Viggo Mortensen Bashes the Heavy use of CGI on the Hobbit

[HurtinMinorKey]

http://comicbook.com/blog/2014/05/17/lord-of-the-rings-star-viggo-mortensen-bashes-the-sequels-the-hobbit-too-much-cgi/

 

 

I didn't know where to put this, but I thought it was an interesting read. I totally agree with Viggo's sentiments about the value of the organic of the first LOTR movie.  

[JohnBarlow]

So was that a CGI Peter Jackson eating a carrot in the last one?

[HurtinMinorKey]

So was that a CGI Peter Jackson eating a carrot in the last one?

 

 

I thought that was Fellowship. 

[JohnBarlow]

Desolation of Smaug Time 1:18

[Christina Ava]

well said viggo, being an 80s child and growing up with star wars, labyrinth, dark crystal, gremlins, never ending story and tons of fantasy films, i think animatronics will always look and feel better than cgi...

[mtheory]

I liked Fellowship, but I've never thought Jackson was particularly talented or original, certainly not in the same league as Cameron, Scott or Fincher. Hell, even Bay was able to put FX aside and do something original with Pain&Gain.

[fuzzynormal]

Cameron? Really? He can stage some action, but were's the originality?

[Axel]

well said viggo, being an 80s child and growing up with star wars, labyrinth, dark crystal, gremlins, never ending story and tons of fantasy films, i think animatronics will always look and feel better than cgi...

 

I have a german book from, get this, *2000*, "Digital Film Production". When all the regions in my country, where steel and coal industry were dying had to be re-structured, the federation pumped millions into the development of CGI-studios. Many of the best VFX indeed came from Germany (started in the nineties, one example where you can see the outcome is Independence Day (1996), directed by Emmerich with his connections to southern german facilities), but it never paid off. Because, as the book foresaw 14 years ago already, VFX were not about higher quality, they were about reduced costs. As anybody can see now, the party that makes no profit at all from their work are the CGI houses.

 

The book makes another point: Even though most SFX (analog special effects, 'tricks') are not particularly convincing, visually, they raise the perceived production value, and the audience enjoys them anyway, thereby willingly 'suspending disbelief'. Whereas, decades after Jurassic Parc, no limits remain as far as photorealistic simulations of impossible visions are concerned, people just know that anything goes and that it's just a cheap digital trick. Nothing 'special' anymore.

 

And more: Any fantasy can be rendered to film, but plots became unbelievably dull. As Peter Biskind puts it in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, all new multimillion dollar blockbusters are B-pictures storywise, and after Titanic they actually degraded to C-pictures.

 

I liked Fellowship, but I've never thought Jackson was particularly talented or original, certainly not in the same league as Cameron, Scott or Fincher. Hell, even Bay was able to put FX aside and do something original with Pain&Gain.

 

As I see it, Jackson is really the master of CGI, if there ever was one, and he started with self-made analog effects (with his 16mm Bolex). Very often he tries to mimic stop-motion-juddering or adds some tilt-shift-look to artificial landscapes, and I appreciate that. I think he has made his masterpiece with the LOTR trilogy and delivered a respectable film with King Kong. Mortensen is a class A actor, and Jackson made him perform to greatest effect in LOTR, let's not forget that. I recently saw The Two Faces Of January (a somewhat old-fashioned film, taking place in the sixties, with an intelligent plot - Patricia Highsmith!), and I admired his performance, as that of his co-star Oscar Isaac.