I agree that cgi takes a lot of finessing to make it look real, for example gollum in lord of the rings feels less fake than jar jar, even though they are both cgi rendered. too bad Peter Jackson succeded in making him rediculously annoying almost as bad as jar jar. He is more a sympathetic character in the books.
That's a kinda strange argument. The bulk of Jar Jar's animation would've been done in 1998. A substantial amount of Gollum was animated in 2001 and 2002. LIGHT YEARS in CG advancements had taken place in the interim. Plus, Jackson got pointers from Lucas and McCallum.
for me the logical conclusion of the trajectory Jackson set up was some kind of redemption, even if he still killed himself, because for most of Jackson's Return of the King Gollum just kind of casts aside all the wonderful conflict in the previous film and becomes bad
I've not read the books (something about them being too damn boring) but I dig the way Gollum's arc plays out in the films. He goes from being conflicted about helping Frodo and Sam reach Mordor but ultimately Smeagol subsumes the Gollum persona and there's a taste of redemption there... which is lost when Frodo appears to turn on him when they're all detained by Faramir. Smeagol was so close to redemption but he ultimately lost his battle and his actions in ROTK are the aftermath of all that. I dug that aspect of LOTR even if I don't like that trilogy over all.
Regarding all this CGI hooplah, I think models and such appear more convincing because the nature of their use brings a kinda realistic look to it by default. The effects in the prequels (even model shots and such) seem to be more biased towards creating eye candy as opposed to shooting for "realism"... and in that sense, for as impressive as the Death Star passover in ANH remains to this day, it was clearly intended to be eye candy as best as could be created in 1976. In fact, a lot of ANH effects fall into that eye candy category, imho.
There's just too much of that, and too much interaction between them, for CG to come off as fully 100% indistinguishable from reality
I don't think people are as perceptive about this as some of you guys do. I've heard critics whine about "too much CG" in specific reference to prequel effects shots that unquestionably were based upon models. On top of that, every single shot in AOTC and ROTS have some sort of effect or digital gimmick and I defy any of you to identify the edit in every single shot. As you guys say, CGI has certain limitations... I just don't think it's as limited as all of you seem to say.