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Jeffrodo
Bree
Jan 17 2015, 2:56pm
Post #1 of 41
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A way to explain away the over use of CGI in The Hobbit...
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Ok, I completely agree with many who feel there's way too much CGI in The Hobbit, that it doesn't feel as real as LOTR. I still love The Hobbit, don't get me wrong...but the world of this new trilogy doesn't always match the realism of LOTR.
So here's how in my own mind I've been explaining it away.
To me, The Hobbit films are Bilbo's memories of what happened. The prologue with old Bilbo sets this up. So in his memory, the realism of those long ago days were sort of polished up, glossed, turned shiny. Sort of like remembering the old days with rose colored glasses. We turn the past into something grander, we mend the cracks and make everything smoother in our memory.
Does that make sense? I know I'm totally making excuses for PJ here...but to me it kind of makes sense that way. And whatever doesn't match with LOTR (finding the ring for example), well...that's just the way Bilbo is remembering it for this re-telling.
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dormouse
Half-elven
Jan 17 2015, 3:20pm
Post #2 of 41
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Why does the use of CGI need explaining away?
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You've come up with a lovely, poetic, and most of all a generous explanation of this 'problem' (so called), and I'm torn between cheering the tone of your post and feeling rather saddened that someone who obviously enjoys the films seems to feel he/she has to make excuses for Peter Jackson, while at the same time almost apologising for making excuses.
Every time this 'too much CGI' tag has been repeated on this forum I've asked how anyone would make these films without CGI and no one ever answers. Because there is no answer. There is no way The Hobbit could have been translated to film in a form that would satisfy a modern audience without CGI. They have used prosthetics and location filming as well, just as they did in LotR. They used CGI in LotR too. And because CGI has come on a long way in the last decade, and The Hobbit was filmed in 3D, making some of the physical trickery used in the previous films impossible, they've used more of it. So what? As someone who grew up watching adaptations where the scenery wobbled and the special effects weren't very special at all, so a lot of imagination was needed to fill in the gaps, I think CGI is miraculous. After all, where would they have found a real gate of Erebor? A real enchanted forest? Or town on a lake? These films take us to places we've only ever been able to visit in imagination and they make them all real. Any time anyone talks about 'too much CGI' just think Smaug....
I love your idea of the films being Bilbo's shiny memories but there's nothing you need to excuse Peter Jackson for. Truly there isn't. Just celebrate the pleasure you find in the films and enjoy them!
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sauget.diblosio
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 3:24pm
Post #3 of 41
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If you're doing mental gymnastics
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to "explain away" things in the films, then the filmmaker hasn't done his/her job.
Same goes for that stupid golden statue.
(This post was edited by Ataahua on Jan 17 2015, 7:17pm)
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 3:39pm
Post #4 of 41
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I don't think anyone believes that the films could have been done completely free of CGI...
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...it's just that some of use feel Jackson went overboard with it. Sure, Smaug, Gollum, the Wargs, Trolls, spiders, and other creatures with non-human dimensions had to be done with CGI, but Orcs were not done with CGI for the LotR trilogy, and they worked just fine. The CGI Orcs in TH look terrible to me. Not to mention the increasingly ridiculous Legolas "Matrix" stunts and the increased prominence of green-screen as opposed to location shooting.
For someone who took almost every opportunity to link this trilogy with his previous one, Jackson sure didn't seem to give much thought to keeping the visual aesthetic consistent. LotR almost had an historical feel about it, TH feels much more cartoonish.
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Ham_Sammy
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 3:41pm
Post #5 of 41
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I definitely did not like that sequence in Erebor not only with the Golden Statue but the boogie boarding Thoring/Standing on Smaug's nose. That's the only part of the 3 movies though that I didn't care for. Overall I liked the use of CGI in the films. That part though I agree with you I didn't care for it. It wasn't only the CGI it was the whole story concept there
I did however really like the Golden Floor in Five Armies and I thought that was done well and I like the image and concept with Thorin's gold sickeness and the ghost image of Smaug through it. I even liked the vortex there.
So overall I didn't see the overuse of CGI. I did not like it in parts though
All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you, Gandalf the Grey
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Annatar598
Rohan
Jan 17 2015, 3:45pm
Post #6 of 41
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Won me over the CGI debate in a way AUJ and DOS couldn't.
Sorry LOTR nostalgics or bandwagoners, there's no way the BOTFA Azog is lesser looking than any LOTR orc. The orcs in BOTFA are of far superior quality to any orc in LOTR.
"[Annatar598] is an overzealous apologist [for PJ]" - Certain TORn member.
Really? Alright...
Well, proud to be one I guess.
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CathrineB
Rohan
Jan 17 2015, 3:46pm
Post #7 of 41
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I feel like all the use of CGI is a bit lazy. They go on and on about how beautiful New Zealand is and instead of actually taking more advantage of it they have even battles set indoors on small "fields" with massive green screens. I get it's probably cheaper, but don't tell me they don't have the money to film outside. It would just have felt more real if they could just stuff the actors on a field rather than a green screen world.
And what's up with that glow everywhere? It doesn't help making things look real you know. I don't know about you, but my world really isn't glowing 
I do love the movies though, but I fully understand and agree with the critisism.
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NecromancerRising
Gondor
Jan 17 2015, 3:58pm
Post #8 of 41
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I would take Azog over any orc of the LOTR trilogy any day.
"You cannot find peace by avoiding life"
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NecromancerRising
Gondor
Jan 17 2015, 4:03pm
Post #9 of 41
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Nothing can look more terrible than the atrocious climax
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of the Pelennor Fields battle where the green cartoonish and lame bubbles appeared to save the day. It is by miles the worst thing that ever happened in the Middle Earth series. Not to mention the horrendous battle of the Black Gate with the worst CGI of all 6 films in the Middle Earth series. Nothing in the Hobbit trilogy,FOTR and TTT can even come close to these terrible scenes.
"You cannot find peace by avoiding life"
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sauget.diblosio
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 4:13pm
Post #10 of 41
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While i would disagree with you on Azog,
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who is the by far the worst thing in all of the Middle-earth films imo, i won't argue the merits of the scrubbing bubbles...
Nothing can look more terrible than the atrocious climax of the Pelennor Fields battle where the green cartoonish and lame bubbles appeared to save the day. It is by miles the worst thing that ever happened in the Middle Earth series
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sauget.diblosio
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 4:15pm
Post #11 of 41
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For someone who took almost every opportunity to link this trilogy with his previous one, Jackson sure didn't seem to give much thought to keeping the visual aesthetic consistent. LotR almost had an historical feel about it, TH feels much more cartoonish.
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TnuaccayM
Bree
Jan 17 2015, 4:30pm
Post #12 of 41
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They were trying to avoid problems
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Jackson himself said that one of the advantages of using CGI is not having hundreds of extras working at the same time, with people fainting and all that, and if you have seen the video-blogs, you should understand the logistical nightmare that it was to shoot on location. Most likely they didn't have the time to go travel New Zealand in the pick-ups, where a large part of BotFA was film. In LotR they didn't always have that option. And you have to have in mind that in LotR the had several shooting units at the same time, in TH they had only two.
Despite of that, many of the orcs in TH were people in costumes, sometimes with just animated faces, and in this last movie most all the orcs in Dale were real people with prosthetics, except in some full CGI shots. And there's a ton of location shots in this trilogy.
After all, its not supposed to look real. Middle Earth doesn't exist. In my opinion the CGI and color grading in these movies are perfect. If gives these movies a "fantasy" feel that I really didn't get with LotR. In some ways the Middle Earth in TH is more "middle-earthy'' for me than LotR.
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Shirriff Anthony
Bree
Jan 17 2015, 4:41pm
Post #13 of 41
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to "explain away" things in the films, then the filmmaker hasn't done his/her job.
Same goes for that stupid golden statue.
If I have to listen to producer interviews as to what they hoped to convey, or wait for an extended edition to clarify something, or have length theoretical discussions then the execution of the project is sloppy.
Faramir: “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
(This post was edited by Ataahua on Jan 17 2015, 7:21pm)
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Dipling
Lorien
Jan 17 2015, 5:27pm
Post #14 of 41
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Is not the problem. The problem is color grading.
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glor
Rohan
Jan 17 2015, 5:28pm
Post #15 of 41
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These films like LOTR, could not have been made without CGI, in fact due to the more fantastical nature of The Hobbit it would inevitably need more CGI that LOTR.
However, I do think that this debate on these boards over the years has occasionally touched on something that has never been overtly stated, ones taste in fantasy, or rather fantasy films.
For me, fantasy as a screen medium like sci-fi, at its best conveys a sense of the other, of something not of this world, for when it looks real, it just looks like actors walking around a location set. When such material is treated as real, it fails to be transformative, it ceases to take me to another world.
This is one of the main reasons I find GoT unwatchable, in never pulls me in because what I see is not Westeros but a castle in Malta, or the Irish countryside, there is no sense, no feeling of another place, not of this world and thus for me there is an absence of believability.
Dormouse, you allude to this and strike a cord with me when you talk of wobbly sets and actors running around medieval castles pretending to be characters from fairy stories and fantasy fiction. GoT reminds me too much of those BBC adaptations of my childhood, it's like a blast from the past, old fashioned but not in a good way.
When PJ made LOTR he did do something unique with the fantasy and sci-fi genre, he combined the enough of the real with the unreal or other, but his purpose was to display Middle-Earth not just as a place but a vast world, with a sense of space and distance, able to contain, in a believable way, the scope of peoples and cultures necessary for the adaptation of Tolkien's great novel. Yet he also used CGI to create a world that was not of our own, and what is more to convey the scale of some of the great battles.
In fact, there are elements of LOTR such as the Army of the Dead where many have desired for the CGI to have been better, to have been used more.
For others this is not true, in order to believe in what they are seeing, they need something less other and more real, something visually and aesthetically grounded in the real world, a more historical approach to fantasy.
This is just an observation but it appears that on this board who are vocal about The Hobbit being too CGI tend to like or even adore GoT because of its realism.
I think what this boils down to is not about CGI per se but a matter of aesthetic taste, of how one finds their fantasy believable when conveyed on screen
No mascara can survive BOTFA
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burrahobbit
Rohan
Jan 17 2015, 5:40pm
Post #16 of 41
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The comparison should be against LotR antagonists
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LotR (mostly) has the good sense to know that orcs are shallow characters that you shouldn't pin a whole fantasy story to, as there's so little culture or reality to them.
In LotR we explicity see Saruman create uruk hai as kind of genetically engineered killing machines. That's their role- minions of developed characters like Saruman or the Nazgul. (Sauron isn't developed as a character in the LotR films, but I think that was a mistake by Jackson that he tried to remedy in TH- another mistake). It doesn't matter in LotR if the orcs are a bit shallow, they're kinda supposed to be.
In TH Jackson presents Bolg and Azog as full blown antagonists to carry the story. That's why there's so much scrutiny of them. But there's just no depth- they growl, look evil, growl again... Frankly Shagrat, Lugdush etc. from LotR had more character to them, even if the effects were cheaper (can't say Gothmog worked tho).
Every minute of Smaug on screen in TH was worth an hour of Azog and Bolg, and I think the writers should have recognised what was great about the original Hobbit story rather than trying to rewrite it with weak characters.
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Bofur01
Lorien
Jan 17 2015, 5:41pm
Post #17 of 41
(557 views)
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...See the VFX video in the thread at the top... the original shots seem far better than those in the film :(
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glor
Rohan
Jan 17 2015, 6:02pm
Post #18 of 41
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It would just have felt more real if they could just stuff the actors on a field rather than a green screen world.
Would it? Consider the scaling issues are very different between 4 Hobbits, an Elf, a Dwarf and Wizard and two Humans versus 13 dwarves, a hobbit and a wizard.
NOTE: I am not even considering the 3D, I am considering the scaling problems of 2D film making.
In the first, the Fellowship, the sense of scale between the actors was largley conveyed via forced perspective coupled with, the height of actors when casting to ensure the forced perspective tricks used were believable. The viewer had the reference point in many scenes of a human, rather than the background scenery, in order to be pulled into the tricks of the filmaker e.g Hobbits look short because they are standing next to a human. It was only when forced perspective was not possible that scale doubles where used and even then they are often noticeable.
With The Hobbit the filmakers had a problem, there is no human reference point in the company so that background scenery has to be used to create scale. Of course there are other options; find 14 actors 5 foot and under, to play the dwarves and Bilbo, or do a Snow White and the Huntsmans ( shudders) and paste faces of actors on scale actors, wrong on so many levels. The last option would have been to have had a very stilted silly looking version of the Hobbit where most of the cast looked like they were screwed to the ground because, they were being filmed whilst kneeling down. Poor John Rhys-Davies performance as Gimli suffered for that reason, many times when he talked in frame with another cast member he was rooted to the spot.
So, scale has to be conveyed via scenery, scenery that has to be scaled up and that does limit the amount of real world location shooting one can do.
get it's probably cheaper, but don't tell me they don't have the money to film outside
There is an interview with Richard Taylor, that was on the TORn front pages last year whe he said that they did not have the money to make The Hobbit in the same way they made LOTR, it would have been too expensive in todays film world.
No mascara can survive BOTFA
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glor
Rohan
Jan 17 2015, 6:10pm
Post #19 of 41
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LotR (mostly) has the good sense to know that orcs are shallow characters that you shouldn't pin a whole fantasy story to, as there's so little culture or reality to them.
So the criticism, for some, that Bolg and Azog are too cartoony is not a matter of CGI but plot emphasis and writing. That even if they had been actors in prosthetics the effect for would have been the same.
Interesting, because I have found the argument against CGI Orcs a little contradictory when we don't have the same ire directed at a CGI Gollum, as they are created in much the same way.
i think sir you have hit the nail on the head, thank you.
No mascara can survive BOTFA
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sauget.diblosio
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 6:33pm
Post #20 of 41
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So the criticism, for some, that Bolg and Azog are too cartoony is not a matter of CGI but plot emphasis and writing. That even if they had been actors in prosthetics the effect for would have been the same. ... performance. The actual look and story arc of Azog were only part of my problem with the character. A large part of it for me was the portrayal of the character-- the way he strutted about and over-emoted like some professional wrestling villain, or a bad video game boss. Bolg was an improvement, and the films would have been better off if they had included just him, but the orcs/goblins in The Hobbit are barely a shadow of
of what we got in The Lord of the Rings.
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Merovech
Bree
Jan 17 2015, 7:24pm
Post #21 of 41
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There's some Olympic-level mental gymnasts around here.
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dormouse
Half-elven
Jan 17 2015, 7:26pm
Post #22 of 41
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... the only orc in The Hobbit that bothers me is an actor in prosthetics who appears in AUJ. I try not to look at him because the way is standing is so awkward it makes me want to laugh. The CGI ones look fine. And as for location shooting, they did shoot in some fantastic locations, just as before, but where on this earth would you find the front gate of Erebor? The interiors of Erebor and the Woodland Kingdom? A town on a lake? An enchanted forest? Far as I can see, greenscreen isn't a problem, it's a tool that makes the impossible possible. Particularly as they are so much better these days at hiding the join. At one time the effectiveness of the effect was limited by a visible edge, usually when something delicate, like hair, was filmed against the screen. You just had to try to ignore it. Now the blending is perfect most of the time, and very occasionally there if you really look for it.
Sorry, but I don't see anything cartoonish about The Hobbit. At all.
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 8:03pm
Post #23 of 41
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You're entitled to your opinion...
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...but I could just as easily refer to you as a "bandwagoner" if I felt the need to do so.
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jan 17 2015, 8:13pm
Post #24 of 41
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But there are no other creatures like Gollum to compare him to...
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Plus, Gollum doesn't exactly have human dimensions. So how else would you be able to do Gollum?
On the other hand, when I look at Azog and the Great Goblin, and then look at Grishnakh or Lurtz, the difference is glaring. Compared to the prosthetic Orcs, these mo-capped ones in TH look like video game characters.
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Glorfindela
Valinor
Jan 17 2015, 8:23pm
Post #25 of 41
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The CGI is fantastic in most cases – much better than anything in LotR. And the stiff Orcs in LotR just look like men in suits – none of them has a sustained arc in the LotR films, so they can just appear briefly, then disappear, with viewers noticing their appearance only superficially. Azog had to be a personality, so needed more than that. I think he was very well done, though the design for Bolg was a bit too much for me.
This oft-repeated comparison to 'video games' means nothing to me, since I've never seen one. I can only go with what I like and don't like with my gut reaction.
Won me over the CGI debate in a way AUJ and DOS couldn't.
Sorry LOTR nostalgics or bandwagoners, there's no way the BOTFA Azog is lesser looking than any LOTR orc. The orcs in BOTFA are of far superior quality to any orc in LOTR.
(This post was edited by Glorfindela on Jan 17 2015, 8:30pm)
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