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Comment by cheeseomlit | Hacker News Reader

One of the most damning comparisons to me are the orcs in the LOTR movies vs. the ones in the Hobbit movies, the former being practical make-up and the latter being almost entirely CGI. It's night and day, the LOTR orcs are a million times more believable and look like real organic living things, whereas the Hobbit movies end up looking like sterile video game cutscenes at times

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I think some of these problems are solvable, if someone worked at it. The lack of gravitas of these creatures isn't in the pixels themselves, so to speak. They're in the fact that large creatures fundamentally move differently than small ones. For a sample version of this, compare the "walk cycle" of a small dog to a large one. They aren't just scaled up.

The problem is, you motion capture a normal sized person then try to linearly project their motion up to a 10 foot tall behemoth, and we can't help but see the normal-sized person underneath. The motion needs to change.

Possibly something as simple as putting some weights of the right size in the right place on the motion captured actor would do the job.

Well and bring up Lord of the Rings and you have to reckon with the beloved and acclaimed motion capture performance of Gollum by Andy Serkis.

Obviously the earlier Lord of the Rings movies did have lots of practical effects and models, but also major use of CGI. It's not exactly a slam dunk for anti-CGI, as an example.

The main problem with bad CGI is that it's bad, not that it's CGI.

Agreed. But The Hobbit was a very rushed film. Rushed CGI can be worse than other crafts when rushed. More time + more money could have achieved better results. That being said, practical FX will always be superior because you don't have to spend extra effort making lights and materials look real.

Agreed agreed. The problem with The Hobbit was not the visual effects. The problem was that it was made without a plan, under duress. Lindsay Ellis has a three-part video essay series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs; yes, I know it says 1/2, I promise there is a 2/3) exploring this.

Midway through Battle of the Five Armies, when CGI dwarf Dain emerges, it’s difficult to not think “wow, they really wanted to get this movie done with - couldn’t even bother to cast a human for this character.”

LOTR had the occasional bad VFX. One that stood out to me, in the theaters, was when Treebeard carries Merry and Pippin through Fangorn Forest: the compositing on the background is sloppy and the lighting on the hobbits doesn't go with it.

The Gollum (CGI) on LOTR was really a peace of art. It can be done well if someone really wants.

Gollum is the reason I can't watch those movies anymore. Any scene he is in has him bouncing around like a piece of rubber. It doesn't look like the ring made him ill at all; on the contrary, he has the energy and exuberance of Bugs Bunny. It's eye roll material.

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