scene to show off the sound system

@@zachary4670 lol that's exactly what I did when I built my dad's home sound system

Sound design in this movie is top notch but this scene especially showcases so much creativity while being very immersive.

The sound is just about the best thing in an otherwise rotten movie.

@@jeremysmetana8583 speak for yourself, those of us who were little kids when this came out grew up loving this movie

Not really. It's impressive, sure, but there's scenes from movies which are now closer to 50 years old and look just as good.

​@@blakesby both can be true my guy, this scene is still objectively incredible today

@@DarraghM1 okay, true. It holds up, but there's also movies double its age with half the tech advances in CG, and they stand up just as well. But credit where due, the podrace is still visually fantastic, and certainly something taken for granted with the best of 'em.

@@blakesby like I said, both things can be true. But the video is about this particular scene, so let us appreciate it for what it is.

​@Blake Canham-Bennett what movies? Not being cynical. I'm actually curious and wanna see them

Yea - it's a real shame 😢 - But thanks for watching!!

Because The Matrix came out the same year and actually revolutionized CGI and action movies

But it looks bad

Groundbreaking was Terminator 2. This kind of stuff was already in so many 3d animated shorts. So no it was not new at all. Maybe on the scale of 2hour movie. One of first, but such fx and animations was realy not new. Also. Its not about Cg. But about the story. Wich is less good than first 3 films. And way too childish.

Good vfx done bad is still bad imo

you goddam right, star wars is a gem in terms of sound design even if some movies are crap

I personally love the sound of Anakin's.

I would say the same but I can't. NOTHING can compete with the seismic charges for me. Too good

@@officialmonarchmusic Jango’s blaster is up there for me

@@FrackaLacka You might be right. Basically everything in Jango’s arsenal has PERFECT sound design

Absolutely! I forget the name of it, but I had this weird handheld steering wheel controller with a 'throttle/brake trigger' and buttons on top. This thing was invented to Podrace. because the travel between locks on the wheel was so short, you could pull off amazing maneuvers not possible on any normal control scheme. Executing movie-quality close calls through the arches are some of my best gaming memories.

In all seriousness when it comes to the arcade style racing genre of videogames it's one of the ALL TIME greats. It played so well. Incredible track design. So amazingly addictive and replay value off the charts. I would include it on my arcade racer Mount Rushmore right next to Burn Out Paradise F-Zero X and Hydro Thunder.

It did it’s on Nintendo switch.

@@wetteryan for me it's SW racer, Rollcage and Collin McRae 2 :)

@@SpikedCollar666 That's a rerelease, not a remake It also got a rerelease on Steam, based on the original PC version, with the only changes being the removal of SecuROM and a fix for a fatal error the original PC version had on modern systems. There was also one and a half sequels: One for PS2 (Racer Revenge) and a Podracing subgame in Kinect Star Wars. Unfortunately I don't think we'll get a proper _official_ remake any time soon. Not until Disney gets their heads out of their asses in regards to the prequels. But there is someone making a fan remake of the game in UE4.

I agree, the sound design is incredible. They do bring the music in for that last lap, but I think to your point, that’s just more emphasis of the INCREDIBLE sound design of that scene. Especially if you see the extended version of that race which was on the DVDs compared to the theatrical cut (and I’m assuming on the streamable versions of that film). The patience to NOT score it for the majority was a really smart choice. Not sure if that was John Williams or Lucas or whoever who made that decision, but it was very smart

I think the music in the last lap makes it even better.

@@leeham6230 oh for sure

Makes it easier to overlay "Gas Gas Gas" for that authentic racing feel... XD

Same. I watched The Phantom Menace for the first time about 2 years ago, and hearing all the bad comments about the film, was very fearful of disliking it. But instead I found a fun action movie, with good pacing and very uplifting atmosphere.

This is one of the best comments about episode 1 that I've seen in a while. I'm getting tired of the Phantom Menace hate. The hatred seems to me to be just a trend and stupid sheep without an opinion, they repeat this because it is said everywhere. I personally consider episode 1 to be the best film of the entire trilogy. Much more intelligent than both subsequent episodes. First of all, there are much better effects here. Mainly also because there are a lot of practical effects used here and for example droids that look better and more natural than those in episode 2 which had bad effects just like the clone army. I remember when I saw episode 2 in the cinema and I was disappointed. The best scenes were the ones with Jango. that was the end of it. I was absolutely disappointed with the final fight. Darth maul set the bar very high and this is the best fight in the Star Wars universe. The Episode 3 fight was just a precombined dance where they didn't even try to kill each other. They were just competing to see who could put on a better show with a lightsaber. Episode 1 builds the atmosphere brilliantly. Darth sidious here is the coolest in all Star Wars movies. Just say wipe them out, all of them and we know right away that he is not playing. Jake Lloyd plays Anakin brilliantly and is very natural. I don't understand what the fans were expecting. Will it be some kind of brutal maniac? He is a normal boy who tries to help and that is why his rebirth is so tragic. That's why Episode 3 disappointed me so much. I have never seen a more awkward and faster rebirth. I was expecting something more sophisticated and not that Anakin kisses Padme, says how everything will be fine. And in a few hours he will kill the young padawans like nothing. Only because the dark side suddenly engulfed him. Done. Sidious kills two Jedi masters in the most embarrassing fight. Most scenes in ep. 3 are so poorly and amateurishly filmed. Then in ep. 1 is all very cool. The race, the final fight, it's enough only when Darth Maul arrives on Tatooine and we all know that this is a big threat. I like the political background that gives it a touch of realism. The last 2 episodes seem like fairy tales to me, but episode 1 seems more mature

The problem with the phantom menace are the characters being very underdeveloped. What made the original trilogy special is the character development, fortunately, Lucas realized it's mistake and Revenge of The Sith is good, and Attack of The Clones was destroyed on the editing room because of Hollywood nonsense.

Not to mention the incredible soundtrack!

Excitement doesn't come from action scenes. If lightsabers and explosions are all that qualify as exciting to you, then i don't know what to tell you. The end lightsaber duel in TPM was boring. Little heart, little feeling of strife. It was all over-choreographed, and just looked like a very repetitive dance. Excitement comes from the stakes of the characters, and the feeling of struggle (not to mention an appreciation of actual stunt work, as done in pre-CGI based movies.). It's not about how much shit you throw on the screen, and how fast it moves. Conversely, the lightsaber duel in Empire Strikes Back was far less kinetic and "actiony" but was WAY more exciting, because there were stakes. You FELT each lightsaber blow. You FELT Vader's power. You FELT Luke's fear and anguish at the end of the fight. There was meaning to it, and it was delivered on film so well. Phantom Menace was just fancy footwork, with a really stupid end to Darth Maul, a villain with ZERO character and personality. Why would i care about three completely wooden and underdeveloped characters? The movie did nothing to make me like any of them.

Condolences

George said it was a moovie for kids, no shame on liking it

@@canobenitez Meesa Jar Jar Binks!

@@FrackaLacka Rip

it's in theaters again now, watched it last night

Yea it's genuinely crazy! I'm glad people appreciate the Prequels more nowadays. Also what's even cooler (in regards to video games) is that they are nowadays made using photogrammetry too. - just look a Geonosis from Battlefront 2. That entire map is pretty much completely photoscanned. Super weird circle to see the tech from a 1999 movie into modern day video games.

Its called a light map for games. Ahh, ancient methods of cgi. Also, for as much J.J.Abrams wanted to get rid of the Prequels by emulating the orignal trilogy as much as possible-from the retro camera itself to casting relative unkowns; his movie had far more greater vfx shots than the prequels. Almost by a thousand more. While the prequels did use revolutionary technology, most were the classic compositing of live action plates (and also entire 3d scenes) while J.J.Abrams team would start from sratch digitally with a clean plate.

Pre-rendering shadows of static objects is still done quite regularly in many games.

prerendering shadows (known as baking) is still the norm in video games, there are rarely games that dont use this feature at least partially, since it is a great optimisation tool and is fairly easy to implement in most game engines. also the non static objects dont usually have path traced shadows like you would see in visual effects (so they dont have real life shadows), they use close approximations, since path tracing is very expensive on computing power even lumen (new unreal engine 5 lighting technique) which comes pretty close to real lighting simulation is still not able to do what rendering engines today can do (they obviously have way longer to render a single frame) also it is still quite heavy

ILM and George Lucas literally pioneered this stuff - and sound editing too. They might be flawed films, but they are technically proficient.

I wanna seee

In college I ate another guy's barf to join a fraternity

because TPM was filmed on real film and Ep2/3 was shot purely digitally

2 and 3 also took place in sterile and smooth environments, but I get what you mean

Gritty. Coarse. Kind of like sand....

@@Kanglar I don't like sand. It's gritty, and coarse, and it's all digital.

Episode 2 and 3 had gritty too, 🤨

Wow - that's actually crazy to hear! I had no idea that happened, but it makes perfect sense tbh

It has nothing to do with expectations, the prequels are just worse movies in almost every aspect. I loved The Phantom Menace as a kid, but saw how bad it is when I grew up. I never fell out of love with the originals, even though I also realized their flaws. I watched Attack of the Clones at age 12 and was already bored out of my mind. Perhaps Russians simply have no taste.

@@ImVeryOriginal or we have better voices =) Rewatched both trilogies not long ago - yup, same, PT is amazingly good and OT is too old today, but okayish. I don't disagree about flaws, but I enjoy the worldbuilding and the overall story in PT way more. Maybe hits close to home, if you know what I mean.

​@@CGWHY '-cene Still look So Realistic After 20+ Yea-'. meanwhile, elsewhere. (03. some example) '2035+/2048-2207+ era Humankind, from the wipeout universe and world/franchise: ". . . ." [Shrugs]'.

​@@ImVeryOriginal (anyways, back to this setting's here....). '-though I also realized their flaws.-'. huh. some wise choice of words there by the way.

Everytime that Jar Jar showed up on the Naboo battle is like the Ewoks on Return of The Jedi ruining the climax between Vader and Luke.

I will say that of all of the effects from TPM, Jar-Jar and the other Gungans are the ones that aged the worst _especially_ during the Battle for Naboo due to the bright lighting. That being said, they're still not bad compared to other examples of poorly aged CGI in the movie industry.

Agree on everything you said!

If only the naboo fighters were more practical they were always too shiny for me.

I’m confused about what you’re saying? Photogrammetry is used absolutely everywhere in modern CG. If anything, technological advancements in regards to cameras and drones etc has made photogrammetry process easier and more ubiquitous than ever before.

Oh man 😆 - Dont get me started on Lightspeed skipping 😅😅

I've always loved that aspect of the race it's just soo cool watching anakin keep his cool and repair his pod during an intense race and still win despite all his disadvantages.

Kids like almost anything. The issues were evident to the adult fans and to many viewers who grew up and realized the films are pretty bad. I watched Episode I at age 9 and loved it at the time, but my perception of it changed just a couple years later. Episode II came out when I was 12 and it bored and annoyed me. I only went to see Episode III at 16 out of a begrudging sense of obligation. I grew up watching all those movies and absolutely think the originals were much better films.

Aw man I was only a baby when this came out (which is crazy to think about!) - but yea the crashes in this film look incredible, I should have put a bit about them in the video because I imagine the tech they used to calculate them was very new at that time!

@@CGWHY Those crashes were like seeing the dinosaurs walking in Jurassic Park the first time, just amazing to see.

Actually for the pod crashes they used Formula 1 crash test software

The world needs more anti-grav racers, yeah.

i never thought about that, but you're absolutely right! sincerely, a norwegian

Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975)

It isn’t really possible to convince someone to develop better taste!

This was the first film I ever walked out on. Have never regretted it. Change my mind.

My sentiments also.

Thank you for the recommendation! I'm always looking for niche 3D experiences, and that sure sounds like a good one. I hope there's a 3D Bluray somewhere in the world. 😂

My girlfriend and I have been rewatching all six movies & we were both saying the exact same thing -- that TPM's visuals hold up better. AOTC really was the weakest of the six Star Wars movies imo... but TPM is by far the most underrated

I never actually thought about it.. but I should have thought to my self wow.. how does everything look so real at certain parts for 99? Lol..

But the Phantom Menace looks very washed out with a lot of magenta for some reason.

Lol really? i can't spot it 😅 - where does it happen?

@@CGWHY A little above the middle of the scene. A much brighter rock compared to the environment pops in. Or the lighting of it suddenly gets way brighter.

@@CGWHYHave you spotted it?

Amazing find ! took me a while but I found it, definitely a pop in

@@abnorth2276 really funny observation, good eyes. it's like ps2 GTA lol

Everyone says it’s bad lol. It’s not

acting is good. I get it for the dialogue, since A New Hope, always has been a problem, lackluster character development as well.

Most Star Wars sequences throughout the franchise are sourced from other films. A lot of the X-Wing stuff was based off old war movie fighter pilot angles. Creativity is being able to take in old elements and turn them into something new. I believe the podracing scene absolutely did that. It made for an exciting and memorable sequence. The Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars movie I saw in the theater and so many aspects of this film really captured my imagination.

added nothing? so you would have fully accepted anakin flying a starfighter later in the movie without him ever sitting in a cockpit before?

Stupidest comment on this video is right here ladies and gents. Because we all know how similar the Ben Hur chariot race is to the TPM pod race…them both being races and all.

There were proper podracing lego sets. Anakin, Sebulba, another guy?

@@stormveil There were official ones but they were expensive so we just made them from the parts we had!