The "Possible Perils" of Special Effects

[Lalwendë]

The 'amorphous green blob' of the Army of the Dead was disappointing, in more ways than it just looked bad. It also tended to give the impression that it was entirely due to the efforts of that army that the battle was won - an opinion canvassed from a non-reader friend again. I can only describe that effect as a green 'slime' thingummyjig; admittedly, it was a difficult concept, but I was disappointed by it.

Some of the best effects were the simplest ones, for example the camera and set tricks used to make the Hobbits seem genuinely small. And of course, the scene where Gandalf rears up in anger at Bag End - part of that, however, was due to the genius of Ian McKellen's acting!

Was it me or did others find the seemingly continual flashy mounting and dismounting of various beasts of burden by Legolas a tad irritating? I kept thinking that eventually he was going to fall and hurt himself or maybe land face down in an Oliphaunt pat.

[Essex]

radagastly,

good point about gandalf, I was going to bring up how well that was done in my earlier post. just because we don't have large special effects shots on certain scenes doesn't mean we can't have them in other places.

It's a matter of context. Gandalf's 'confrontation' was with an old friend near the start of the book. Jackson would not want to show Gandalf in the same light as he showed Galadriel later.

With Galadriel I think Jackson was trying to show just how dangerous the Elves CAN BE. (Add to this, in my humble opinion after reading Silmarillion a while back, what a bunch of arrogant, selfish, hateful, nasty group of people the Elves can be at times) nb I'm ducking to avoid rotten tomatoes thrown at me

We had moved on a couple of hours into the movie by then, and Jackson was jacking up the tension and danger that Frodo was facing. To me this scene worked

PS Our viewpoints on various parts of dialouge within the LOTR movie is like a piece of prose by Shakespeare. One director might have read Galadriel's temptation scene with her speaking softly (as I must admit I did before the films). But I think it works far better with her voice raised and her 'power' urging to be unleashed to take the Ring.....

[Sapphire_Flame]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Was it me or did others find the seemingly continual flashy mounting and dismounting of various beasts of burden by Legolas a tad irritating? I kept thinking that eventually he was going to fall and hurt himself or maybe land face down in an Oliphaunt pat.

*headdesk* That annoyed me to no end. Now not only does Legolas have the shame of being Captain Obvious, he also possess "mad fighting skillz" and the ability to shoot, squash, and generally mangle Generic Large Beasts o' Evil. Please, PJ, do spare us the pain and anguish. (This thinking has spawned any number of 'Sues whose modus operondi (sp?) is "I am an elf, therefore, I have mad fighting skillz and never get dirty." Bah.)

Originally Posted by Essex

One director might have read Galadriel's temptation scene with her speaking softly (as I must admit I did before the films).

Heh. I must say here that I liked the Bakshi rendition of Galadriel's Speech of Power better than I liked PJ's.

Abedithon le,

~ Saphy ~

[davem]

I have to say that for me the biggest mistake Jackson made was in losing control of Gollum. Gollum is a character that needs a tight leash or he'll take over. This is where the very quality of CGI let him down. If it hadn't been as good, he would have had to keep Gollum more in the background, & we'd have had him presented as he is in the books - only seen through the eyes of others. Because PJ was able to give him screen time on his own he lost control of him & because of that he comes to dominate every scene he's in.

Having said that,it kind of applies to all the CGI in the movies. Its too good - PJ is never forced to be restrained. Whatever he wants to put on screen he can, so he doesn't have to hold back. Sometimes less is more & more is less. The intimacy is lost, because everything is simple too 'intense', too overwhelming. The whole thing strays too often into melodrama for it to work successfully. I suppose what I'm saying is I wanted War & Peace & got Star Wars, & while there's nothing wrong with either, that's the source of my disappointment.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Child

Potentially more serious, will the heavy use of special effects tend to "date" the movies so that we pass over them more quickly at some point down the road? What seems marvelous and innovative today can quickly become blase when the next round of technology comes in and produces something far more sophisticated.

This is an interesting point. As I said in the sister thread, I remember being thrilled with Ray Harryhausen's effects in the films such as the Sinbad series and The Valley of Gwangi. And I was absolutely blown away when I first saw Star Wars. And, while Harryhausen's stop-motion animation does now look very dated in comparison with modern SFX, I do think that some of Industrial Light and Magic's work on Star Wars has stood the test of time well (although it is probably difficult to get hold of the pre-digitally enhanced version these days).

But with many of the special effects today, and particularly those deployed in the LotR films, it is difficult to see how they could get much better. Gollum's features and expressions, for example, are so realistic that I find myself completely forgetting that he is a CGI character. And I find creatures such as the Oliphaunts, the Stone Troll, the Balrog and, yes, even Treebeard (for the most part) to be utterly credible. Admittedly, there are some areas where the SFX could be improved upon. Latex face-masks can sometimes result in that rather standardised "Buffy Vampire", big cheek-boned look, and this afflicts some of the Orcs, although most are the result of exceptionally good make-up jobs (particularly the 'principal' Orcish characters). And there is a moment in Gollum's transformation where he looks like the actor (presumably Andy Serkis) in "monster" make-up that he is. Also, there is a loss of 'reality' where CGI is used for characters otherwise played by actors (such as where Legolas jumps from the Stone Troll).

But, for the most part, it is difficult to see how the effects could get much better, and so difficult to tell whether the films will become dated in this respect. I suppose that I thought much the same when I first saw Star Wars, so perhaps they will. But I tend to think that the next stage of technical development in films will be enhanced 3-D, or even holographic, visuals.

Originally Posted by Child

Were special effects "overused" in the film to the point that they distracted our attention from the characters and/or caused PJ to invest his energies in something which, I believe, Tolkien would have considered tangential? Did the stress on special effects, where everything is made so obvious to the naked eye, detract from the sense of mystery and magic that is so much more evident in the book itself?

Well, I've said it before and I'll probably keep saying it, but, rightly or wrongly, these were 'action' films. And such films tend to require spectacular special effects these days. People like spectacular special effects (or so film-makers believe, at least). As I have also said on a number of occasions, the films were made for film-goers in general, not just us Tolkien-book-fans, so it was inevitable really that much of the subtlety and narrative/themic development of the books would be squeezed out by the visual extravaganza.

But that answer does not, I think, fully do justice to the question that Child has posed. I would divide the special effects into three categories. There are those which are both technically brilliant and appropriate to the story. There are those which are techically brilliant but inappropriate. And there are those which (for whatever reason) are not so technically brilliant and therefore lack somewhat in realism. It is the latter two categories which will disturb the 'suspension of belief' and therefore, perhaps, impair one's enjoyment of the films.

I think that we could all reach broad agreement on those effects which lacked in realism. I have given examples above of some of those that I would see as falling in this category. But, where the technical quality is good, it will depend on individual taste and standpoint as to whether a particular effect is appropriate or not. For example, I found Legolas' more athletic manoevres rather silly, but there are many who would count these amongst their favourite moments. Similarly, I am somewhat dubious about the RotK EE preview which shows Saruman shooting a fireball from the top of Orthanc, but there are many who will love this sort of thing.

To comment, with this in mind, on some of the effects discussed so far on this thread:

I liked Bilbo's 'horror' face in Rivendell. There is textual justification for it and some form of make-up would have been required to portray Frodo's vision of Bilbo at this point in the book, Ian Holm's formidable acting skills notwithstanding. I can see why some think that Jackson went over the top, but it worked for me in light of the brevity of the moment.

Galadriel's 'nuclear' moment is an interesting one. Like Essex, I believe that there is justification for using special effects here, both on the basis of the text and for film-making reasons. I just happen to think that the effect was done rather badly. Switching the camera to negative image and distorting the voice simply looked faintly ridiculous to me (I almost laughed at this point when I first saw it in the cinema). Indeed, I would have favoured a more sophisticated (and perhaps more subtle) use of effects here.

The Dead Army is also interesting. The close-up shots of them in the Paths of the Dead are, I think, marvellous. The way that the Dead King's face shifts from rotting flesh to skull, for example, is very well done. Yet I agree that the 'long shots' of the Army at the Pelennor look silly. 'Amorphous Green Blob' and 'Green Virus' are alas pretty accurate descriptions of what we ended up with. It would have been far better, visually, to have had the odd close-up shot of Dead Warriors fighting on the field of battle. And this would have had the added advantage of making it seem less like the battle is only won because of them (although, since Pelargir is excluded from the cinematic release, they do have to play some major role at the Pelennor).

Radagastly mentioned the Warg attack. I actually don't think that this was gratuitous, in the context of the film, at all (although Aragorn's cliff dive undoubtedly was). We know from the book that Saruman used Warg Riders, so it is entirely credible that he would use them to attack those bound for Helm's Deep. I was thrilled when I heard that there would be Warg Riders in the film, as the Battle of Five Armies is one of my favourite Tolkien passages. So they are not, in my view, inappropriate. And technically they are pretty good too. Only problem is they are not Wargs! They belong in a category of their own.

[HCIsland]

Add me to the list when it comes to the Warg attack. Not because I felt it was gratuitous - I felt it worked very well as far as story structure went - but because of execution, in particular the hyena look of the warg's themselves. Actually, what I really like about the scene is not so much that battle, but the build up to it. I find this quite a lot actually. Jackson does a great job in a number of places jazzing us up for the battles.

I agree that the Dead was overwhelming and Galadriel could have been toned down, but overall, I would say that Jackson had kept himself under control when it came to FX. What I actually find pretty amazing is how many shots contain no FX at all. How much actual scenery and landscapes were used rather than blue screening everything. The obvious counter-example to this would be the recent Star Wars instalements where the shots without effects are the exception rather than the rule, much to the films' detriment IMHO.

H.C.

[Essex]

Davem,

what I'm saying is I wanted War & Peace & got Star Wars, & while there's nothing wrong with either, that's the source of my disappointment.

Ah, now I begin to understand your motives.

Unfortunately, you would never get a War and Peace version on the Cinema Movie screen. Pity really, but impossible. We have to either listen to the BBC audio version (which as good as it was can still be greatly improved) or have a TV mini series filmed in the future which stuck to the books narrative as close as possible, lasting over a number of seasons.

PS We're dissing the Army of the Dead, but again, its just Jackson substituting the men of South Gondor with the Army of the Dead. The battle of Pellenor fields could not have been won without Aragorn and Co, so instead of 'live' humans helping him, Jackson used 'dead' ones, which negated the need for a lengthy summary from Aragorn after the battle explaining how he'd come to Minas Tirith.

The extended edition may well show Aragorn's fight with the Corsairs, and therefore we wouldn't get the 'surprise' of Aragorn turning up at Minas Tirith to save the day: therefore in the EE it would work fine if we had the 'live' people that Aragorn freed from the Corsairs help save the day.

We need to keep in mind the movie maker's viewpoint on when we review these movies. I remember being exactly the same as a lot of people on these forums (ie somewhat negative towards the films) before I listened to the commentaries on FOTR and TT. This has given me a wider view of how films are made, and their constraints. But what it's done mostly is given me an even greater satisfaction of the films, inasmuch as by the time I saw ROTK, I had no real complaints AT ALL about the contents of the film (including the 'green blobs' saving the day). I was dissapointed in what was left out, but understood that these bits would probably be included in the EE.

Indeed my first comment to the missus when the credits started to roll on ROTK was "That was great but I can't wait for the extended version"

[HerenIstarion]

Irrelevant to the discussion, just should confess my ignorance - what is FX?

thank you

[Lalwendë]

I always have a preference for TV adaptations purely as there is more time to devote to the stories they are portraying. For me, getting over all the detail and nuance of the novel is important, and is possibly why I am always just a little unsatisfied with book adaptations. I think it was the limits of time involved with film which led to the limits in scriptwriting and hence to the limitations of the film.

However, TV adaptations are not always blessed with large budgets and it takes real skill to make a visually effective adaptation on limited money. One of the features of LOTR is that it needed decent effects - I cannot quite wipe from my mind the fear I had that they would resort to using children as Hobbits or some such cost-cutting scheme. I was pleased that someone with imagination and skill had taken the reigns. And ultimately, despite all of my grumblings, these are films I can watch many times over!

The strange thing is that one major factor in the success of the films not always considered, was the acting, which I found excellent - in the main. In particular, Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee and Sean Bean. With the quality of their acting, the films could (almost) have gotten away with being made on the most limited of budgets!