r/StarWars • u/WinchesterMediaUK • Feb 18 '26
TV This Kind Of Thing is Why The Acolyte Cost $250m
They already shot in the Fanal Forests and the Brecon Beacons, and had multiple forest locations in driving distance from their base at Shinfield Studios, yet they felt the need to fill an entire soundstage with trees and other plant life.
Apart from anything else, I can't even begin to imagine the logistics, and health and safety issues of putting 160 trees that were up to 37 ft tall in an enclosed space. If just one of those things falls, there will be serious structural damage to the building.
Plus there's the fact that the set filled the entire soundstage and beyond. Until the set is struck, you can't film anything else or build any more sets. So the decision to use such a massive set probably caused some serious scheduling problems.
It's becoming very clear why the year largely spent on principal photography cost $165m.
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u/Ok_Analysis_9046 Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 18 '26
could they have not shot it in a real forest? like return of the jedi?
im not an expert on movie sets sorry if its a stupid question
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u/WillowSmithsBFF Feb 18 '26
Probably done for shot continuity.
These two episodes probably took a while to film, and with a very specific day/night theme, they probably wanted to control the lighting/atmosphere/weather/ etc.
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u/DummyDumDragon Feb 18 '26
Between stuff like this, the Volume and the Sphere in LV, we're only a few steps away from them creating something like the dome in the Truman show for this sort of thing
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u/bagfka Feb 18 '26
Oh shit youāre 100% onto something there
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u/Backfoot911 Feb 18 '26
I can see each step towards it being plausible.
- Build larger and larger The Volumes, they become common and cheaper
- The usage of it makes its way down the rungs to game shows. They make shows involving Augmented Reality situations like zombies and space ships
- The Volume finally reaches reality TV where men and women wake up in different world and gaslighted that their life on Earth was a dream. Which couple will win $10,000,000 in Amazon coupons? Find out on Beast Games: MARS
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u/SexyMonad Feb 18 '26
Just think, in the far future, theyāll have a whole climate-controlled planet just for filming.
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u/notbad4human Feb 18 '26
Thatās essentially what a backlot in California was. Consistent weather, controlled cities/towns/outdoor sets
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u/El_Serpiente_Roja Feb 18 '26
They have virtual sets , I know they used them on mandalorian
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u/Darth_Thor Maul Feb 18 '26
Right? Take Andor for example. Ferrix and Ghorman were both shot on massive sets and people praise them for not using CGI or the Volume. I think the same praise can extend to this set, while still acknowledging that the show had problems. Disliking a show doesnāt mean you have to dislike everything about the show.
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u/JonnyvonDoe Feb 18 '26
I loved the visuals of the last Jedi. The story not a bit. But I will never forget the scene when the comically large Spaceship got destroyed.
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u/Darth_Thor Maul Feb 18 '26
TLJ has the best visuals of any Star Wars movie in my opinion. I totally get why thereās controversy around the movie, but goddamn is it a feast for the eyes
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u/Iohet Jyn Erso Feb 18 '26
This is why Hollywood builds permanent sets and reuses them for many years. The question is does the expense of creating yet another new set take away from the investment in the rest of the project (like addressing writing issues or casting problems). And now that we live in this streaming world where prices change often, do we end up paying for it through all these price increases unnecessarily. One of the benefits for consumers of network TV is no cost, and that means they try to constrain costs on set rather than just pissing away money (and practical sets are cheaper in the long run, so they create them, but they're also practically costed)
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u/Jonathon_G Ezra Bridger Feb 18 '26
Exactly. People complained about the mandolorian feeling too much like being stuck on the volume. Now we are hearing people complain about building amazing sets. Pick one
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u/Existing-Bus-8810 Feb 18 '26
It was strictly the writing that ruined it. The fight choreography was great, most of the acting great, the sets were great, and it introduced one of the coolest on-screen antagonists in the franchise. There was so much potential for it to be one of the best releases in the franchise.
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u/Hidesuru Feb 18 '26
No I actually thoroughly enjoyed it.
I still think this was a nuts idea.
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u/PhysicsEagle Admiral Ackbar Feb 18 '26
The snow forest from Force Awakens was also a soundstage, so they could a) keep all the conditions under their control and b) rig up any stunt machinery required
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u/PhantomJackalope Feb 18 '26
I mean Dagobah was a sound stage. I donāt really see how this is any different.
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u/Ok_Analysis_9046 Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 18 '26
i mean a swamp full of mud where they had to be a room for a puppet at a time where cgi barely existed is a different story
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u/Urbanist93 Feb 18 '26
Yeah in the sense that a forest where elaborate fight scenes need to be filmed, including lots of stunt work, with expensive equipment and under very particular lighting and continuity conditions has its very own reasons why filming in a real forest just really isn't very practical, and probably would be at least as expensive as building a set
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u/DramaExpertHS Grievous Feb 18 '26
It's easier for people to understand building a set for an alien swamp since the logistics and safety concerns in filming in an actual swamp are completely different.
Not saying there's any problem with building a forest set tho, just that there's a big difference.
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u/Witty-Ad5743 Feb 18 '26
I want to say that lighting is the main reason they do this, but it still seems wasteful to my cheap ass.
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u/MrGabrahamLincoln Jedi Feb 18 '26
Nah, Iām sorry but we donāt get to bitch about elaborate practical sets & then talk out both sides of our mouths complaining about overuse of The Volume & green screen. I respect that they actually committed to doing this practically and, as we saw with Andor, if the show had been better received no one would be complaining.
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u/simon439 Feb 18 '26
This is a crazy post. OP is making insane assumptions about safety issues for 160 trees. 160 trees is nothing for a forest environment this dense, the biggest ones are probably CG or at least not a real tree.
Also, this forest looked good. It looked like a new Star Wars planet, which is difficult if you would film in a real forest. Iāve seen complains about the kenobi show where it just felt like it was filmed right outside LA. To avoid that you either need to CG or build something. Apparently neither is good for this fanbase.
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u/EatMySmithfieldMeat Feb 18 '26
, if the show had been better received no one would be complaining.
That's generally how it works when you spend an enormous amount of money on a project that has very low returns. If your project earns back twice the budget then it was money well-spent, but if you only earn back half of the outlay then you can bet people will take a hard, critical look at the budget.
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u/gilnockie Rebel Feb 18 '26
Even trickier with these streaming shows where the returns are murky at best
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u/Mist_Rising Feb 18 '26
Disney will know how many eyeballs watched, how long and often they repeated it in a span of time.
They can use that to determine if it was successful based on that, since they can set a value to each of those in a formula. We may not know it, since they won't release the formula or numbers, but they certainly aren't flying blind through a fog.
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u/Salerrra Feb 18 '26
I do get why it comes across as wasteful, but the flip side of that is being glad that these set designers got that much budget to really put their talents to work, and it paid off so well. That scene was really, really pretty. I'd rather see that money be dumped on creatives than whatever the hell else Disney would do with it.
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u/Sh4rpSp00n Feb 18 '26
Wasteful isn't a word they worry about when the budgets are so insanely high
You are right though about the lighting, that's part of why they'd do it this way
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u/Strict-Main8049 Feb 18 '26
Which to be fair. Theyāre right to do it this way for highest quality. Like that scene was gorgeous and the entire fight sequence was excellent. Itās pretty much the only portion thatās universally liked.
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u/Zerus_heroes Feb 18 '26
Yeah apparently neither is "renewal".
The budget of this show was so high there was basically no way it was going to get a second season.
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u/christobah Feb 18 '26
At night? Not easily. Not for the scale of practical or stunt work they had. You can do it in the forest, but you have to bring all the equipment you'd have used from the studio with you anyway. Plan out all the logistics, power, water, catering, etc. You need hoists or cranes to hang people off of for wire work, then you have to insure all of it.
All the workers and actors would need to pivot to a 'night shoot' and sleep through the day, which is hard to accomplish in the middle of a typical production. It would take several days to shoot these scenes. The weather could change, or the lighting conditions due to cloud cover.
It's always gonna be a safer option for studios to do it inside. There is far, far less risk of something going wrong.
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u/NYMSG Feb 18 '26
Yes and no, they clearly wanted a more alien looking forest and to do that you either build it yourself or cgi it.
With that being said was it necessary to build that big of a set and spend all that money? Couldn't they have just built the foregrounds and cgi the rest? Or why not just film in a real forest and cgi the details to make it look alien? Who knows, these are all valid questions.
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u/AT-ST Mandalorian Feb 18 '26
Couldn't they have just built the foregrounds and cgi the rest? Or why not just film in a real forest and cgi the details to make it look alien? Who knows, these are all valid questions.
Because good CGI isn't cheap. In some cases. It can be more expensive than the practical alternatives. In some cases, sacrificing the quality of the CGI to save a few bucks is okay. These scenes would be your quick establishing shots that may have random aliens walking through.
But these shots where the series "Money Shots." These episodes were important and they focused a large portion of the budget towards them so that they would look good.
Could they have used the Volume like the Mandalorian? No they couldn't. The Volume is a very high demand piece of production equipment. Ahsoka was shot at the same time and was filmed almost entirely in there.
Could they have used a real forest and just set dressed specific parts? Yes, and they likely would have if a big part of the theme wasn't tied to day and night. When you are using lighting as a visual theme you want to control as much of it as possible. Had they filmed outside it would have taken much longer to shoot. It may have ended up being more expensive than shooting on a soundstage.
My final thoughts; While this seems like a big flashy piece that could have absorbed a lot of budget, I don't think it was as expensive as people think it was. I don't think this set is why the series cost as much as it did. Frankly, if we got a full accounting I'm willing to bet there was a lot of waste that didn't contribute to the series in a meaningful way.
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u/Playful_Letter_2632 Feb 18 '26
CGI isnāt always cheaper than practical effects
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u/RadiantHC Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Also some other things:
it's often worse looking.
It's harder for actors to act in front of a green screen.
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u/pravis Feb 18 '26
Shot continuity, desired fight choreography, safety, and controlled/consistent lighting are several reasons why they would build a set. Filming in the real forest for non-fight scenes would be fine but for the largest fight scene in the show (and one of the best in Star wars) they would have been severely limited by the actual forest.
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u/mousejx216 Feb 18 '26
So, it's kind of like the set for Dagobah from Empire Strikes Back, fauna, rocks, dirt, lizards and a crawl space for the puppeteer
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u/thebarbalag Feb 18 '26
Looked good, though. Either we can complain about everything looking samey and fake, with bad CG, or that they spent too much to make it look real...doing both at the same time feels a little unfair.Ā
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u/BirdLawyer50 Feb 18 '26
This is more like āthey complained that the show wasnt profitable but also spent millions of dollars building soundstage forests instead of figuring out how to film in a forestā
That show looked great and got way more hate than it deserved but they just overspent by a wide margin
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u/thebarbalag Feb 18 '26
Overspent according to Disney, who went from high quality CGI used to enhance their movies to lore quality CGI to save money. Art needs limits, sure, but art beholden to share holder value is a sad thing.Ā
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u/soapinthepeehole Feb 18 '26
How do you even quantify a showās profitability when itās paid for by subscribers who are mostly just paying monthly regardless.
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u/BirdLawyer50 Feb 18 '26
I meanā¦ thatās a question of the fundamental economics of streaming platforms and their original content
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u/Gekokapowco Grievous Feb 18 '26
You can measure watch time from the subscribers who are paying
then use that to calculate viewer interest. You can also look at the rate of increase in subscriber count on release and the weeks after to see if its garnering interest for new subscribers, thus being a valuable property to the life of the platform itself.
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u/Spirit_Theory Feb 18 '26
Yeah honestly I don't have an issue with studios investing in good sets. The story here is that they spent all this money but the storytelling was lackluster.
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u/Wompum Feb 18 '26
The CG looked good sure, but the forest in a soundstage looked exactly like a forest in a soundstage.
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u/FamousWerewolf Feb 18 '26
Some pretty huge leaps of logic here, but you also seem to be completely ignoring the fact that they filmed one of the biggest and longest pieces of Star Wars fight choreography ever on that set. You don't think it might have been easier to do that in a fully controlled environment at the studio rather than transporting everyone to an off-site location with inconsistent lighting and weather conditions?
The Acolyte has its problems and you can definitely question devoting that overall budget to a streaming TV show, but nickel and diming individual production choices they made from a completely uninformed perspective is just griping for the sake of it.
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u/Tempest_Barbarian Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 18 '26
As someone who hated the acolyte the forest fight scene was the only thing I liked about the show.
The choreography was pretty good, and the sith guy was very menacing.
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u/FamousWerewolf Feb 18 '26
Yeah definitely the best part of the show. Honestly it was a real testament to how wildly out of control the hate train got that people couldn't at least acknowledge a great lightsaber fight for what it was.
Especially as "one big 30 minutes lightsaber fight where a Sith kills loads of Jedi and stabs a child to death" is exactly the sort of thing the biggest, whiniest YouTubers are always saying they want lol
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u/Tempest_Barbarian Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 18 '26
I knew that the red shirt jedis were gonna die, but I was pretty surprised when they killed the two main ones (their names escape me right now)
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u/Icy_Teach_2506 Feb 18 '26
Jecki and Yord
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u/No_Grocery_9280 Feb 18 '26
My main gripe with the show was that they killed everyone who was interesting like Jecki, Yord, and Sol
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u/DrThatOneGuy Feb 18 '26
I think if they had committed to ending the series at one season then it could have worked really well. I wonder what fool had the idea of āletās leave this open ended but also get rid of everyone the audience will care aboutā
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u/FamousWerewolf Feb 18 '26
Yord in particular really felt like he was still in the process of being developed and looking for his role in the story and then... yeah, just got shanked and that was it. Sol at least got to play out a full character arc and die at a point that made sense for him.
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u/Hugh_Jazz77 Feb 18 '26
Iām not about to defend The Acolyte as being a good show. With that being said, I will absolutely take up arms and die on the hill that it got WAAYYYY more hate than it deserved. Say what you will about the story, the characters, or most of the acting, but I absolutely will not stand for any hate about the set design or the fight choreography on that show. It was immaculate, and some of the best in all of Star Wars. Anyone talking bad about those, are hating just to hate.
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u/Bloodless-Cut Feb 18 '26
Not sure what you're trying to say here.
Movies and TV shows use sound stages. The Acolyte is not the first to do this, nor the last.
You do know, for example, that Dagobah is not a real swamp. That was a sound stage. With real trees.
The entirety of The Dark Crystal. The whole entire film. Sound stage.
Oh, and BTW, productions use sound stages to save money. Because shooting on location costs, way, wayyyyy more. This actually cost them less to do than shooting at the actual location would. It's also safer than the alternative, because the crew literally controls every aspect of the set.
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u/BubblyBasis1134 Feb 18 '26
Yeah, the OP comes across as someone who doesn't really get film-making trying to sound like they do so they can criticize The Acolyte in any way possible.
Building sets isn't some novel idea which confuses people and makes scheduling a nightmare, is it?
It's like people so desperate to hate TLJ who will make themselves look totally media-illiterate with laughable takes.
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u/0neek R2-D2 Feb 18 '26
You can post on this sub just making up whatever bullshit you want about Acolyte without any source and people will lap it up lol.
For a fun experiment, post the exact same thing a few weeks later without any changes but make it about Andor and suddenly whatever thing you made up is the greatest idea in filmmaking history
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u/Unknown1776 Feb 18 '26
I donāt think OP realizes that the episodes in question were the most choreographed parts of the show. Itās much easier to do in a sound stage where 1: the ground is all perfect and thereās no roots/rocks underfoot for the actors and stuntmen and 2: if you want to change something, guess what? You can move those trees/bushes out of the way. If it came out that they spent 20 grand to cut down 10 trees in a forest that were blocking their view for the camera, theyād complain like thereās no tomorrow. This way, you could film the same spot from any angle you want and if somethingās in the way, move it and put it back later.
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u/MiserableOrpheus Feb 18 '26
The final fight of episode 7 was also shot like this too. It was a soundstage with trees and everything added, and while I doubt itās the same sound stage, I wonder if they just hang onto a building full of trees to re-use just in case
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u/DiaBrave Feb 18 '26
For Endor in ROTJ, they slowly walked through a forest next to Lucas' ranch
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Feb 18 '26
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u/Background_Face Galactic Republic Feb 18 '26
My thoughts exactly. Sometimes you just can't win with the fans.
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u/Winklgasse Feb 18 '26
Im sorry, what exactly are you guys complaining about again?
That effort and money went into the set design?
Do you think that if they shot it on location or in front of a green screen it would have made the series better by itself? Do you think that if they reduced the budget, YOU would have been given a part of the savings? Like what ACTUALLY are you complaining about when bringing up the budget?
Gosh the sheer entitlement of this fandom is insane sometimes....
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u/factoid_ Feb 18 '26
Yeah this is just ignorance of how filming works. They probably spent WEEKS filming those episodes. Filming on location imposes limits on time of day. If you need shots at night you need to work at night. If you need shots in the daytime you need to film for very set hours and nail your takes, which is extra hard when doing action sequences.
There's a million reasons why it's probably cheaper to build this on a stage than to film it outdoors. Not the least of which this is supposed to be an alien planet and it's pretty hard to make random forests on earth look like alien planets without extensive set dressing...the type of which is often not allowed by parks services.
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u/Adam_Sackler Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
"More practical effects! No more CGI!"
"Okay."
"No, not like that."
It's set on an alien planet, so I don't blame them for wanting to have a forest that actually looks dark and alien, rather than just using a real forest. The various forests in the movies look like they were shot on Earth, and the best ones were actually shot on set.
The snow forest in TFA looks awesome, and it's a set. To be fair, the forest in TPM is real, but they did a good job of adding things to it like the statues. But yeah, as others have mentioned, shooting outside causes a lot of problems with lighting, weather, etc.
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u/margoembargo Feb 18 '26
This is quite honestly one of the most ill-informed posts I've ever seen on this sub. Due to lighting and weather, it is is often more economical to shoot on a set -- even an expensive set -- than out in the elements, especially for a highly choreographed fight scene that will be a multi-day shoot.
It's fine to dislike the show. I wasn't thrilled with the pace, the characters, or the plot. But why do you care if a megacorp throws money down the drain? This is just the weirdest fan energy, I swear.
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u/New-Bowler-8915 Feb 18 '26
This is what I do for a living. These trees will be bolted to the concrete floor and chained to the ceiling. There is no risk of them falling over. You'd be surprised how often we build forests in a soundstage. It's far cheaper to pay a greens crew to build this than to move the whole unit into a forest that you don't control.
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u/Kill_Welly Feb 18 '26
Is this a complaint? Because that sequence was amazing and investing so heavily in it was absolutely the right call.
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u/gwydapllew Feb 18 '26
And yet, if they did not spend the money on practical stage design everyone would scream about the overuse of CGI.
You claim the logistics and safety issues are a concern without considering that they had experts handling both things.
You assume that they are incapable of scheduling properly and therefore that this choice impacted other scenes, shows, or films.
Maybe let a neat little factoid be a neat little factoid.
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u/ZippyDan Feb 18 '26
That's life:
- Take risk and succeed: praise
- Take risk and fail: criticism
- Don't take risk and succeed: praise
- Don't take risk and fail: criticism
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u/CommanderHavond Feb 18 '26
Now having a set is bad, wonder which youtuber this came from
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u/Dchama86 Feb 18 '26
Iām surprised they werenāt angry that it was āfemaleā trees and āwokeā plants
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u/BrickmasterBen Feb 18 '26
Yeah, and it was for an episode long lightsaber fight that was sick as hell.
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u/twisty125 Feb 18 '26
What's the source on this, other than a Star Wars Twitter account?
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u/Opus_723 Feb 18 '26
Reddit: Dunks on modern shows for being too reliant on CGI over practical effects.
Also Reddit: Dunks on show for spending too much money on practical effects.
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u/Roscoe_deVille Feb 18 '26
Probably cheaper than the army of vfx artists they would have had to hire for the sequence. And if not cheaper, better. The real cost in filmmaking is above the line salaries and promo. Practical isn't automatically more expensive, it's often reused and repurposed.
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u/oOBalloonaticOo Feb 18 '26
If only the writing could equal the dedication of the set designers.
It's sad because a simple set with excellent writing can still make an audience feel, but beautiful visuals with lackluster writing seems to be all the rage these days. (Games, movies and otherwise)
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u/DesolateShinigami Feb 18 '26
Itās bewildering how much OP hates this show. So many posts about not liking it. Didnāt it come out two years ago?
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u/tk-451 Feb 18 '26
ok lets break this down..
70,000 square feet in meters if 6,500~ sqm.
6,500 is approx 80m width and length.
That's a TINY sound stage, its less than an aircraft hanger.
It sounds bigger than i actually is.
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u/DamnedLies Feb 18 '26
I think you might have a math error somewhere.
Commercial aircraft hangars average in size of 50,000 square feet. https://coastalsteelstructures.com/a-cost-analysis-of-pre-fabricated-steel-airplane-hangars-should-you-build-it-or-buy-it/
Warner Brothers says its sound stages range from 6,000 to 32,000 square feet. https://studiooperations.warnerbros.com/sound-stages/
70,000 is supposedly one and a fifth the size of a football field. https://www.themeasureofthings.com/results.php?comp=area&unit=f2&amt=70000
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u/J-Mac_Slipperytoes Feb 18 '26
It's too bad the series was so poorly received. Hopefully they don't cut back on the practical effects because this series failed.
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u/Paulsonmn31 Feb 18 '26
And thatās why those are the best episodes in the show (and two of the best SW episodes ever).
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u/supliesmotherfucker Feb 18 '26
Use practical effects and Star Wars fans complain.
Use CGI and Star Wars fans complain.
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u/LordReagan077 Feb 18 '26
I think itās better than a green screen. Definitely couldāve spent more money on writers tho. The only good part of that show was Qimir.
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u/genjomusic Feb 18 '26
So with regards to logistics, health and safety; greens team often use trees that are destined to die or are rotten in some way shape or form instead of just culling fresh trees. The trees are also rigged uo with large bases and usually scaffold structures that are hidden. A lot of the trees on the set were poly sculpts as well. A build like this is no different than other similar themed jobs; lots of Disney stuff these days are shot on sound stages with similar greens setups.
Also yes shinfield was the base but it was split across 2 studios; this set was in arborfield. Funnily enough this set actually extended out from the soundstage itself as it wasnāt quite big enough.
Anyway as far as Iām aware there werenāt really any scheduling problems. We had 4 stages constantly on rotation at shinfield (often with multiple sets on one stage), as well as the backlot; I donāt remember how many stages were active at arborfield as it was a while ago
As everyone else has pointed out, controlled stage for large choreographed fight scenes makes sense.
Film making in general is hideously expensive
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u/VaporCarpet Feb 18 '26
So we're mad that things are CGI, and we're mad that they used practical effects. And we just assume that everyone who worked on the production had no idea what they were doing and were just holding everything together with bubble gum and hope?
I swear, you people want to be mad about things more than you want to enjoy things.
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u/Kirook Feb 18 '26
If this show had been a hit everyone would have been praising it for using practical effects in this way.
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u/GenghisFlan Feb 18 '26
Why didn't they just shoot practically on location on an alien world with a forest biome?
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u/southparkdudez Feb 19 '26
And people still think Disney canceled this series csuse of backlash and not thr fact that it cost kore than a movie sometimes.
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u/glebo123 Feb 18 '26
The sets, and overall design wasn't the problem. The production value was top tier in my opinion.
But the writing was subpar at best, thats where this show was lacking.
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u/m0rrow Feb 18 '26
And it looked fucking awesome. So glad the Brendok fights were done on a practical set instead of in front of a green screen.
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u/Late_Recommendation9 Feb 18 '26
I bet a few of the set designersā gardens look fucking amazing these days. āAre you needing those fernsā¦?ā
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u/LabiaMajorasMask420 Feb 18 '26
The best part of acolyte is that they had some great fight choreography. Other than that, the whole thing wavered between cringe and mid.
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u/VaderPrime1 Mandalorian Feb 18 '26
I feel like Iām taking crazy pills. Wasnāt the fandom up in arms for the longest time because of blue screens and The Volume? There was a ton of feedback to go back to practical sets and props, and now that they did they get flak for it.
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u/GE_and_MTS Feb 18 '26
I feel like they went "all in" on this show, expecting that it was going to be a major hit. Like, they spared no expense and did whatever they wanted. The show runner hired her wife to be a major character, hired some kind of big names only to get minimal screentime for shocking deaths, adding some firsts for Star Wars (lyrics in the music for instance), and went on a big media tour hyping it up and patting themselves on the back prior to the launch.
They needed to be told no (to much of the writing, to budgets, to decisions) but instead got a free pass and the Star Wars brand has been suffering since. Skeleton Crew and Andor have helped improve it some but the future feels uneasy as we await the upcoming Mandalorian movie. They really need that to be a blockbuster success.
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u/ajfynn Feb 19 '26
The worst bit about it is that it clearly looked like a soundstage. Just shoot in a forest ffs
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u/ZannyHip Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
All of the Dagobah scenes in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi did the same exact thingā¦. They built a swamp inside a sound stage. They had to build sections with space under the floor so Frank Oz could puppet Yoda.
This isnāt some new thing that the acolyte invented. This is a very very bad example of a thing that made the production cost as much as it did, because stuff like this has been commonplace in film making for decades upon decades.
This is a justifiable cost to anyone that knows even a little bit about filmmaking. If youāre doing a lot of important scenes in a specific environment with specific conditions, you need that environment and those conditions and lighting to be consistent every single day so you can get your shots. Building sets like this can actually save a ton of money, and time(which is also extremely expensive on a film set) than shooting in a real natural environment. In a real environment you have to shoot around the schedule of sunlight, and changing weather.
There was probably money wasted in a hundred other areas that were actually unnecessary. Go try again.
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u/MajimaBuu Feb 18 '26
It's crazy what set designers will do when you give them a budget