In an interview dated July 7, Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit trilogy, addressed Viggo Mortensen's -- who played Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings -- criticism of Peter Jackson's overuse of CGI leading to a lack of subtlety in the movies.

Climax Of The Battle of Five Armies 'Sets Tone' For 'What's Going To Happen' In the Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Speaking to Seven Magazine, Freeman responded to Mortensen's criticism, while defending Jackson.

"All I can say is: I hope that's not the case. I know Peter and the team who make those films, they'd be horrified to think they'd jettisoned all subtlety," he said.

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He did admit that CGI was used very generously in the movie but that it did not, in any way, overpower the human element of the story.

"Yeah, there's a lot of CGI, an awful lot of that business going on. But they are still very, very interested in the story," he said. "They want the human side of it to be absolutely pivotal. Beyond that?...Of course it's a question of taste and I respect Viggo's opinion."

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in May, Mortensen went into quite a lot of detail about the production of The Lord of the Rings and how Jackson is, in a way, obsessed with big-budget, technically sophisticated film-making now. The actor suggested that this seemed to have spilled over to his work on The Hobbit.

Mortensen revealed that initially in 2002 Jackson had done very "sloppy" work with the last two in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the film needed "massive reshoots" which happened over the course of a few years.

"But he would have never been given the extra money to do those if the first one hadn't been a huge success. The second and third ones would have been straight to video," he added.

The actor also alluded to the fact that Jackson might be betraying an organic quality in filmmaking for technical flourishes.

"Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back," Mortensen said.

Lastly, it seems like Jackson's dependance on CGI has crippled him, according to Mortensen. He also suggested that films that could be pulled off in a smaller budget were executed on a large scale because of the Jackson's fascination with technology. Mortensen cited The Lovely Bones which he thought was a "smaller movie," yet Jackson needed a $90 million budget for something that could have been done in $15 million. "The special effects thing, the genie, was out of the bottle, and it has him," he said.

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies will hit theaters on December 18.

Watch a teaser for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug:


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