The Desolation

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by dancing spawn of ungoliant

Well, after TT, I haven't gone to watch PJ's movies for the plot either. The story can be found in the books, after all, but what the books are missing are things like landscapes, costume design, score, hearing the characters talk... So WCH's term CGI opera is quite good actually, but I don't find it to be an altogether negative description.

Anyway, I can see that even though there were some parts that people generally liked in the film, the bad things weigh more in the debate, so I'm going to leave it at that.

Spawn, I wouldn’t want anyone feel they’re not *allowed* to say they like this film, or any film– I’ve myself enjoyed plenty of movies that most people can’t stand at all (or parts thereof, anyway). "Why I liked such-and-such” is not always the same thing as “Why you should like it” (or, “Why it should be considered a good movie”).

Originally Posted by Kuru

The computer animation: for Smaug it was good enough. The gold looked awful, awful, awful! I play video games that have more realistic images than that. What Jackson ended up doing was creating a set-piece that not only was absurd and not at all based on anything in the book, he didn't even have the tools at his disposal or maybe the artists with the ability (not sure which, could be either or both) to make said set-piece look anything approaching good or believable. The giant gold statue in particular looked laughably bad. I think part of the problem lies in that I've observed in CGI it is paradoxically easier to make complex things look realistic as opposed to simple things. I'm not sure why, it may have something to do with texture.

Real objects not only have many tiny details and imperfections, they interact with light in a way that’s hard to reproduce fully, even now. You’re not seeing this stuff consciously whenever you look at something, of course, but it must register on some level. A complex model just has more to distract you from noticing anything “off”. Plus, unlike dragons, coins and statues actually exist, so you have some basis for comparison.

That said, what I’ve seen of Smaug really does look quite amazing. My guess is that they blew a large part of the fx budget on the dragon alone, and there wasn’t enough left to do the rest properly– or time ran out, or both. Certainly these movies have included some surprisingly cheap-looking CGI– and as far I know it was all done by Weta, so it’s hardly likely to be a matter of simple incompetence.