Giant monsters and huge set pieces couldn’t have been feasible before the advent of CGI. Photo credit: Pierre Vinet/ New Line Prods. © 2002.

The Truth About CGI
In a time, when certain critics are raging against CGI as perhaps the death knell of live-action filmmaking, one has to look at the flipside of such paranoia and understand the liberating aspects of CGI, which forever frees filmmakers from cheap sets, cheap rear projection, inactive matte paintings and matte lines and, worst of all, bulky men in bulky monster suits, making believe that they are gnomes or dragons. Indeed, until the advent of CGI, visual effects certainly helped expand the concept of “suspension of disbelief.” But there are always Luddites (such as those anti-industrial revolution fanatics) who want to destroy modern technology. When film was new, the first critics wanted filmed theater, with actors visible from head to toe. Close ups were considered incomprehensible — it was thought that audiences couldn’t accept “half an actor.” But audiences learned to accept and enjoy many rapid innovations in the technological novelty that became an art form. Oddly enough, in the case of Lord of the Rings, the new technology is in service to a story that in many ways is anti-industrial itself, a story that conveys Tolkien’s wartime trauma, with the Orcs and Saruman representing the encroachment of mechanization, and Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf representing the pastoral peace of a vanishing era.

Henry Turner is a writer and award-winning filmmaker, whose Lovecraft-inspired horror feature, Wilbur Whateley, won top awards at the Chicago International Film Festival. His writing on film has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, L’ecran Fantastique, Variety and many other publications. A longtime film festival executive, he has programmed for the Slamdance Film Festival, and currently heads FilmTraffick L.A.