Sleeping through the beautiful visuals

@ Last Movie Outpost

Let's have a throwback to 1970s-80s practical effects. Special effects artists were limited by the technology of their time and didn't have much to work with. Back then, they didn’t really have the computer-generated images we're accustomed to today. For example, in 1975's "Jaws," the shark wasn't computer generated. It was 100 percent animatronic. The artists actually had to build and operate an animatronic shark! In 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," one of the most gruesome scenes in cinema occurred when one of the antagonist's faces melted off. 

A quick internet search would tell you that so much work and experimentation went into making the melting face work. The secret behind it was taking a mold of the actor's face and making a cast out of a gelatin formula. In filming, the gelatin face was blasted with a heat gun from behind the camera, and thus the melting face came to be. It took so much time and creativity on the visual effects artists' ends to create the right formula to make the melting face as realistic as possible.

Despite the practical effects being limited, films like "Jaws" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" are considered classics and are renowned for their stories and cultural impacts. However, with cinema nowadays, that just doesn't seem like the case. Practical effects have been replaced with CGI, and it seems studios are willing to sacrifice much of the budget for visual effects. Overall, visual effects seem to be prioritized over the quality of the storytelling itself. I've noticed this in newer movies. They often have breathtaking visuals, but the writing is sorely lacking substance.

This is especially true in the "Star Wars'' sequel trilogy. These films have some of the best visuals in the entire live-action film series, yet, they are notorious for their poor writing and plot holes. I wish I could like these movies more, but the visual effects are their only redeeming quality.

This brings me back to my point that older films have an edge over what is released today. The classic movies referenced so often and categorized as 'must-see' cinema had a much better focus. It seems that modern-day studios would rather show off what they can do with visuals. It seems like a cheap show to draw in a new audience rather than work on maintaining the audience they already have. Studios should focus less on visuals and more on what could truly be a timeless story that will be remembered for decades to come.

By: Evan Majors