The character of Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is perhaps the most famous or infamous non-nomination at the Oscars to date. Although there is nothing in the rules that prohibits “performance capture” roles from being nominated, so far no role featuring this technology has been featured in the nominations for the Academy Awards.
The newest controversy is of course the box office juggernaut “Avatar”. None of the actors have been mentioned in any categories. Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, the stars of the movie, have earned plenty of praise but no nominations. Über director James Cameron attributes this to the general feeling in Hollywood that these performances are a result of the technology used rather than the actors’ efforts and talent. He feels that the acting community needs to understand exactly what goes into the process of motion capture.
“Avatar” used extremely advanced techniques in motion capture which helped capture almost all of the actors’ movement and emotions. Although “LOTR” wasn’t so far ahead, it still used a combination of motion capture and live acting to bring the character of Gollum to life.
Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, actually had to act twice for every scene, once in a location and once in the motion capture studio, recreating identical movements and expressions. This in itself was considered an amazing commitment to the movie and yet it controversially earned him no nominations.
Whether Hollywood will change its opinion in the years to come is something that we all will have to wait and see. With the innovations that appear everyday, it is obvious that at some point a performance aided by technology will finally get its just rewards.