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“I have a little theory that in all of our hearts, as brilliant and as wonderful as CGI is, and I of course am an absolute fan of it, this is going to make me slightly controversial, but there’s something deceitful about it,” Scanlan said to Radio 1138 Podcast on Jedi News. “It asks you to believe that it’s real, and the better it gets, the more it wants you to believe that it’s real and forces you to believe that it’s real.
“And I think there’s just a natural – something just deep inside us that knows when something is real. It may not be that it’s as perfect or fantastical or mind-blowing as the CG version may be, but it’s something that you allow into your heart and into your soul, and it allows your imagination to make up some of the little spots.”
Scanlan also mentioned how that was reflected by the data, as audience surveys indicated that they prefer more practical effects. That’s led teams at ILM, Lucasfilm’s effects powerhouse, to find “a creative middle ground” between practical and digital effects.
“[It] is really exciting, to be able to say that we can go so far practically, then go further digitally. Or we can create a partial creature, or enhance a creature, or assist in a place, like we did for K-2SO, who ultimately is a digital character, but to work with the actor as an alien, as a creature, as a physical character as if he were just another practical effect. I think that will make a difference, and I think you’ll see that in the film, that he was K-2SO on that set, and he had the same support as any creature we made. So I think he felt part of the practical effects, but ultimately he’s digitally in the film.”
