The Use of Practical & Digital Effects in Film
The Lord of the Rings movies are some of the greatest movie masterpieces of all time. The movies were shot at the turn of the 21st century, and relied heavily on practical effects such as using location miniatures, meticulous attention to detail on costumes, body doubles, and forced perspective to weave small characters (like hobbits) into scenes with human-sized creatures. It has achieved an enduring believable fantasy that has aged really well.
This reliance on practical effects is why The Lord of the Rings trilogy speaks to me so much and The Hobbit movies do not. It is also why the original Jurassic Park films look pretty realistic, while the new ones look more digital.
The Emotional Bridge Between Fiction & Reality
While watching The Lord of the Rings movies, I can get lost in the adventure. Hours go by before I realize that the day has passed. With The Hobbit films, I would be painfully in the present. “They forgot to correct Legolas’ eye colour again,” I would think. (Orlando Bloom, the actor who plays Legolas has brown eyes and so he would typically wear blue contacts when filming, but this wasn’t consistent in The Hobbit films.)
Or I would be thinking about what I was going to make for dinner afterward. My point is, it took me out of the moment. I was very aware that I was in a movie theatre watching a movie, whereas with The Lord of the Rings, I felt like I was actually in the midst of the adventure with them. This showed in the depth of my emotions.
Similarly in the early Jurassic Park films I was on the edge of my seat, such as when the tyrannosaurus rex was chasing them in the car. When watching the later films, I find myself less emotionally connected to the story. My emotions aren’t pulled in such a way as they were in the early films. Plus, there is greater capacity for jump scare when a person is immersed in the film. Not if you aren’t mentally or emotionally present in it.
This I think, is the difference between art and entertainment- art tugs at something deeper, more emotional, than entertainment usually does. Although, both have value to society.
Fantasy Needs a Touch of Reality
Of course, CGI isn’t inherently bad, there are a lot of benefits to its use. But when it is used carelessly or excessively it can become a barrier, not a bridge to immersion. There is a very important element of realism needed, even in fictional stories. This can be visual or emotional, but must exist somehow for us to feel a connection to the story.
Animated children’s cartoons, for example, do not pretend to be real. They include talking animals and characters spontaneously bursting into song, but they still hook us somehow; usually by relatable characters or strong emotional messages like the value of friendship or the loss of a parent.
This emotional pull is also the reason why some surrealist art captures us while other surrealist art just looks nonsensical and uninspiring. Fictional art- in all of its forms- seems to be a mysterious mix of fantasy and reality, truth and fiction, and the relatable and the newly imagined.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on July 15, 2025)