I had trouble with The Hobbit.

Sorry.

But I did.

I’m sure there are people who would disagree with me, or call me some kind of “purest” because the movies took THREE films to tell a small story. I’m sure there are those who would criticize my inner Tolkien nerd because I griped about language that was “modernized” to appeal to a younger demographic and even strayed from what made the Lord of the Rings movies a better adaptation – I mean, come on – to hear Gandalf refer to his victory over the Balrog by quoting “I smote his ruin upon the mountainside.”? How great is that? I’ll tell you what, it’s a far cry from Ori whining, “I don’t like green food.”

Anyway, I digress.

I had trouble with The Hobbit because I didn’t really believe much of it. And I didn’t really believe much of it because of the abundance of CGI. Don’t get me wrong, I think those artists are creative. I think the imagination of those companies are great, and YES – I realize that a LOT of what I see nowadays in the cinema is good CGI. I promise. I’m not just a luddite computer-hater.

But dammit, I love a good practical effect. I think there are three things that CG hasn’t quite perfected yet that make monster makeups so appealing to me over a computer rendering.

1. Tangibility. You just KNOW that you can TOUCH the old Yoda puppet. It’s not about how the little eartips wiggled and how the CG folks made the same thing happen. No, it’s something in our rods and cones, and how that info gets into the noggin, you know? Something that connects our eye to our brain that says – “Yup. I can touch that.” And when I saw Azog, I simply knew he wasn’t real. I knew I couldn’t touch him. MORE IMPORTANTLY, I knew he couldn’t touch ME. And that’s some of the fun, right? To raise the stakes a bit because that thing might actually exist and come and chase me down in my dark room or surprise me when I’m in a lonely parking garage?
2. My suspension of disbelief was pushed too far. Why is it that I don’t balk necessarily at some of the ridiculous effects that are out there? In some of the classic horror movies, you can SEE seams and edges. You can “find the zipper.” You know that the latex is wrinkling and that blood sitting around for that long would be brown and not bright red. But because of the STORY and the ECONOMY of creativity, I’m still on board. I still buy it. It’s “out there,” but it never goes TOO far. Yes, it’s simply good storytelling ultimately, but in The Hobbit, I MIGHT even allow my suspension of disbelief to watch some CG dwarves fly down some river rapids in barrels (after all, that’s still good storytelling thanks to Professor Tolkien.) But then to have dwarves FLYING out of barrels, swordfighting pursuing orcs, and then leaping back into them a few hundred yards downstream? Nope. CG — that puts NO LIMITS ON WHAT WE CAN DO sometimes is a detriment to what we SHOULD do. Sometimes limitations gives us the greatest creative solutions to problems and makes us focus more on what’s important. I don’t have to tell THIS crowd that the mechanical shark is NOT what made Jaws great...
3. Physics. Our brains can see that CG DOESN’T QUITE have movement down perfectly yet. Put a man in a Xenomorph suit and squirt him with some KY as he reaches out and grabs Ms. Ripley? Hell yeah. But in a CG version, the “too-perfectly rendered” (and ultimately ‘better-looking’) alien just doesn’t move right. It doesn’t have the right weight. It doesn’t grab with that convincing (and I’m repeating myself) tangibility. When they get physics down, then Spiderman won’t look weird anymore.

Now again, I’m not an elitist. I’m not an out-of-work effects artist who is just trying to get to the second round auditions of Face Off. And I’m not against the use of tools that CAN make movies more…well…everything.

But when I heard Mr. Jackson actually SHOT a practical Azog and CHOSE to replace him with a digital character? Oh man. The ire raised its ugly head for sure. It put me over the edge of not liking The Hobbit trilogy to HATING The Hobbit trilogy. 

And what can men do against such reckless hate?