Worst SFX No.5: Star Wars (1977/97)

Martin Anderson

Published on Jan 6, 2009

This much you knew. The original scene featured a portly actor in costume as Jabba the Hut, harassing Harrison Ford over his debts. George Lucas had in mind that he would superimpose effects footage onto the scene, but seems to have shot it without providing any contingency for doing so (no blue-screen, excessive camera movement, etc). Unhappy to leave the mighty Jabba so humble in appearance, Lucas wisely excised the scene. In 2004 he less wisely ordered ILM to insert the Jabba character from 1983's Return Of The Jedi into the scene, for the cinematic re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy. CGI Jabba was over-animated, poorly textured and looked hardly anything like the despot from Jedi. So Lucas had another go for the 2005 re-release, and this attempt raised the standard from atrocious to just plain awful. The necessity of having Ford climb over Jabba's (then) non-existent tail led to an SFX hack that remains of YouTube quality. Leave it out, George…