I love 2001. I just watched it again the other day actually. The cinematograhy in that movie is simply amazing. Best ever, in my opinion. Not that GL would know anything about that, since he does 95% of his movies on computer...
That's another thing that bugs me. Back when the original movies were made, they were ground breaking. They had to do things that had never been done before. Basically create new technology so they could acheive the shots they wanted. How about now? Well, now they just do it all on computer. No innovation, to creativity, nothing.
Personally, I prefer models WAY more than CGI. I've been saying that since the day I saw TPM in theaters. Everything looked fake and cheesy to me. If they really just wanted to use computers so bad, why not just make a REAL model, make a digital map of it, and munipulate it digitally. That way, you can make it do whatever you want, but it looks real.
I agree, LOTR is one of the best CGI uses ever. Except for Gollum, where you can tell he's CGI (but not by too much), there isn't very many glaring CGI scenes that stand out. They did everything they possibly could with reality before resorting to computers. I mean, you don't use 250 REAL horses for no reason. If GL made LOTR, do you think there would be more than 3 horses EVER on set?
To me, CGI is like any other special effect. It can be awesome when used sparingly and only when necessary, but when overused, it's stupid. You NEVER want to over use a special effect, because then it's just cheesy and over done. The CGI in the PTs is both.
I completely agree with you Samatar:
CGI should be used only when necessary to enhance the story, not to BE the story.