Should Gollum get an Oscar? If he does, I’d like to officially place the first bet that he’ll use the words “my precious” in his acceptance speech.

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  1. ditto. i think Serkis was amazing!

  2. Why not? I think Gollum was the best part.

  3. My initial reaction was to say that of course he should, but on reflection I’m not so sure.

    The problem is that the comparison with a performance like that of John Hurt as the Elephant Man isn’t entirely valid.

    In Hurt’s case the makeup was applied and whatever emotions he managed to get across were due to a combination of his voice, his body language, his eyes and as much of his face as could be discerned, and the script. Andy Serkis did as much with his voice and body language, and was also aided by a terrific script. However, Serkis also had plenty of help from the CGI team who created the facial expressions on Gollum’s face. Basically, I think any award should go to Serkis and the WETA SFX team, because you can’t easily draw a line between Serkis’ performance and that of the SFX team.

    Since we’re definitely going to see more of this sort of half-actor, half-CGI role in future, perhaps it’s time that Academy introduced a category of Best Unseen Performance to cover everything from motion-capture CGI to voice-over work on purely animated stories, the award being shared between the SFX house and the actor.

  4. I would consider it, but in the end was it really the *best* performance? I think mostly it was just a really good role and well-scripted. Either way, he would be supporting actor, right? Cause no one’s topping Daniel Day Lewis for best actor this year, methinks.

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