Zack Sharf Amazon Prime Video’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” will harken back to Peter Jackson’s original trilogy by relying predominantly on practical effects and prosthetics in bringing the Orcs of Middle Earth to life.
Jackson’s three “Lord of the Rings” films earned acclaim for showcasing practical creature makeup and prosthetics work, but Jackson notoriously went the CGI route in “The Hobbit” trilogy for Orc characters such as Azog and Bolg.
Fans have long been critical of Jackson’s switch to CGI.Speaking to IGN, “The Rings of Power” executive producer Lindsey Weber and prosthetics department chief Jamie Wilson assured fans that a more practical approach for Orcs was used on the Amazon Prime Video series.
Visual effects were only utilized to make minor tweaks to prosthetics during action scenes or to showcase a group of Orcs so large in number that it would’ve been impossible to pull off the scene practically. “When they are up close to the camera, Orcs are really practical and almost exclusively,” Weber said. “And the places where the visual effects team help were in more numbers when we need larger quantities than you could amass on a film set anywhere in the world.
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