SilverWook said:

So, you don't think people who bust their ass to make a practical creature work on the set, (and without harming the actors) only to find out it's all been replaced by CGI when they sit down to see the movie, might have a legitimate axe to grind?

When you work in film you know that your work could end up on the cutting room floor,and that goes for every one. From an actor getting his scenes cut(Clerk Gregg has even joked about the fact that before he played Agent Coulson that he was the guy who's scenes were always cut from the movie to get it down to a decent run time),a composer who writes a piece of music for a scene but then the director finds in editing that the scene plays better without a score,or a special effects person who goes to the trouble of making a mask that seems to work fine in the shop but once it is out in the studio causes trouble and needs to be replaced. If you can't live with that idea then you are in the wrong business.

Oh and as has been pointed out the masks were not just trashed they were scanned,so they were used in the movie just not in the exact way people thought they would be. That is the thing about Jackson he always seems to use a practical effect as the basis for the CGI effects wither it's taining a make up person to use a computer to pain the skin on Golum,mo capping actors to get the best balance between man in suit and CGi for creatures that would take too much time and money to do with out a computer,or scanning a mask and putting it on the actors' heads digitally,and that is why I have a hard time picking out the CGI from the practical effects in his movies. The fact is on any movie you have limited time and money so it comes down to finding what works in that time and when you come down to it computers and CGi are a big help there and movies like The Lord of the Rings just couldn't be done on time or budget without them.

Computers are a tool we all use and there is nothing wrong with using them in film making.