Re: Star Wars Episode VII
I have a theory as to why we all loved the original design of say... Vader in the OT... The wonkiness gave it a human element that our eyes couldn't "see" but we just accepted it as real, symmetrical, and furthermore all black....
No human face is 100% symetrical.
The EP3 Vader looked like a toy helmet... The OT felt alive.
You and no one outside of the prop dept had any idea that the faces of TK's, Vader, and Boba were lopsided... Not in the 70's-early 80's anyway !!!
Even now... Do you watch the OT and say " Vaders helmet looks HORRIBLE!"
I bet none of you do.
The artists breathed life into these characters.
A perfect CAD version sucks that life out.
I grew up in art and music.
Music is the same way.
Hendrix or Zeppelin with their "sloppy" borderline live recordings will always have more heart and soul than protools'd out autotuned ANYTHING of today!
Notice people are buying records again? Well the same thing is happening with SOME bands using analog etc.
Bottom line: I own 2 cast from screen used Vader helmets and 5 trooper lids and a set of full armor.
I can see that they are "off " in person, but on screen they just look more "right".
The exeption would be that all the troop helmets were assembled differently so they do stand out from one another.
But I still hold to my belief that part of what made the OT and broke the PT was the sanatization of all the designs.
Again, just IMHO.
And what's wrong with that? The only reason that the helmets are wonky and asymmetrical is because they were hand made before they CAD and other computer methods of design and manufacturing, in other words, they were the way they were because of limitations in technology and not by intentional design. You really think that a high-tech society like what we see in Star Wars would actually be hand carving and casting/vacforming their Stormtrooper's helmets? No, they'd be using their equivalent of CAD and cranking them out in factory so that everything would uniform, even, and symmetrical.