I just saw a commercial for The Two Towers that was completely about the great reviews that Gollum/Andy Serkis has been getting for his wonderful performance. The commercial features several seconds of footage from a scene with one of Gollum’s more pitiable, human-like moments. It seemed like a pretty blatant play for some Oscar attention. (well-deserved, IMHO)
I know not everyone will believe that his performance was Oscar-worthy and the point can certainly be made that there was more to Gollum than just Serkis. There was a team of digital animators providing Gollum’s visual presence including facial expressions. But Serkis did a lot more than just the voice. Apparently he bodily played the part of Gollum in every one of Gollum’s scenes–first with the other actors in the scene and then again recreating the same scenes in a studio using motion-capture animation technology so that Gollum’s moves are Serkis’ moves.
So I ask you fellow Dopers.
Has anyone else seen this commercial?
Do you think this performance is Oscar-worthy?
Assuming the Academy doesn’t create a new category like “best performance by an animated character,” is it possible (however unlikely) that Serkis could be nominated for an Oscar? I mean, is there any rule that says he couldn’t be nominated for the traditional Best Supporting Actor category?
Possible? Who knows.
Deserved? Hoo-boy, yes. That was an incredible performance. He totally captured all the reasons I’ve always felt sorry for Gollum, even when I wanted Frodo to cut his throat.
There’s no rule that would prevent voice actors from receiving nominations in the acting category. That said, it ain’t gonna happen. Gollum is as much a creation of the animators as the actor who voiced him, which in many voters eyes makes voice acting half a performance. Body language and facial expressions are a big part of any performance, and as much work as Serkis put into helping the animators create these, it isn’t him up there on the screen that we see. There was Oscar buzz for Robin Williams’ portrayal as the Genie in Aladdin, but nothing came of it.
I think that the creation of a voice acting category would be a good idea, though.
Gollum is pure Andy Serkis, for anyone who’s paying attention.
The contribution of the CGI artists is hardly different from the contribution of makeup artists in the performance of many other Academy Award® winners. The expressions are Serkis’s. The eye movements are Serkis’s. The voice, obviously, is Serkis’s.
The technology is wonderful, but it wouldn’t have been worth beans without the performance of Andy Serkis. The animators basically copied key-frames from a real, live, breathing performance, it would have had the same emotional and visceral impact if you saw a high-eight videotape of the original performance of Andy in denim and a cotton t-shirt. All the rest is window-dressing.
Gollum is the most compelling and engaging character in the movie. Worthy of a nomination? You bet your ass. Worthy of the award? That depends on the competition.
I’m all for the creation of a voice-acting category. I’d say Serkis definately deserves it.
But, no matter how much the CGI animators based their work on his actual performance, the fact of the matter is…he’s not actually on screen. A computer animation is. Any award he got would have to share credit with the CGI people, and I just don’t see that going down with the Academy.
I don’t think Peter Jackson’s comparison of Serkis’s performance with that of John Hurt’s in “The Elephant Man” is valid. It’s one thing to throw prosthetics on a actor, another thing entirely to replace his entire image with animation.
Absolutely Serkis has earned it. His physical contortions reminded me of Michael Clark’s twisty performance as Caliban in Prospero’s Books. Gollum is a Caliban sort of figure.
I said he deserved the nomination about thirty seconds after the movie was over, and I stand by that. It’s an amazing performance that is far, far more than a voiceover. Serkis should be nominated right along with the more traditional performances.
Smeagol should be nominated and given an Oscar even if it’s a one time only thing simply because Smeagol was so well realized in the movie and actually conveyed emotion, pathos and personality.
What would be cool would be a shot of Lucas sitting the audience sitting next to Jar-Jar after Smeagol goes up to accept his award and Lucas smacks the back of Jar-Jar’s head. Of course Smeagol would have to be wearing his furry loincloth and a lovely black, silk bow tie when he accepts.
Eat it, George Lucas you talentless fat fuck.
The performance is not pure Serkis–Gollum does many things in the movie that Serkis could not. (I doubt Serkis climbed a cliff face head-downward, for example!) The animators obviously tweaked the character’s movements in various scenes. Compare the shots of Serkis going after the fish in the making-of TV show with the shots of Gollum in the movie. Gollum’s movements are much sharper, faster, more frog-like.
While it’s absolutely true that the performance would be nothing without Serkis, it’s also true that Serkis’s performance would be nothing without the animators. To put it bluntly: if the animators had not done an excellent job on their end, no one would be mentioning Serkis and Oscar in the same sentence.
None of this detracts from Serkis’s achievement. It’s as much his performance as any “real life” role which uses lots of make up and stunt doubles–a good comparison (in terms of technology, not quality!) would be Jim Carrey in The Grinch.
No doubt one day the Academy will eventually create a Best Performance in an Animated Role award to deal with this problem. It’ll probably take another decade for that to happen, though.
Serkis will have to be content with the buzz, and a slim chance of a nomination. It’s very unlikely that he’ll win, though. Many actors in the Academy are going to see this as “actors being replaced by computers,” even though that’s not the case.
Mind you, there’s some chance the Academy will award Gollum a Special Achievement Oscar. That would avoid, for now, all the tricky issues of how to deal with this kind of performance.
One thing I like about the MTV movie awards is that they’ll create a category especially for Serkis/Gollum if need be. (I also like them because they take out all of the technical awards that nobody outside the film industry cares about.) That’s the only CGI character I’ve ever actually forgotten wasn’t real while watching him.
Not meaning to hijack, but another performance I think deserves an Oscar nomination but will never get it is Matthew Lillard as Shaggy in SCOOBY DOO. If you watch any of Lillard’s other performances and then his Shaggy, you’ll realize he put as much effort into creating that character as if he’d been cast in a 4 hour arthouse film that nobody watched and all critics loved.
I’ve seen that commercial, and I wondered the same thing. It’s pretty apparent that they’re working early to establish Oscar recognition for Serkis.
I totally think it’s valid, and deserved, and completely analagous to John Hurt’s nomination for The Elephant Man. Of course the animators’ role in the performance is important and shouldn’t be understated. But that’s a separate category, and I’d love to see that nominated too.
Well, by that logic then none of the actors are eligible. There are several scenes where Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Gimli are digitally inserted or manipulated. I’ll say this: if any of the other actors did get a nomination but not Serkis, it’d be grossly unfair; Gollum is by far the most engaging character in the movie.
I’m glad you opened this, Tangent (BTW, are you by any chance the Tangent who worked for Quantum Computer Services back before it became AOL?)
IMHO, this is going to force the Academy to make a ruling on what constitutes “a performance” in the sense of modern CGI-aided moviemaking.
I have it on good authority that Andy Serkis, in addition to doing the voicing, made every move that we see Gollum making on screen, and that the animation was guided by the sensors embedded in the rubber suit he wore in playing the role. The “coming down a wall headfirst” was, of course, filmed sideways and rotated, just as Fred Astaire never actually danced on a ceiling.
That the redigitization of Serkis’s character to produce a believable 500-year-old “attenuated” (Tolkien’s term) and obsessive Stoor character was far more complete than in other films, IMHO, should not matter – he played the role in exactly the same way as every actor and actress has done since Bertha Venation, and was subject to editing by director and editing crew in the same way as they all were, based on the state of the art at the time that their movies were made.
And IMHO he deserves a best supporting or special Oscar for his performance – by far the most thoroughgoing portrayal of any character in either LOTR movie to date (Relevant quote from a parody: “I almost had another facial expression!”).
This afternoon I saw the Two Towers for the second time – and the second time in three days. IMHO, Serkis is worthy of a nomination.
The following may contain what some might view as spoiler material:
[spoiler]
The portrayal of Smeagol is nearly perfect. Serkis brought to life a character whose mind and spirit have been ravaged for ages by daily contact with and worship of evil.
The interactions with Frodo and Sam were brilliant from first to last. Physically, verbally, emotionally.
The Slinker and Stinker dialogues were beautifully handled (even the one false note of pop culture reference humour was only that – one brief atonality). Serkis gave us the pitifulness and admirability of Gollum; that after all those years of scrabbling in darkness buried in his miserly obsession with a power he has no hope of ever wielding, yet cannot relinquish, there remains a trace of good in him and he makes us hope against hope that that residue will win out. Serkis portrayed these things! How do you do that and not be worthy of at least an Oscar nomination?[/spoiler]
Polycarp, yes, Serkis did enact every scene with motion-capture sensors on. But the animators couldn’t use that raw information without changing it. (For one thing, Gollum is a different height relative to Sam and Frodo than Serkis is.) So what you’re seeing is Serkis’s performance as mediated and tweaked by the animators. Again, compare Serkis scrabbling for the fish in the stream with Gollum in the actual movie to see the difference.
Agtain, this isn’t to say that Serkis didn’t contribute an Oscar-worthy performance: it’s just to say that the talent and skill of the animators is involved too. Which is why the Academy really needs a distinct category for this.
“2) Do you think this performance is Oscar-worthy?”
Absolutly!
“3) Assuming the Academy doesn’t create a new category like “best performance by an animated character,” is it possible (however unlikely) that Serkis could be nominated for an Oscar? I mean, is there any rule that says he couldn’t be nominated for the traditional Best Supporting Actor category?”
I think it’s very possible. I don’t know about any rules, but I think it’s likely that he will be nominated and he most certainly deserves it. As for winning, well, like Larry Mudd said, it depends on the competition.
i have never understood the ‘Academy’. They have given awards to people who, in my opinion, haven’t earned it. Last year being the case. I watched as FOTR and A Beautiful Mind came to be the top contenders, but who gets best actor but Denzel Washington, in a movie where he plays his typical ‘pissed off at injustice–or justice for that matter’. So, Gollum will not make it, some cheap actor or actress will, for a flat performance. The Academy is guided not by opinion, but who can get their attention. PJ is right in pushing Serkis for the nomination though. I’d like to see Gollum win best supporting actor over some flat performance from The Hours or Catch Me If You Can. (I didn’t say i don’t like those films, but Tom Hanks has had his time and it is done, and Leo is nothing more than a teen idol, and can only be that. If this offends, i do not mean it.
Now that i have read this…i HAVE to watch the Academy Awards!
The academy awards are primarily about hollywood presenting an image of itself to the public, more often concerned with politics and sentimentality rather than artistry. That said, I would not be surprised if they presented a “special achievement” award in this case. It certainly would be well deserved. This is the first time (IMHO) a CGI character became “real,” not merely a technical curiousity.
Interesting discussion topic, but let’s remember how meaningless the “Oscars” really are. I mean, “Streetcar Named Desire” garnered acting Oscars for everyone EXCEPT the lead actor (Marlon Brando, who was brilliant) because they had to give that to Bogart (for his worst role ever, in “African Queen”) on the “soon to croak” rule. Sheeesh!..Timmy