Towering toy robots, legions of fiendish Persians, Davy Jones, Sandman-they defy the cosmos and destroy competition at the box office.
Cinema has entered an age where little is impossible and everything is attempted. Budgets are burgeoning and though production sets remain as grandiose as ever, the digital world of visual effects-or VFX-is infinitely vaster.
But amidst the boom of explosions and the whoosh of space crafts, an undercurrent of grumbles has surfaced to meet the digital takeover.
300's "massive, computer-based post-production army" had "no ragged breath of real, ugly, human consequence," according to an Entertainment Weekly review by critic Lisa Schwartzbaum. And Time Magazine's Richard Schickel likened Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End to being "trapped in a theater with the visual effects flaming all around you."
Looking at this mish-mash of critical comment, an inadvertant association between flashy visual effects and poor storytelling has seemingly developed. With energy funneled so vigorously into the fantastic, it's no wonder that not much ends up in the real.
"It's a little unfortunate that we have the technology now to make-whether it's the future or the past-look so real you'd think they'd become transparent to the storytelling. But we depend on making it more the spectacle than the character," said Terry Windell, who has worked on animation and visual effects on Star Wars:Return of the Jedi (he did Emperor Palpatine's lighting bolts!) E.T. and Ghostbusters.
When digital effects increase characterization-when our beloved subjects of fantasy and science fiction come to life, then the film can benefit from the technology.
"The flip side, I think, is the overuse of digital effects when it comes to more physical matters like car crashes-things we might have done in the past with miniatures and pyrotechnics," Windell said, "I think sometimes you can find yourself in sort of a plastic reality with the digital effects."
Windell also objects to using effects in the manipulation of history, such as with 300's "rock -video version" of the Battle of Thermopylae and with the overall tendency to disregard basic physics for spectacle.
Both critics and visual effects teams seem to agree on the necessity of a quality story. Visual effects may not remedy a mediocre script, but they do offer a deeper, more textured movie-going experience, said Kevin Freeman, an animator for ImageWorks, with clients such as Spiderman 3 and The Chronicles of Narnia.
"You'd be surprised by the kind of work that goes into a shot or film that isn't 'effects heavy,'" Freeman said. "Everything from sky replacements to removals are all things you would never even think to call out. When we are doing our jobs, the audience doesn't even know that effects are involved."
Often underestimated are the small details in an effect-the flow of hair, the texture of clothes or the shiny Autobot's sheen.
"It takes that critical eye to produce imagery that the audience won't question for a moment when it appears on screen," said Jeff Dillinger, whose primary task on Spiderman 3 was to construct the malleable Sandman using particle technology.
In some ways, the critical community is suffering from too much of a good thing and, arguably, the anesthetization of the Star Wars-era wonder.
"I think you're reaching a saturation point. I think people were amazed [back then] because they understood that it wasn't real but it looked pretty real and questioned, 'How do did they do that?'" Windell said. "Whereas now, people don't even bat an eye they just say, 'Oh, well that's done with a computer.'"
Windell's hope is for superior stories and tasteful effects. He sites E.T. as a past example of a film that transcends the vacancy of tech-heavy productions and The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a more recent instance.
Whether the great power of visual effects will be handled with great responsibility remains debatable in the onslaught of studio tent poles. But Freeman is certain of one thing: the digital way-from iPhones to blockbuster effects-isn't going anywhere.
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