I will say here that it is mightily unfair to compare the Goblin King and the Hobbit Trolls with four human-sized Orc/Uruk characters, because they, as Monstrous Infantry-sized creatures significantly larger than that, could never be portrayed simply by putting an actor in makeup (not unless he was standing on the shoulders of another anyway). A far better comparison for these two would be with the Cave Troll and Mordor Trolls from Lord of the Rings, who, funnily enough, are also CGI.
As for Azog and Bolg, I honestly see them as far and away more intimidating than any of the four Lord of the Rings Orcs/Uruks above, simply because the former two are so much more capable, and so much more of a threat to the heroes throughout the films they are in. Azog is the Big Bad of the Hobbit Trilogy, second only to Sauron and the Ringwraiths, and one of the few Orcs given the privilege of speaking with Sauron himself. He is known to have fought and killed a Dwarf King with many centuries of battle experience, as well as nearly killing the young Thorin and mortally wounding him in their final fight. Bolg, meanwhile could only be killed by a character with the level of OP-ness and plot armour of Legolas, and even then he gives the Elf the biggest run for his money in all his film appearances, twice. By contrast, the Orc on the bottom left in the LOTR montage is wounded by a Rohirrim pretty easily when his mob is ambushed by Eomer's Riders, before being unceremoniously stepped on by Treebeard as he crawls after Merry and Pippin. The one on the bottom right is a run-of-the-mill Mordor Orc commander, and would be no match for any of the heroes in the series had he been put into a fight scene. Lurtz did kill Boromir, but only because Boromir was distracted by his masses of Uruk-Hai Scouts (and he shoots him from afar with his bow, rather than fighting him in combat). When he is given a chance to fight one-on-one, he is killed pretty easily by Aragorn. Gothmog was a strategist, yes, but not on the level of Azog, and as a combatant he is also dispatched with ease by Aragorn. I rate my film characters based on their deeds and their power, not simply by how they're rendered.
And a message to all CGI-phobes out there - it's rather ironic that, despite being younger than most of you, I've seen a lot of old films that many of you haven't even heard of, let alone seen, and I can tell you that practical effects that are cheaply done look just as fake as underdone (or overdone) CGI. Don't believe me? Watch
At the Earth's Core, a 1960s film with easily the worst practical effects I've ever seen and only made watchable by the late Peter Cushing's acting. Even the old adaptations of better-known stories like
Journey to the Centre of the Earth and
The Lost World, not having the budget to hire a stop-motion legend like Ray Harryhausen, were reduced to sticking crests and spines onto real-world lizards and calling them 'Dinosaurs'.
I honestly think a lot of this modern-day pleasure of shitting on CGI in part comes down to 'nostalgia' for those few old films that did come up with good practical effects (and were rightly praised for them, I might add, in particular Harryhausen's creations), and either a willingness to conveniently forget the mass of older films that didn't, or a lack of knowledge of their existence.
Both practical effects and CGI have their uses - practicals for close-up shots and scenes with small groups of actors, and CGI for creating creatures that couldn't be done with practical costumes and makeup, and battle scenes involving thousands. Both have their good points and their weaknesses, and they should be interweaved together to make the best of both. I can understand the downsides of using large amounts of CGI, but at the same time I think the more people become afraid to use CGI where it's most necessary, out of fear of CGI-phobes criticising productions purely because of CGI use, the more it will cause filmmaking to degenerate to the level of the pre-1990s era where CGI was nonexistent and practicals were all filmmakers had, which I honestly think will be a great shame. CGI has been able to achieve so many things that practicals just couldn't have done, and deserves credit where it's due.
