A requiem for spectacle

Do you know what makes me sad? The thought that no movie is ever going to wow me the way Star Wars did. And by ‘wow’, I’m talking about that jaw-on-the-floor, I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing! kind of wow. The kind that can only come from spectacle. Of course a good film never relies on spectacle to carry it. It is certainly one of the least admirable tools in a movie makers tool box. (slightly more admirable than sex) But it has always been my favorite one. And now it seems to have been used so much that it’s completely useless. I think, as a medium, film has shown us every possible form of spectacle at it’s fullest, loudest, and most heavy-handed. You just can’t put any more spaceships, warriors, explosions, robots, horses, or Brad Pitt buttocks on the screen at one time. Battles can never be more epic than they are in Lord of the Rings. Armadas can never have more boats than there were in Troy. Sweeping idyllic vistas can’t have more waterfalls and beautiful buildings than Rivendell.

I saw Hero and Sky Captain this weekend. Both of them with beautiful cinematography, gorgeous landscapes, huge, amazing battles… the works. And I was duly impressed. But there was something lacking. I think I will always date films by B.LOTR, and A.LOTR. Because I was still blown away by movies before Lord of the Rings came out. Now? No. Not really. I’ve liked movies. I appreciate the amount of work and artistry put into them. But nothing even comes close to comparing. And the weird part is… When I was watching Lord of the Rings I had an unsettling feeling in the back of brain telling me I should be more impressed than I was. I mean, this movie was custom made for me. I love it at least 10 times more than any other movies. But still, one of it’s best features, spectacle, had already been pushed so far by other films. By the time LOTR came out, it had lost most of its teeth. So while I knew this was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, I also knew I would never see anything more amazing. (Until I die that is.) So a sadness tinged my view throughout the epic masterpiece. It’s especially sad to me as a prospective movie maker. My favorite tool is ruined before I even get a chance to use it! I guess, like the rest of the film industry will eventually figure out, I’ll have to start relying on those boring old tricks like ‘good acting’, ‘great story’, ‘interesting dialog’, nuanced characters’, etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Epic Weekend

Image
Wow… I am worn out.  My team’s big project at work is live now, and we just released a big patch to fix some terrible difficulty spikes.  The last time we released Super Adventure Box: World 1 it got pretty universal praise.  (Which I put up here back in April)  Since then our founder/president has used it (Along with the Mad King Clock Tower I designed and built back in October 2012) as examples of content we release that raises retention rate, and therefore revenue.  So expectations were high for this World 2 release which came out on Tuesday.  The day after Labor Day and the Penny Arcade Expo.     Saturday (3 days before SAB World 2 launched) my company held a party at a hotel near PAX for fans, and my project, Super Adventure Box was the main feature.  We were running speed run competitions all night where players tried to be the first to get to the end of the new zones.  I ended up MCing the whole night.  I guess there...
Read more

Covid: 4 Years Later

Image
Before I begin let me quickly sketch the readers I'm writing this for, so you can decide if it's worth your 10 minutes. Firstly, this is for those of you who are at least somewhat sympathetic to people who are still worried about Covid and are sincerely curious why we are this way. I'm trying to present our case as coherently as I can, with references. (As well as I, a not-quite-professional writer can.) I'd like to convince you our stance is not based on fear, hypochondria, conspiracy theory, etc. But based on peer reviewed science. I'm also writing for myself and other folks who are taking Covid very seriously. I'm an ambassador by nature, so I like to facilitate understanding between groups where there is none. Many in my cohort simply cannot fathom how most of the world is not seeing the problem. Here's the agenda. First I'll quickly cover history of this pandemic, then some of what the science says about infectious disease and protecting ourselves....
Read more

A Covid Mask Prediction

Image
In speaking with several other covid conscious people I got a very nicely detailed prediction I wanted to record for posterity. They do not want to be credited with this out of concern for messenger-shooting. So I asked them if I could post it here anonymously and they agreed. Anon:"We are going to have mask requirements. I've done the math on all the possible interventions, and masks are the only one which can get the Rt down below 1 and actually stop the pandemic. Without masks, you can't do it; the other tools put together just aren't good enough (the best one, air filtration, maxes out at 80% effective, and so does Far-UVC, and this simply isn't enough with the infectiousness of Covid -- short-range transmission, which neither intervention stops, will keep it going at pandemic levels). Therefore we're going to get masks. I don't know how many maskless people will die before we get masks. But the math is inescapable. We start using respirator masks. Or m...
Read more