Fox has greenlit sequels to Rise of the Planet of the Apes and X-Men: First Class, but all it wants is an Oscar for Serkis. But is it too soon in motion-capture history?
It's been a big week if your name is Andy Serkis. Not only has the British star of Lord of the Rings seen a sequel to the summer's best popcorn sci-fi flick, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, greenlit by Fox, but the studio has begun its much discussed campaign to see their man nominated for an Oscar for his motion-captured turn as Caesar the intelligent chimpanzee.
The striking but unnerving "for your consideration" ad doing the rounds features Serkis in mo-cap get-up alongside a snap of his ape counterpart in the movie. The studio says it sees no reason why its star should not be given the same consideration as other thespians when it comes to awards season, given the advances in the technology over the past few years. These days, the argument goes, what an actor does in the mo-cap studio is exactly what you end up seeing on screen: it's not just the subject's motion which is captured, it's their entire performance.
I'm inclined to think that Fox and Serkis have a point here. But that doesn't mean I expect, or would even like to see, the actor on the best supporting nominees list when it's announced early next year. Here's why.
Firstly, Fox are asking Academy members to consider Serkis's turn as one of the top 10 male performances of the year almost entirely on the basis of trust. Motion-capture technology is used very differently depending on the film-maker in charge of production, the actor involved, and most importantly, the animator who takes the performance and transfers it on to the screen. The mo-cap system used on Rise of the Planet of the Apes features tiny cameras to capture every facial readjustment, so it's more than capable of picking up a turn in its totality. That's not what happens on every production, however: the amount of "interpretation" an animator employs varies hugely from film to film, and many professionals privately hint that they are doing rather more work than they're getting credit for. Handing Serkis an award for his work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a big ask, because in 10 years' time we may find out that the animator in question made his own adjustments at key moments, or that the director asked for changes to be made at the digital stage in order to avoid an expensive reshoot. There are a lot of variables here, and if any one of them has played a part, it would make a mockery of the Academy's decision.
Secondly, even if you accept that Caesar is 100% Serkis, there's the question of whether the turn is in itself one of the best performances of the year, rather than just the most novel and unorthodox. Fox's Tom Rothman points out that Tom Hanks received an Oscar nomination for a mostly mute role in 2000's Castaway, while John Hurt picked up a nod in 1980 following his turn in David Lynch's The Elephant Man despite (and perhaps largely because of) the fact that you never see his real face. So it should be no big deal that Caesar only speaks one word in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, especially if you follow the mantra that great acting is all in the eyes. The ape is a genuinely soulful creation, and the fact that we are able to watch his personality shift from innocent and playful to cynical and confrontational without a word being said is a tribute to the work of all involved. But does that make it one of the year's best performances, or just one of 2011's most groundbreaking turns?
Apart from anything else, no one really knows how to quantify greatness in motion-captured acting yet, mostly because the number of films which have properly made use of the technology remains low. To put it bluntly: until we've seen bad motion-captured acting, it's going to be very difficult to say just how good the good stuff is. Serkis may have to accept that his career-defining performances will only truly be recognised as the technology becomes more commonplace, and awards bodies have a context within which to place his acting.
As well as a sequel to Rise of the Planets of the Apes, Fox has also announced a followup to X-Men: First Class, the mildly enjoyable but deeply flawed latest instalment in the studio's ongoing mutant superhero saga. No details yet, but let's hope they get somebody in to write it who's capable of avoiding the last film's occasionally excruciating bad dialogue. Any movie with a cast that includes Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence is going to have something going for it, but the first film too often veered into facile, hokey territory, and featured lines ("I prefer: Magneto!", "Mutant and proud!") that felt like they'd been written in at the last minute by studio execs determined to reward the cheeto-crunching fanboy brigade for turning up. As has so often been the case with this series, there were also just too many superheroes on screen for us to care a jot about 80% of them.
Rothman said this week that he wants to bring Matthew Vaughn back for First Class 2 (as it will hopefully not be called) as well as Rupert Wyatt for the second Apes movie. "Both of them were really great scripts and so we have to be sure to get great scripts again," he told ComingSoon.net, dubiously. "We're working hard on the scripts for both of them, but we have every hope of moving forward with them."
Vaughn did his best with First Class, but the whole creative push was rushed, and it showed. Fox just seems to have a more lackadaisical approach to its genre projects than other studios, so perhaps it's not surprising that executives are determined to see Serkis get his day in the sun. They certainly won't be picking up any gongs for their comic book movies any time soon.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/dec/01/andy-serkis-mo-cap-oscar
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