Message in a Battle

The WP has a tale titled The Messages in a Battle about the recent growth of computer-generated battle scenes in movies, now that you don't have to pay all those extras. RotK clearly wouldn't have been much of a movie if the battle scenes hadn't been so good.

Re:Normally...

[mirko]

I am not sure : I went to the pictures in order to view this 3rd episode and I have to say I was not as impressed as I was after the previous one.
I think something was missing but it has nothing to do with the CGI.
I have NOT read the book and I do not plan to.
That's why it was difficult for me to clearly understand why some characters appeared all of a sudden.
They looked like patches applied to fulfill some scenario hole.
Of course, I can imagine some angry moderator will kick my butt because I dare criticize what he might have perceive as this year's finest movie but now : face it : if you disagree with me while you've actually read the book, then you just cannot get my point.
Now well, if Michael indeed read the book he has gotten far more of this movie than I and could indeed be trolling, if he hadn't, then he might be sincere.

Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.

[ozbon]

Personally, I think Gollum was utterly believable within the scope of LOTR. OK, not human - but the interaction with surroundings, the characterisation, all seemed pretty much perfect.

Dobby the House Elf in Harry Potter was ground-breaking, but Gollum seems to be a whole generation above that.

Re:Matrix

[iainl]

Have I missed them, then? I wasn't aware that the nominations for the 2004 Academy Awards were announced yet. Its worth noting that the first Matrix film did indeed take the effects Oscar.

I'd also question your second statement - I found the CG battle scenes in Revolutions to be decidedly hit-and-miss, and on other levels they weren't really doing a huge amount over and above what they won that first Oscar for. I'd be nominating X2 (for the stunning work on Nightcrawler), Return Of The King (Gollum is as much improved on Two Towers as he was there from Fellowship, even before you look at the battle scenes) and perhaps even Kill Bill's gore work over the new Matrix films.

Re:Quality of RotK

[Anonymous Coward]

"that's worth a patent"

A Bug's Life actually did the artificial bloopers a long time ago.

Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.

[bugbread]

Interesting aside:

One of the frequent dangers of car accidents is that people will pull an accident victim from their car, assuming it will blow up (as they've seen it a billion times in the movies). Properly aerating and dispersing gasoline such that it is explosive is pretty rare in car accidents, though, and the much greater danger is that a person with spine injuries will be further injured by...people pulling them out of the car.

Samurai banners

[TheTick]

From the article:

The film's director, Ed Zwick, who is working from the model of the great Kurosawa, color-codes his various units by flags that are mounted on helmets. Possibly this is historically true; possibly some genius on Kurosawa's staff thought it up.

Neither Kurosawa nor Zwick "thought it up". These banners are called sashimono, and they were affixed to the back, not the helmet. Sorry to nitpick, but a little research effort on the part of a writer for a major news outlet would be appreciated.

Re:Message in a Review

[selan]

Except that this article isn't a review of ROTK, it's a discussion about battle sequences in recent movies. The actual review [washingtonpost.com] by the author of this article (who happens to have won this year's Pulitzer for criticism [pulitzer.org]) discusses the specific issues you raised.