MN A nit to pick with Peter Jackson: Gollum vs. Jar-Jar

Watching the long bonus material documentary on the TTT, I was struck by some statements by Peter Jackson. In discussing the way that Gollum was created he called it historic and a piece a of movie making history. Now correct me if I'm wrong but pretty much all of the techniques used on Gollum were pioneered by Lucasfilm for Jar-Jar, including motion-capture suit and digital animation. They also talked about how they taught a make-up artist to use a computer so they could get the realistic build-up of skin tones right on Gollum. Again, this is something Lucasfilm has been doing on digital characters all along, think of the especially fine work on the Kimoans in AOTC.

Maybe these things were historic for Weta Workshop since they'd never done anything like this before, but as for making claims for any real innovations in effects in connection to Gollum, I'm a bit suspicious.

 

Yea Like Jar Jar or not he was ground breaking.

I don't think it's right for PJ to claime otherwise. Problem is because so many people hate Jar Jar they will be willing to over look that.

 

Yes Jar Jar was the first of his kind, but the actors didn't interact very well with him. He really didn't show emotion. I rank Jar Jar just as useless as the space monkey in Lost in Space. Gollum on the other hand truely had an impact on the story. He interacted seemlessly with the characters and showed great emotions and expressions. Gollum is truely landmark in my opinion.

 

jar jar is like atari 2600 and gollum is like ps2. the range of facial movements and the sheer expressiveness of gollum's face are light years beyond jar jar.

jar jar had some expressions but they were horribly exaggerated IMO. almost to the point of cartoonishness. jar jar's face was all hand animated. no capturing was used because his face is so outlandish.

gollum's face reacts very realistically as would the actor playing him. Weta captured Andy Serkis' facial movements and applied them to the computer model hence the realistic movement and expressions.

i can't deny that jar jar was ground breaking. for his time he was. gollum is equally ground breaking.

 

So here is the kicker.....


Do you think they would have even tried Gollum if not for Jar Jar?



Yes we all agree that Gollum was more successful. as the tech improves the products will improve. That is certain. Had Jar Jar come later I am sure he would have been better than he was. But would studio executives have been willing to dump money into Gollum if George hadn't already shown a CGI character could be done?

 

Jar-jar was the first main CGI creature.

Gollum was the first one that really interacted with the other people, and was really the star of the show. you can't say that about jarjar.

 

Oh Jar Jar interacted with the real people. It was just not as successful as Gollum was is all. It was good enough where I never was taken out of the movie so it worked for the most part.

 

Well Yoda was an entirely CG character in Episode II and he interacted very well with all of the actors and even showed emotions. Now that is groundbreaking.

I have met some Lord of the Ring actors and during a Star Wars Q & A one of the actors was in the back snickering and telling people that not to waist their time with Star Wars.

That right there made me hate a couple things about Lord of the Rings. A couple of months back they had a show where they talked about the making of ROTK, and they were talking like that bluescreen techniques that they have been doing in Star Wars since 1977 was brand new and the reporters have called them visionaries.

Sorry for ranting, but show some respect for Star Wars...if it wasn't for Star Wars then there wouldn't be a Lord of the Rings trilogy.

 

Yea Yoda and the Clone Troopers.


I didn't even know the Clones were all CGI until after I saw the movie a couple of times. I would have swore at least the close ups were real guys in Armor. Especially the one in the sand with Padme. Obviously a guy in a faceless mask is easier than Gollum but I do think people are saying ga ga things over the LOTR that are a bit of a stretch when they start using words like Groundbreaking and Visionary.

Don't get me wrong. I think PJ and crew did some amazing things. and they did them better than anything that has been done to date for sure. I just think the foundation for what they did was laid down by George and his company so it isn't exactly correct to call what they did Groundbreaking or first of it's kind. It's just an improvement.

 

My point exactly Doright. All special effects are built on past experiences, making small improvements but occasionally people do stuff that really has never been tried before, such as Lucas did on ANH and like it or not in the Phantom Menace because such a huge amount of it was digital. And I kept hearing things like "invented entirely new way of making movies" attached to the LOTR trilogy and it just bugged me because they improved on existing and proven techniques.

 

"Well Yoda was an entirely CG character in Episode II and he interacted very well with all of the actors and even showed emotions. Now that is groundbreaking."

he did? when did he show emotion? i must have been sleeping during that part. i didnt feel anything for yoda. its just yoda. i thought he was animated well but nothing i hadn't seen before.

yoda have shown emotion but it was not in the same way that gollum did. you see confusion, happiness(when he gets the fish), sadness, anger, and shear treachery. you hate gollum because you know he is up to no good but at the same time feel pity for him and what the ring has turned him into.

that is something difficult for a human actor to pull off and unheard of for a cgi character. it just simply has never been done on such a grand scale.

what do you feel for jar jar? for the most part you feel he is a hinderence of the other characters. he's constantly in the way and gumming up the works. you might feel pity for him because he is such a fool. i understand that he is there for comic relief but he didn't have to be a complete dope the whole time.

jar jar ground breaking? sure! gollum however is a fully realized leading character. that is something that jar jar will never be.

the bar has been raised and i hope GL and ILM took notes.

 

Goat put it pretty well. I am not for a second going to say jarjar wasnt' groundbreaking. same with yoda. (btw, yoda may not have shown as much character as gollum, but he was a heck of a lot better than puppet yoda.) Gollum was just a wonderfully done thing, the acting and cgi were almost perfect.

ps. doright, i knew the clonetroopers were digital, just cause i had experience in 3d rendering, but did you know that while the orcs are marching up to helms deep, all that was done in massive? thats right, not just cgi, but massive.

 

thats right, not just cgi, but massive.


I don't know what you mean by "massive"

Is that the deal they had cooked up that made all the Orcs act independently?

 

Yup.