The more I hear about TCW Season 7, the more inclined I am to ignore it, and banish it from my mutated head-canon of TCW 1-6, Gennedy Wars, and the Clone Wars Multimedia project.
Which is even easier to do given all the alterations Season 7 has gone under Disney/Filoni, rendering it the only season of the show that was made without Lucas' supervision, and therefore illegitimate.
Well, I suppose this is why I can't be considered a good authority when it comes to what looks superior in a film, because what I look for in CGI and special effects in general isn't how "real" it looks. The realness of practical effects or CGI, and the way people interact with it, doesn't do a whole lot for me specifically, because to me I know it's all fake anyway. I know some people are caught up on what looks real to them and how actors interacting with something enhances that immersion, but that was never how my brain worked. Be it the shittiest or most dated CGI, or the most pristine puppetry or animatronics, the thing I care about most is what design either of those effects are trying to convey.
The CGI in the Prequels looks fuzzy, badly-composited, and poorly-implemented throughout several instances, but I was too enamored with the designs being conveyed through those effects to care. By contrast, modern films like the ST has some of the most realistic contemporary CGI to date, but that doesn't mean shit to someone like me when the design work is so bland and forgettable. I'm never going to remember any of the recycled, generic ship types or bland alien designs or static planetary locations in the ST, no matter how "real" they look. But the ships, planets and aliens of the PT? Those designs will stay with me forever. Even the poorly-conveyed CGI sequences that people poke holes at, like the badly-composited aliens in the Pod Race or the green screen environments like the Jedi Temple or Utapau, I'm too busy marveling at how creative all of the designs are. One of my favorite scenes in all of Star Wars is the Beast Arena Scene on Geonosis....none of it looks real or convincing in the slightest, and yet the monster designs and landscape are like something straight out of John Carter: Warlord Of Mars, and make me gush over it regardless.
When it comes to Yoda, his design is the same whether in CG or Puppet form. As stated, I care more about the design being conveyed than how real it looks. And while PT Yoda doesn't look more real, that version stays with me because of the kind of expressions that are conveyed through his model, dated as it may be.
I guess it all just comes down to the fact that I have a larger affinity for the artistic design of film than the technical aspects that allow for realism. It's one of the reasons I gravitate more towards animation than live-action film...and the PT looks wholly unrealistic, and like one big live-action cartoon. One that hasn't aged well in the technical sense at all, but like all the dated cartoons I love, convey designs and visuals that stay with me long past their expiration date.
I think you might've misinterpreted what I meant by "I don't know if you could pull those [expressions] off with the limited range of the Puppet Yoda". I didn't mean that a puppet couldn't pull off the same dynamic range of expressions. Far from it.
The 1990 TMNT Movie showcased animatronic puppet faces that were capable of a wealth of expressions, that still look fluid and varied today. Other films have showcased similar effects as well. It is certainly doable with puppetry. What I'm saying is that the puppet used for Yoda in ESB and ROTJ didn't have that kind of expressive range. His emotional reactions were kind of limited to widening his eyes or clamping his mouth into a disapproving scowl, which is fine, but the rest of his face doesn't really change, and makes him look a bit static. Puppet Yoda is still a nice piece of puppetry, but I think a better puppet could've conveyed a wider ranger of expressions....which we unfortunately, never got. We did get those with CG Yoda, not because those expressions were only possible in CG, but because we never saw a truly advanced puppet on the same level of something like TMNT, for example. Or any of the puppet effects on display at the conventions you mentioned.
One would hope that a modern attempt at Puppet Yoda would be more expressive than the one we got in the 80's, but the TLJ one looked just as static and limited as the original. They could've easily put the money into making the most dynamic and emotive Puppet Yoda to date, but Rian Johnson funneled all of that money into shit like the lactating alien manatee, and the Casino Planet.
I'm all for Yoda using a lightsaber---but that's mostly because it fits the "unassuming but secretly lethal martial arts master" archetype that I enjoy in other fiction, like Nicotine Caffeine in the Samurai Shodown games or Master Hozoin from Vagabond. It never seemed shlocky or goofy to me, except when he made those weird noises during the Dooku fight. In fact, it made logical sense to me that someone as small as Yoda would make up for his small height and short reach with his blade by performing high leaps. It's no different than Kazdan Paratus using his droid harness to make up for the same time of physical setbacks in The Force Unleashed (one of the only things I liked about that game).
The only thing I didn't like were those weird growling noises Yoda made during the Dooku fight. Glad that George had the good sense to remove that from all future incidents of Yoda fighting in ROTS and TCW.
