In a revelation that is a surprise to few, it turns out that The Force Awakens far surpassed The Phantom Menace for use of CGI.
It turns out that there are over 2100 VFX shots in the movie, which is 200 more than The Phantom Menace had, and it had a fully-CGI battle between Droids and Gungans in the climax. The Phantom Menace also used heavy miniature work, while The Force Awakens used no miniatures at all, surprisingly.
The best part about this is that The Force Awakens was able to make the movie SEEM like it had less CGI and VFX by using even more. Thanks to the advancements in CGI that The Phantom Menace pioneered almost seventeen years ago, ILM was able to bring a movie to life that would never have been possible otherwise. Comparing Jar Jar Binks and Maz Kanata will probably give you a very apt comparison to realize how far technology has come in the near-two decades.
Patrick Tubach and Roger Guyett, two ILM Visual Effects Supervisors, talk about this in an interview on Slashfilm. Check it out here to read the full conversation.
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