Since its announcement, the upcoming Lord Of The Rings movies have been met with trepidation. It’s not the fault of the films, which are still more than a year out. On one hand, there’s certainly something exciting about the creative team behind the original Rings trilogy reuniting for another adventure. On the other, there’s something worrying about the creative team behind the Hobbit trilogy reuniting for another adventure. We’re trying to reserve judgement until we see the thing because, who knows, maybe the movie about Gandalf and Aragorn’s failure to catch Gollum before Sauron will be an exciting new entry in the series. However, each announcement about the film, and its legacy sequel follow-up, has made the Black Pit in our stomachs grow deeper and darker. Unfortunately, Hunt For Gollum director Andy Serkis, still nursing the wounds of his non-partisan, fence-walking, ass-forward Animal Farm, isn’t helping.
In a new interview with Variety, Serkis echoed Peter Jackson’s view on AI, e.g., it’s a tool that can be wielded for good or ill, like a certain One Ring, according to Boromir. In Serkis’ view, as long as AI isn’t “exploitative” or “harming anybody” or “telling mistruths,” it’s okay. Ignoring how things ended up for the Captain of the White Tower, Serkis is doubling down on the things that worry everyone about this new quest—that its digital effects will overpower the production. Namely, bringing the original cast back for another trip to Middle-earth 25 years later will require “a little bit of de-aging for some of the characters and machine learning is part of the process.”
Though he doesn’t say which characters need de-aging (probably not Aragorn), Serkis does bring up a form of machine learning used in the production of Lord Of The Rings, a “program which allowed 1000s of orcs to all have their own individual mindset. So that is a brilliant example of an incredible use of AI.” Which is to say, 25 years ago, when this technology wasn’t being rammed down our throats, it was exciting to see Weta develop little CGI background orcs doing randomized movements. Still, the filmmaker says that there will be no “AI shots” in the movie and that “every shot is created in a traditional way.” Serkis even hits upon something he should be talking up way more as the production gets underway: “One of the things actually that I really wanted to do with this film was to bring back all of the great filmmaking skills, from miniatures to prosthetics and marry them up, because that’s my taste. I like it when you mix up different filmmaking techniques.” We’d like to hear more about that and much, much less about how we’re going to use data sets to make Elijah Wood look 19 years old again.
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