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Celebuial · 02-28-2005, 08:09 AM

The use of CGI and special effects in P-J's film adaptation seems to me somewhat sporadic. At times, such as the in the prologue to FOTR I feel that CGi are used to great advantage to enhance the reality of the environment created. It isn't too obvious, unnatural, or "in your face". The fireworks at Bilbo's party were a nice touch, they weren't over done and looked almost real. When Galadriel is offered The Ring by her mirror the effects are good. They clearly show the power of The One Ring and also the power of Galadriel and Nenya, but without going over the top. Enough of Kate Blanchet's performance is still visable so it looks believable- you can see the struggle in her face. Lothlorien still looked real and quite natural even though most was CGI.

In TT while most of the graphics remained ok-Helm's Deep looks very real compared to latter battles in the trilogy. However, Tolkien described there to be a faint green glow about Minas Morgul, not a full blown huge beam of green light!

As we progress to ROTK everything seems to go dramatically down hill. The effects are now used to draw the attention away from the created world instead of enhancing it. The battles seem less realistic and instead of showing the huge scale of events, seem only to diminish the appearence of size. Trolls no longer look realistic and orcs don't simply look like orcs; but deformed orcs. Shelob looks, instead of like a spider, like some kind of uber spider and draws the attention away from the emotional turmoil of Frodo and Sam unneccesarily. The dead look completly silly and don;t appear to fit with the style of the rest of the film nor Tolkien's descriptions. The death of Saruman was just a joke- He now shoots energy bolts from his staff, wich is a contradiction to the battle between Gandalf and Saruman in FOTR where you can see the power of the blows on the faces of the Istari and the whole thing looks a lot more like a psycological struggle. His staff doesn't merely break, but shatters and seems rather comical. Obviously there is the incident with SAuron's presence becoming a gargantuan search light.

To me it seems that if the effects were kept to a minimum the films could've been much better and kept truer to Tolkien.

I am greatly interested in other peoples oppinions. Do the effects make the films worse ior better?

02-28-2005, 08:09 AM	#1
Celebuial Wight Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cardiff during term time/Leicester in the holl's Posts: 129	Why?? Special effects and CGI in LOTR The use of CGI and special effects in P-J's film adaptation seems to me somewhat sporadic. At times, such as the in the prologue to FOTR I feel that CGi are used to great advantage to enhance the reality of the environment created. It isn't too obvious, unnatural, or "in your face". The fireworks at Bilbo's party were a nice touch, they weren't over done and looked almost real. When Galadriel is offered The Ring by her mirror the effects are good. They clearly show the power of The One Ring and also the power of Galadriel and Nenya, but without going over the top. Enough of Kate Blanchet's performance is still visable so it looks believable- you can see the struggle in her face. Lothlorien still looked real and quite natural even though most was CGI. In TT while most of the graphics remained ok-Helm's Deep looks very real compared to latter battles in the trilogy. However, Tolkien described there to be a faint green glow about Minas Morgul, not a full blown huge beam of green light! As we progress to ROTK everything seems to go dramatically down hill. The effects are now used to draw the attention away from the created world instead of enhancing it. The battles seem less realistic and instead of showing the huge scale of events, seem only to diminish the appearence of size. Trolls no longer look realistic and orcs don't simply look like orcs; but deformed orcs. Shelob looks, instead of like a spider, like some kind of uber spider and draws the attention away from the emotional turmoil of Frodo and Sam unneccesarily. The dead look completly silly and don;t appear to fit with the style of the rest of the film nor Tolkien's descriptions. The death of Saruman was just a joke- He now shoots energy bolts from his staff, wich is a contradiction to the battle between Gandalf and Saruman in FOTR where you can see the power of the blows on the faces of the Istari and the whole thing looks a lot more like a psycological struggle. His staff doesn't merely break, but shatters and seems rather comical. Obviously there is the incident with SAuron's presence becoming a gargantuan search light. To me it seems that if the effects were kept to a minimum the films could've been much better and kept truer to Tolkien. I am greatly interested in other peoples oppinions. Do the effects make the films worse ior better? __________________ Ú cilith ‘war. Ú men ‘war. Boe min mebi. Boe min bango.