How ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace’ paved the way for digital cinema 

By George Hewitt

The 90’s marked the beginning of a new era for cinema, movies such as Edward Scissorhands (1994), Jurassic Park (1993) and Terminator 2 (1991) ushered in a wave of digital apparatus in film-making. This new digital wave moved cinema away from its traditional analogue technologies and towards the sorts of films we are used to consuming today, such as Avengers: Endgame (2019) or Avatar (2009). 

Traditional analogue cinema consisted of Film Cameras that required developing, 35mm projectors, two channel audio signals, and physically cutting the film to edit them. All of these apparatuses require an impression onto a physical medium, unlike digital technologies that are produced by algorithms and numerical manipulation, such as computer animation, Non-Linear Editing systems and digital cameras.

In 1999, George Lucas’ ‘The Phantom Menace’ released in cinemas, introducing the world to the first entirely motion captured CG character, Jar Jar Binks. This was a huge moment in relation to cinema’s entry into the digital sphere, as for the first time the world was seeing a character built entirely through digital effects. Played by Ahmed Best in a mo-cap suit, acting alongside the other performers and partly in separate motion capture sessions, this advancement of digital technology onto film paved the way for some of our favourite CG characters of the 21^st century, such as Gollum, Caesar the Ape and King Kong. All of these characters appearing on screen using the same digital apparatus as Mr Binks in 1999.

However, the common criticism of Digital Cinema by the likes of Bazin, is the riddance of indexicality in cinema as a result of the introduction of digital technologies. Meaning that modern films lack the realism of ‘pre digital cinema’ as there is no physical trace of the camera or apparatus used to create the audiovisual experience of analogue cinema.