But Neo in The Matrix 3 mob fight scene looked so fake? It’s not because the artist who designed Neo was so much worse than the one who did Gollum. The reason why Gollum looked so lifelike and real as opposed to Neo is precisely because Gollum isn’t real. He was a fantasy creature. In 3D modelling and animation there is a term called The Uncanny Valley It refers to a phenomenon where something fake looks so real and familiar its “creepy”. You see we know the human form very well. So well, in fact, that when we see something that looks very real but something tells us it’s not real we get creeped out. We don’t know why it’s not human it’s just not and that creeps us out to a certain extent. That area of creepiness is the Uncanny Valley. It’s hard enough to get the human form exactly right in two dimensions it’s even harder in 3D. An artist can be so good and get it so close to perfect that we can’t pin down what’s wrong, even when we know something is wrong, and it’s creepy. In a sense the artist was too good for his own good. Some Wax Museums are like that. Those department store dummies you see at JC Pennies? They look stylized and plastic and fake on purpose. The store certainly doesn’t want you to feel creeped out when you walk through their aisles.

The problem disappears when you are creating something non-human. Our minds tend to be a lot more forgiving when we are asked to suspend belief when looking at a Gollum instead of a Neo. Gollum doesn’t look wrong to us because he’s not human. We’ve never seen a Gollum before so why couldn’t he look exactly like that? The creepy Uncanny Valley doesn’t figure in. So if you’re wondering why we haven’t already gotten picture perfect 3D animated actors to replace Tom Cruise yet. You can blame it on the Uncanny Valley.