How Many Shots In 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Are Completely CGI?

Due to the overwhelming amount of CGI visual effects used in the Star Wars prequels, and all the complaining that followed from fans hoping for more practical filmmaking, Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams have really been hitting home their use of authentic, real, practical effects for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. They've been relying heavily on that message, as seen in the recent Comic Con behind the scenes reel.

But that doesn't mean Star Wars: The Force Awakens won't have its fair share of CGI visual effects. Undoubtedly, CG was needed to extend sets, hide puppeteers, and even create entire characters. (Hopefully none are as distracting or invasive as Jar Jar Binks.) However, it sounds like there aren't a lot of shots in Episode VII that are completely CGI, with no practical effects whatsoever.

Find out how many Star Wars The Force Awakens CGI shots there are after the jump!

According to MakingStarWars.net, as of last summer when the film was in production, there were about 28 total shots that were supposed to be completely CGI. That's supposedly out of a total of 357 scenes (each of which can be made up of many shots) that compose the entire film. Obviously some things change over time, but it's a safe bet that there weren't a whole slew of totally CGI shots that were added later in production, because they take a long time to make perfect for the big screen.

The report does detail some of the scenes in question that have reportedly been revealed as completely CGI, but we don't want to describe them in-depth, because they contain a lot of spoilers. If you feel compelled, you can read all about them right here.

But we will say that most of the completely CGI shots are in space, featuring ships like Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, the Millennium Falcon and Kylo Ren's First Order starship.

In fact, you can actually see one of these shots in the second teaser trailer as the ship with folding wings (believe to belong to Kylo Ren) approaches one of the new Star Destroyers somewhere in space, complete with escort ships:

Another sequence that we've already seen that is entirely CGI is the Millennium Falcon being chased by TIE Fighters on the surface of Jakku. But as we've seen in the behind the scenes sizzle reel, there are plenty of practical sets and tricks being utilized to bring Han Solo's ship back to the big screen.

While it's good to know that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is employing plenty more practical effects to bring the galaxy far, far away to life again, it makes sense that today's state of the art technology would be utilized to help complete the film and make certain sequences a little easier to craft. We're just glad the actors weren't surrounded entirely by green screens this time.

Are you happy with the push to practical effects? Do you think they're selling that too much?