The rationale (which, again, I'm not arguing for or against) is that mocap performances are not strictly speaking totally the actors, because mocap has to be cleaned and can be (and very often is) edited and tweaked after the fact by animators. Not to mention there are often required liberties taken because a model cannot line up one to one with an actor anatomically.
In a sense, mocap performances are done by a team of animators where one animator puppeted a model in real time.
Every last motion Gollum makes was Serkis doing it, including when he's jumping up on rocks and climbing down head-first. The animators certainly deserve credit for the facial expressions and the rest of the work of the digital costume, but he physically acted the part.
I don't disagree, but facial expressions is like 50% of acting if not more. That's why I said "Half of Andy Serkis' job portraying Gollum was done by animators"
The rationale (which, again, I'm not arguing for or against) is that mocap performances are not strictly speaking totally the actors, because mocap has to be cleaned and can be (and very often is) edited and tweaked after the fact by animators. Not to mention there are often required liberties taken because a model cannot line up one to one with an actor anatomically.
In a sense, mocap performances are done by a team of animators where one animator puppeted a model in real time.