Special effects in movies

A thoughtful essay on the overuse of CGI in today's movies. From Motherboard:

Pixels Are Driving Out Reality
When the massive alien starship of Independence Day: Resurgence landed in theaters this summer holiday, audiences flocked to witness an unprecedented scale of destruction. Director Roland Emmerich’s appetite for spectacular catastrophe is clearly bigger than ever—at one point, Asia is flipped on top of Europe—even though it retains a sense of nostalgia, a sense of that familiar extraterrestrial panache. As Jeff Goldblum’s character whispers at one point, “They like to hit the landmarks.”

Is the audience impressed and scared? Rather mildly, if one has to judge from the film's 32 percent audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “You can forgive Independence Day: Resurgence for being ridiculous,” wrote a reviewer at Time. “But you can't forgive it for being boring.” Vox: “Independence Day: Resurgence is the summer’s worst movie — and its most boring.” At Kotaku (“Independence Day: Resurgence Is Worse Than Bad. It's Boring”), a reviewer noted: “I should have taken a nap instead.”

And the thesis:

In 1979, when spectators saw Alien, they were deeply impressed because what they saw was strongly linked to actual life, if only because their imaginary life had not been colonized by CGI. The humongous spaceship Nostromo — a miniature model — provoked awe and respect. When the creature erupted from Kane’s abdomen — a plaster model encased in fake blood and animal entrails — people were horrified. The shock was registered on the faces of the actors, who, per Ridley Scott's direction, weren't told ahead of time that the moment would include a giant splatter of blood. "That's why their looks of disgust and horror are so real," producer and co-writer David Giler told Cinefantastique.

A long and wonderful exploration - the writer, Dr. Riccardo Manzotti is a Professor in Psychology at the Institute of Human, Language and Environmental Sciences at the University of Milan, holds a PhD in robotics, is the author of 50 papers on the basis of consciousness, and is the webmaster of consciousness.it.