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Message in a Battle
The WP has a tale titled The Messages in a Battle about the recent growth of computer-generated battle scenes in movies, now that you don't have to pay all those extras. RotK clearly wouldn't have been much of a movie if the battle scenes hadn't been so good.
While the battle scenes were very eye appealing, I think that all of the actors did a wonderful job. Sean Astin (not sure on the last name) was so convincing as Sam, it was breathtaking. Not to mention Magne....errrr Gandalf (portrayed by Sir Ian McKellan) really had the presence to convince me that he was both wise and powerful. Anyway, I just felt that yeah, the battles were pretty, and it would be hard to have the LotR without a war going on, I still don't think the movie was made by those sequences.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Despite how much work and how amazing these CG segments are for the current time period. I have yet to be impressed. I guess until I can actually not tell the difference, or at least only subtle differences, between real an fake. I'll be happy.
Really the biggest eyesore is CG people. I have yet to see something that really amazes me as it looks like a real person. To be honest, I found the closest being FF:Spirits Within. Crappy movie, but you have to admit the graphics were outstanding.
I guess my standards are just too high.
If they didn't have all of the ridiculously lame dwarf comedy ("nobody tosses a dwarf", "toss me", etc.) and if Legolas hadn't snowboarded down the stairs on his shield. For a movie with such a realistic look to it, those elements of the battles, especially Helms Deep, were totally unneccessary and really ruined the great ambience that the thousands of CG extras created so effectively.
Why must directors put such painfully lame moments in films, anyway? It's like in Minority Report, when Tom Cruise is fighting the other guy wearing a jet pack and they 'accidentally' cook the hamburgers on the grill to perfection... why? WHY???!
Read Pynchon.
In my own personal opinion, I think the writer of the article didn't pay attention to the movies. (esp. LOTR: all three)
.02.
With that, I'll say his opinion is lame.
Thats my thought..er,
'/dev/wit' is not available.
One thing lacking in both Matrices, was fluidity. The Visual Effects were large, and imposing, but they were choppy and fake; did not represent actual motion very well. The movement in the shots seemed too computer generated, and falsely blurred to overcome choppiness. Granted, this was probably stylization to a point not only a shortcoming. The Matrix effects are definately not to be overly criticized, they impressed thier audiences. Yet, in a year that offered the best visual effects to date (as a whole), the Matrix came up just short.
Is a cgi woman doing sexy things to herself for the entertainment of others still exploitation of women, when no specific woman is being exploited?
Down this path are all sorts of questions...
Charging into Oliphaunts was not the best idea, but hey, it was the first time most of them had EVER seen oliphaunts! Beginner's mistake eh... :)
One thing I really give credit to the LotR trilogy for is their casting. There are virtually no "big-name" actors in any of the movies. While there are the better known stars, Sir Ian McKellan, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett and even Liv Tyler and Sean Bean, none of them overpower the other cast members to the point of obscurity.
Furthermore, they found some actors from relative obscurity (Merry and Pippin come to mind) who perform remarkably well. Every single character in the LotR series is acted out almost flawlessly, and I for one can clearly relate their on screen portrayals to those characters from the book. And that's certainly what makes the battle scenes that much more *real* and closer to home. Someone watching the movie can really get a feel for the characters and sympathize with them. No character gets lost behind the face of some huge actor and no one actor steals the show from any other.
As for the CGI effects, I had no trouble believing that those oliphaunts and huge armies of Orcs were real, they might as well have been. The graphics were more than convincing enough and the fact that the movie is indeed in a fantasy setting allows for what Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the "willful suspension of belief." I had a harder time believing that Tom Cruise's character could take out four or five samurai before even getting any samurai training.... not to mention he somehow managed to hold them off with a flagpole of all things...