By admin 
Most Hollywood movies incorporate a degree of special effects these days, but some genres are more reliant on digital trickery than others. For example, it would be pretty hard to pull off a convincing fantasy film without the aid of VFX. Many successful movies in the fantasy genre have utilized a mixture of practical and digital effects, and if you need proof that this approach is a wise one, we have five words for you: “The Lord of the Rings.”
Peter Jackson’s indie roots came in handy when he made his “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The filmmaker famously used the forced perspective technique to make his actors appear a lot smaller or larger than they are in real life, which was a must in a world inhabited by Hobbits. He also had several intricate miniatures built, which look fantastic in the finished films. However, there were some things that simply could not be achieved practically, and this is where the groundbreaking work of New Zealand VFX house Weta came in.
Jackson’s original trilogy set the tone for big-budget modern fantasy heading into the 21st century, and the acclaimed director returned to film the “Hobbit” trilogy a decade later. In recent years, Prime Video has channeled Middle-earth magic through its “The Rings of Power” series. Special effects are rampant throughout all of these projects — but what do they look like before they’re gussied up? Let’s see what the iconic franchise to rule them all looks like without special effects.
Benedict Cumberbatch was more than the voice of Smaug
Benedict Cumberbatch was a busy guy while filming the “Hobbit” movies: He voiced both Sauron as the shady Necromancer and the dragon Smaug the Golden. These two characters were brought to life with CGI, but Cumberbatch contributed more than just his voice. With Smaug, in particular, the British actor went all out, donning a motion capture suit and getting down onto his belly. Behind-the-scenes clips show Cumberbatch acting out his lines while in the suit. While it looks somewhat bizarre, the end result was one of the best moments in an otherwise middling “Hobbit” trilogy — the confrontation between Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Smaug.
In the final version of that portion of the story, the audience is treated to an epic treasure room in the Lonely Mountain. As Bilbo (invisible thanks to the One Ring) scampers to safety, Smaug emerges from a mountain of gold and hunts around for his unseen visitor while talking to him. Seeing the dragon’s gigantic motions in the movie and comparing them to Cumberbatch’s own serpentine recreations on the studio floor takes the epic scene to a whole new level.
The troll that Aragorn duels was supposed to be Sauron
At the end of “The Return of the King,” Aragorn leads the Armies of the West to the Black Gate of Mordor, where he challenges Sauron — only to be surrounded by the Dark Lord’s armies. In that encounter, he goes toe-to-toe with a huge armored troll. However, Aragorn was originally supposed to have a dramatic duel not with a troll, but with Sauron himself.
In a behind-the-scenes featurette, director Peter Jackson revealed that they planned on having an bright white figure (meant to represent Sauron’s angelic guise as Annatar) come to face Aragorn, which would then turn into a very tall, black-armored version of Sauron. Jackson ultimately decided that he wanted to focus more on Frodo and Sam as they entered Mount Doom with the One Ring, and so the Sauron part of the scene was cut.
We still see snippets of the Sauron duel in the final film, however, since they repurposed Aragorn’s shots for his troll duel. The aforementioned featurette includes some low-res behind-the-scenes shots in which Viggo Mortensen swings his sword at a stunt double dressed as Sauron, prepping for a battle that would never make it to the big screen as originally intended.
The Mouth of Sauron’s mouth was originally much smaller
In the extended edition of “The Return of the King,” right before Aragorn duels the troll that was supposed to be Sauron, the titular character rides out to negotiate with Sauron’s representative, a nameless figure fittingly called the Mouth of Sauron. Played by Bruce Spence, the character has a brief time on screen before Aragorn beheads him. But before the negotiations conclude in bloodshed, we get a few close-up shots, revealing a half-priest, half-warrior figure with a helmet that covers the top half of his face so that only his gigantic mouth is visible. The helmet is real, and Spence wore a prosthetic appliance to create split skin around his mouth.
Despite the grizzly makeup, the footage didn’t wow Peter Jackson when he came to edit it. He tried digitally turning the mouth sideways (some of the creepiest body horror stuff you’ll find in any Middle-earth project), but it still didn’t hit the spot. In the end, he kept the mouth horizontal, but the VFX team at Weta Digital enlarged it by about 200 percent for extra creepiness. “I was really pleased with the way the effect worked because it gives you this uneasy sense that something’s weird,” Jackson said in a behind-the-scenes featurette. “I like it. It’s one of those slightly subtle but sort of disturbing effects.”
Andy Serkis really invested in Gollum’s facial expressions
One of the issues with CGI characters is that, while you can use an actor for their voice and can even capture their motions, it’s hard to make close-ups of their face believable. It’s that lack of human expression that cranks up the uncanny valley element to eleven. This is why the “Lord of the Rings” franchise was able to make a splash by investing not just in a fully computer-generated Gollum (which was a major breakthrough in itself), but also by capturing the facial expressions of Andy Serkis in detail.
Those dots that you see on an actor’s face when they are in a motion capture suit are designed to pick up the smallest elements of their facial expressions, and Peter Jackson pushed this to the limit to channel the incredible Gollum energy of Serkis. While Gollum has impressive facial expressions in both trilogies, it’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” where the technique hits its peak. In behind-the-scenes footage from the first “Hobbit” film, Serkis can be seen plastered in motion capture gear making faces that clearly made it through to the final Gollum performance.