The iconic writer/director George Miller has revealed that Gollum from The Lord of the Rings films trilogy served as a major source of inspiration behind the making of his beloved film, Happy Feet. Based on J.R.R. Tolkien's popular fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings follows the character of Hobbit Frodo Baggins, (Elijah Wood) who is chosen to destroy the chaotic Ring of power while simultaneously conquering its creator - the master of evil, formerly known as Dark Lord Sauron. Frodo isn’t in the least bit alone though, as throughout his adventure he meets an eclectic group of underdog heroes.
The trilogy chronicles Frodo's journey traveling across Middle Earth, all the way from his original stomping grounds to the hell-ridden country, Mordor. Peter Jackson's film adaptations received universal praise amongst critics and audiences following their release. Still to this day, The Lord of the Rings is almost unanimously regarded as the most successful movie trilogy of all time, winning 17 Academy Awards out of a grand total of 30 nominations. During the events throughout the duration of the second film, Frodo meets the notorious creature Gollum (Andy Serkis), who was once the owner and gatekeeper of the Ring and now suddenly wants it back. Stuck between what seems like two completely polarizing personalities, Gollum switches between helping and plotting against Frodo and Sam as they carry out their task to destroy the Ring. Yet, ultimately he ends up turning against them and attempting to murder both of them. Although the intention behind the character of Gollum was to originally have him be completely animated and just simply have Serkis provide the voice-over, Jackson quickly changed his mind.
Jackson decided to have Serkis instead play the role on set via motion-capture so that his facial expressions and physical attributes could also add to Gollum's overall image alongside his voice. This breakthrough idea that Jackson implemented is overall what helped the trilogy take home three consecutive Oscars for Best Visual Effects. The revolutionary motion-capture technology has also opened the door toward Jackson being established and regarded as a motion-capture performance artist. Jackson's innovative, creative, and ground-breaking use of real-motion-capture systems inspired many other movies to do the same, most notably Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Avatar. However, its profound influence didn’t impact the limited genre of live-action films alone. Now, Miller has revealed in a recent interview with Deadline that production on his hit animated comedy Happy Feet took massive inspiration from the motion-capture work displayed on Gollum.
It turns out that Miller was concerned about a key aspect of the penguin characters in Happy Feet, fearful that the state of animation at the time wouldn't be able to properly translate his vision to the screen. "With Happy Feet, I had the film, I had the story...but I wasn’t sure how to do it as an animation... Andrew Lesnie, who shot the Babe movies, went on to shoot The Lord of the Rings movies. He came back from Lord of the Rings, and he showed us the first motion capture of Gollum," Miller said. "In that moment, I thought, 'Oh my God, the penguins can dance.' Suddenly, that then made it a reality, because I didn’t think we could get good dancing from animation - but motion capture made it much more viable. With that, we happened to end up with wonderful dancers, and we were able to capture every detail and every moment.”
It turns out that using motion capture in his film also granted Miller a lot of buzz and praise following the release of Happy Feet. Happy Feet enjoyed a successful box office run, along with positive reviews and adoration from fans. Miller also claimed that Happy Feet was only ever made a reality and moved into production once motion capture came into the conversation. Motion capture single-handedly transformed and impacted the future of animation as a whole, and its profound presence is undeniable at this point.
Lord of the Rings and Happy Feet are available to stream on HBO Max.
Source: Deadline