The Hall of Fire DoS Review Thread

[Smaug's voice]

puisque vous préférez CGI-orcs.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Details, SV. Details.

I like the look of the CGI hero orcs (Azog and Bolg). But I really dislike the overuse of CGI, which has lead PJ to give us millions of orcs doing impossible things.

[Primula Baggins]

I have to agree about that. The mathematical formations in RotK just do not look real to me. And a battle of, say, ten thousand versus ten thousand becomes an uninvolving abstraction very quickly.

[Passdagas the Brown]

It's really startling how bigger budgets to CGI can lead to lower quality overall.

I'm going to bring up Game of Thrones, but in a negative light (so don't kill me, Voronwë). In the finale for season 4, there was a scene that involved the arrival of some horsemen. The producers had some money, so they amped up the size of the army with CGI, and gave us these birds' eye view shots of a pincer maneuver. It looked like something from some of the wider battle shots in RotK. In other words, fake! Not least because it all seemed a bit too computer-perfect. The "mathematical formations" that Prim mentioned in RotK. Had they stuck with camera trickery, and real horsemen, it would have been far more effective, IMO.

[Smaug's voice]

And a battle of, say, ten thousand versus ten thousand becomes an uninvolving abstraction very quickly.

Depends.
Till this day I find the entire charge of the Rohirrim very moving and involving, whether it be the close-up shots or the large swooping shots.

The mathematical formation that I found hard to believe in RotK was when they marched on the Black Gate and allowed Sauron's armies to encircle them.
I don't remember anything else striking odd to me, in the rest of the film though.

[axordil]

Now I feel like going back and watching the big battle toward the end of Spartacus for comparison. It may be that any sufficiently large choreographed movement of figures looks funky.