R2D2 (Kenny Baker) Replaced with CGI for Ep2

BirdTor writes: "Kenny Baker, the diminutive actor who played R2D2 in all of the Star Wars up until now has been dumped. George Lucas plans to use a computer-generated R2D2 instead. I don't know, there's just something charming about the Kenny-driven R2D2 bumbling along that I doubt the new 3D-generated R2D2 will be able to capture."

Comments

Artoo - and Star Wars - you will be missed.

[Brand X]

George Lucas doesn't get it anymore. The charm of the original movies that made him so successful is more than special effects. It's the details like the way Artoo and Threepio moved... perfect comedy of motion, even if accidental... and the worn, old junkheap look of the Falcon. Those Naboo fighters looked like pre-fab toys. No battle-scarred X-wing fighters for these movies, no sir. The bad acting, the good acting, the classic heroic fantasy in a new fantasy world with robots and starships - that was the magic. It's gone now...

It's a new generation, and 20 years later, the new star wars isn't star wars... it's the Matrix trilogy. (Yes, there are two sequels already in the works.)

Just some random comments

[KaiShin]

It looks like there's going to be a lot of apprehension surrounding the next film. The botching of certain elements in Episode 1, and now this. I don't think the digitization of R2 will have that much of an effect on the character. I'm sure they're working hard to recreate the bobbles and bleeps of the R2 we know and love. My only concern is that due to the nature of today's CGI R2 might come out shiny and rendered looking. There's still something to be said for hand made models and costumes when it comes to realism.

I don't think its fair to compare Jar Jar and R2. Jar Jar was a big mistake, as anyone with half a brain knows. R2 was beloved because he A) didn't speak some kind of horrible broken english, B) was able to convey huge amount of emotion despite speaking in bleeps and bloops, something they never got right with Jar Jar, and C) was one half of a comedic duo. C3P0 was a major part of making the R2 character loveable, and with Jar Jar that other half was missing, or was filled in by whatever character happened to be in the scene at the time. These are things that shouldn't be lost in the CGI transformation of R2, unless they manadge to mess it up completely. I'm sure that if they destroy R2, the public will never forgive Lucas :P

Slashdot has been duped!

[SpookComix]

The truth, everyone, is that Kenny Baker is dead. He never survived the fall.

--SpookComix

It's pretty obvious why this happened

[Dirtside]

Around when Episode I came out, I read time and again how much of a nightmare it was to deal with the several R2 robot models on the set. For one thing, each one weighed somewhere around a hundred pounds, and more than once a model fell on someone and injured them. Also, they had to have several different models; one for closeups where R2 does something (like extend a claw), one for moving around (and of course, it couldn't go down stairs, or over bumps in the floor).

And I can honestly say that in the dozen-odd times I've watched Episode I, I never once thought, "Hey, there's Kenny Baker." It was always, "Hey, there's R2-D2." I'm sorry Kenny didn't get to work on Episode II (Oh my god! They fired Kenny! You bastards!), but, well... that's progress.

What was that?.....

[zombieking]

"George Lucas always told me that R2D2 really came alive when I was inside him."

What the heck is this guy really trying to tell us? And I thought this was a kid's site.... [Rimshot]

Relevant Mark Hamill Quote:

[jonathansen]

"I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George (Lucas) would do it."
-- Mark Hamill (The guy who played Luke Skywalker)
--

Ridley Scott had an interesting point of view..

[mav[LAG]]

..on Alien. On the 20th Anniversary edition DVD, he says a couple of times (in the director's commentary audio track) that he prefers to do something physically rather than using CGI.

I believe the quote is: "If you can do it physically then do it rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on computer graphics." Examples are the egg "waking up", all the sets, the shuddering during takeoff and landing, the outside shots of the derelict, Ash's death and of course the Alien itself.

Now Alien was made at a time when computer generated gfx were at the stone-knives and bearskins stage, but somehow it's aged extraordinarily well. It just has a kind of raw lifelike quality to it that you just didn't get in EP1 - you could feel the effort that went into the acting and directing.

Ironically enough, many people's favourite sequence in the Matrix is the lobby shootout - which hardly features any CGI at all (except the wire removal).

Get a grip George - work on your casting and story some more and you might have a film people like.