Proof That The Yoda Puppet Is Being Erased From History
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George Lucas made a lot of mistakes with the Star Wars prequels, but here’s one of the biggest: Ditching the Yoda Puppet. In The Phantom Menace, despite all the CGI overuse everywhere else in that movie, he stuck with having Yoda as a puppet, performed by a Muppeteer. The Muppet used there wasn’t as good as the one used in the original trilogy (it wasn’t even made out of the same material) but at least the character seemed mostly like the same warm, wise, organic creature we’d always known and loved. Then for subsequent prequels, no doubt largely so he could have him do ridiculous kung fu in Attack of the Clones, Lucas replaced the puppet with a far more cold, sterile, CGI character.
At least we have the real deal in The Phantom Menace, right? Not anymore.
Lucas is working on re-releasing all the Star Wars movies in 3D, starting with The Phantom Menace in 2012. For the re-release he’s digitally removing the Yoda puppet and replacing him with that sterile CGI Yoda from the other films. Here’s the evidence, in the form of a Russian Phantom Menace re-release poster featuring the newly CGI’d Yoda…
Even he doesn’t seem very happy about this state of affairs. Yoda just isn’t as cool when he’s not actually standing there.
The Phantom Menace Yoda was already converted to CGI for the Blu-ray release of the movie, so this was something we all saw coming. Lucas has a habit of changing his work and then preventing people from seeing it in its original form, so look at this as confirmation that going forward the CGI Yoda will be the only version of Yoda available. The real question here is… will he do the same thing to the original trilogy when that’s finally re-released in 3D? With Lucas, you never know.
Here’s a comparison between the two Yodas, using the Blu-ray redo as a basis…
