im generally fairly anti-CGI, but that davey jones is indeed impressive. i think avatars CGI is grossly over rated. its all so blatantly CGI which makes in an instant failure to me.
I'm not a die hard Avatar fan, but come on. Of COURSE its "blatantly" CGI....because none of its real. There are no 12 foot tall blue zebra people running around, flying on dragons between floating mountains.
Its like watching Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles and saying "those are so blatantly rubber suits".
And bare in mind, outside of the immediate sets within the "human world", EVERYTHING else was CGI. Even the freaking rocks and vines of the floating mountain scenes. Outside of the fact that you KNOW its cgi because nothing like it exists, how is this a failure?
But to get back on track, I'll have to say that I've always had an issue with Gollum. I'm a HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE lotr fan; hell, if I'm not popping a South Park DVD in to fall asleep to, its one of the LOTR movies/extras.
Yeah, when we first see Gollum in the bright sunlight (when Frodo has him tied in elven rope); the breath was knocked out of me because it looked so good. But as I started to really watch the character, paying attention to him, i noticed how much more they could have done to really sell the character. For being so skinny you should really be able to see his muscles/tendons/etc move, but you don't. His muscles, ribs, etc, are all just a texture on a wire frame. Now, I love the character, and I know its not that big of an issue, and what Weta DID do was a huge accomplisment, and i would certainly never say the cgi was bad, but Gollum was always something that bothered me once i got past the "woah" factor.
