Why?? Special effects and CGI in LOTR

[Celebuial]

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?

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

I don't quite agree that the effects took over in the final film; I just think that they were not used as cleverly. Good observations sir.

[wilwarin538]

Those were great observations. I agree. When I was watching the third movie I noticed something seemed a little different about it. The way Saruman died and the way his staff broke was just ridicoulous. Next time I watch the RotK I'm skipping that scene all together. But maybe its just some people, I know so many LotR movie fans who like the third movie better then the other two because "it has more action and special effects, its not boring like the first two".

I think PJ just wanted to make good movies and he did. But when I compare the movies and the books there are so many things I find wrong with the movie and then other people don't see anything wrong.

It's just all a matter of oppinion. But I agree completely the special effects were a little much.

~*Wilwa*~

[Morsul the Dark]

Not to be a stickler however... HOw long do you want them to work on these scenes? of course shelob could have been better she is the only cg charactor in the scene however to defend to battle scenes there are so many charactors its hard to make them perfect..the only part I find bad is when Legalas climbs the mumak...eowyns horse barely clears the things ankle and yet legalas is up to its knee...

[The Only Real Estel]

However, Tolkien described there to be a faint green glow about Minas Morgul, not a full blown huge beam of green light!

Creative license. I think when you stop and think about this one it's a rather minor point.

The battles seem less realistic and instead of showing the huge scale of events, seem only to diminish the appearence of size.

I missed this one, the battle looked pretty undiminished to me.

Trolls no longer look realistic and orcs don't simply look like orcs; but deformed orcs.

I actually thought the trolls were well done, for the most part. As to the deformed orc, I don't think anyone likes him, but his looks were not CGId or special effected (there's a new word for you ).

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

To me, Frodo sending Sam away drew more attention from their 'emotional turmoil' than anything. Either that or added unnecessarily to it.
As to Shelob I got the impression from the books that she was an uber spider.

The dead look completly silly and don;t appear to fit with the style of the rest of the film nor Tolkien's descriptions

I am on the fence with the Dead Army. However, if I had to pick out my biggest problem with them, it would probably be them wiping out the entire orc army rather than what they look like. They looked pretty realistic to me for the most part, although they did remind me a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean.

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

The fireball that he fired at Gandalf was not one of my favorite parts of the movie--I'll agree with you there. But I don't think his death scene was a joke, other than the fact that if he really was impaled upside-down on a wheel his feet would be not be straight as he was turned under the water (I'm pretty sick at the moment, so if you don't understand that last comment, that's the reason ). When Saruman's staff is broken I almost laughed because of his reaction, rather than his staff shattering. As far as it shattering, I don't mind that much--shatter, break, it's all the same.

Obviously there is the incident with Sauron's presence becoming a gargantuan search light.

I agree with you most on this one. It looked ridiculous & went back on what Saruman was saying about the Eye in FotR, but there are whole different threads on that subject.

In summary, I think that the special effects were used well the vast majority of the time.

[Turin]

I think the main point being made is that there was an over-reliance on CGI, especially in the RoTR. In my opinion, it often leads to a lack of intensity during the battles and detracts from the characters' struggles that they go through.

Not to be nit picky but one of my worst CGIs was the Oliphaunts:

To create, bigger, (supposedly) better battle scenes, PJ&co decided that they would create Mumaks that are the size of small mountains. Now I know they were supposed to be big.. but that big?

*tries not to remember the Legolas rodeo scene* yuck!