re: #102 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

It’s not the existence of special effects that I think is damaging.

It’s that visual special effects have become the only metric that elicits responses, if I perusal of reaction videos on YouTube are any indication. At least for the masses of young people who make such videos.

And yes, Star Wars did its bit to help usher in this era. But the original Star Wars was very clearly a western set in space. Alec Guinness noted in interviews that it was a very basic story as such.

But it was the story that caught people up, and the charismatic actors (at least on the part of Harrison Ford.)

The role of the visual supplanting the story is a long one in cinema.

I just find that the past couple of decades has seen the mega corporations (e.g., Disney) run it into the ground.

But they do that with all their productions. Too many sequels/prequels.

Visual effects in Star Wars were not used as shortcuts but to show us something we had never seen before. As a visual medium, this shpuld be a feature, not a bug (as too many movies see happen). Too often VFX are used like blowing up cars - distractions to keep the audience moving along with the plot without wondering if it makes any sense.

Good visual effects support and sustain the plot. Bad ones undercut them.When executives get involved, it almost always ends up bad.

I loved the fact that Barbie was produced by the star and her husband. I think that is one way to worked the way it did because the creative talent’s sensibilities were given paramount attention.