I’ll agree when it comes to “The Hobbit” - the endless reliance on ever-perposterous CGI has destroyed the creative story-telling process.
That’s how I felt Lucas ruined the Star Wars triology when he re-released them with all sorts of new stuff including the Titanic of CGI, Jar Jar Binks. Once they get their hands on this stuff the story line too easily becomes: ‘Aren’t I so cute and clever?’
Have you ever tried casting 100,000 Orcs for a couple weeks of battle scenes? Even if Moochelle is available that still leaves you 99,999 short.
I agree there were basically no live scenes in the Hobbit. There were a few more in Smaug. The first 3 were awesome and had just the right amount of CGI to make the story work.
IMHO anyone who has written computer programs has had the experience of starting out with a small technical calculation and, by the time they got through making the input convenient and the output presentable, they find that the technical calculation was trivial to program and the prettiness factor took all the programming effort.It is no different in writing a posting here on FR. It is easy to get involved in trying to make the spelling and formatting perfect - because you know that everyone else knows that, what with word processing and HTML, you could - and spend as much time on prettiness as you did articulating your thoughts clearly.
IMHO, emphasis on “production qualities” at the expense of content is an anti conservative bias.