Spectacle

[Guy Rowland]

I'm watching Light and Magic, the Disney Plus documentary series on visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic.

The company was set up by George Lucas to work on Star Wars in 1975/1976. I find the story of its inception and the scale of its challenge thrilling to this day - a bunch of unruly and talented misfits locked into a Van Nuys warehouse in 110 degree heat without any apparent strategic managerial oversight. When Lucas returned to the compound after filming had completed with six months to go, they had burned through half the cash and completed two shots out of hundreds. The film itself was a laughable mess that was on track to sink 20th Century Fox.

It's the classic heroes journey - from the depth of despair fighting impossible odds, the eventual triumph was all the better.

I was that spotty 10 year old whose mind was blown by the result. I can still remember sitting in the packed Bromley Odeon having queued for hours, being the last allowed in and sat away from my brother (behind me) and mum (over there). My two strongest memories are a) after escaping Death Star and thinking that was the end of the movie and it was the best thing I'd ever seen, THEN realising they were going to ATTACK AND DESTROY the thing itself and b) the swooping shot down into the Death Star trench. There was this fully realised new world that made everything that had gone before seem incomprehensibly dull.

The next moment when spectacle did that was probably Juarasic Park, another film-watching experience permanently etched on my brain at the Empire Leicester Square - the first public screening after the royal premiere. The atmosphere was more like a gig than a screening - I remember hearing the excited chatter beforehand from people who knew they were about to watch film history, swapping notes remembering when they first saw Star Wars at the Dominion Tottenham Court Rd. THESE WERE MY PEOPLE. My two memories here - the first music-free T-Rex attack felt genuinely overwhelming. The power of the thing. The second was a single shot of our heroes escaping from the kitchen through the roof and a velociraptor jumping up - the sound the audience made, a mix of screams, laughter and pure joy, hasn't ever left me. The entire audience stayed through the whole end credits, cheering every department that appeared.

That's what movies can do. That experience of seeing something totally new, totally convincing in service of a classic story.

And we'll never see it again.

My timeline is full of clips from the new Google AI tools. Everything looks and sounds totally convincing, and none of it is real.



Anything is now possible. Literally anything. And what most people experience is watching a second of it on a phone screen before scrolling up to see a Golden Retriever do something adorable. (That's literally me by the way, I'm not projecting here). Nothing has impact, nothing has meaning.

At the same time, the $400m budget Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning has opened. The franchise is increasingly based around Tom Cruise's derring do stunts - yes, that's really him flying off a cliff on a motorbike. We know anything is possible with effects, so the marketing around the real risk and danger becomes the thing itself. It has opened relatively poorly, being outgunned by kids franchise Lilo and Stich. The biggest star in the world doing mission impossibly dangerous things seems to be met with a global shrug.

Spectacle has been reduced down to noise. Each technological breakthrough in my lifetime - Star Wars, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, The Matrix - has been incredibly hard fought and won by brilliant artists pushing back the boundaries. Now someone enters a prompt and the work is done. As Jeff Goldblum's character Malcolm said:

MALCOLM: I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you're selling it!

He didn't know the half of it.

What's the most mind-melting incredible thing you can visualise? Type it in to Google Flow with Veo 3, and there it is. Then watch a cat be hilarious.

We will never be captivated by spectacle again. A huge part of me grieves. But another part is philosophical. Because something else links Star Wars, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and The Matrix - they're all fantastic stories. They just happened to be wedded to technological breakthroughs that - combined - gave an exciting brand new experience.

Well we can still create great stories. I found Adolescence Episode 3 heart-stoppingly thrilling and engaging, on the edge of my seat - and 90% of it was two people in a bare room. But that did have a different kind of spectacle, the entire hour shot in a single uninterrupted take which did add something to the mix.

In way this was perhaps one group of filmmaker's response to the banality of AI miracles. Let's do it for real. Like Mission Impossible, there's plenty of effects and tricks needed to get that finished and on screen. But unlike Mission Impossible, Adolescence had something profound to say. It felt important, human, vital. I've really enjoyed the Mission Impossible franchise, but I think its time could be over. Ingenious stunts mired in dozens of layers of double-crossing and shiny maguffins just aren't enough to hold an audience's attention any more. (Disclaimer - I haven't seen this latest one yet).

All those seminal movies made their technological breakthroughs in service of telling a particular story. James Cameron wanted a villain made from liquid metal. The Wachowskis needed to show time bending. The effects are all story-led. And technology will continue to enable that - Adolescence is a very different kind of example. I have a feeling that Mission Impossible starts from the stunts and reverse engineers some kind of story that links them all. And if all this encourages studio execs to put original, engaging stories first then I'd be delighted. (And surprised).

I do grieve for what I grew up with. I know I'll never have another Star Wars or Jurassic Park moment, and nor will anyone else. Brilliant, vital stories will just have to suffice.

[Lawrence]

Brilliant post, Guy. I enjoyed it even though we don’t share an enthusiasm for a number of the spectacles you mentioned.

What I do share is your passion for that episode of Adolescence, which to me was some of the most brilliant writing, filming and acting I’ve ever seen. I too was on the edge of my seat for most of it and I don’t believe I’ll ever forget the experience.

Every time I see great writing on episodic TV or in the movies, I get a chill, a thrill and a soupçon of hope for the future of art.

[Guy Rowland]

Every time I see great writing on episodic TV or in the movies, I get a chill, a thrill and a soupçon of hope for the future of art.

Amen, brother.

Episode 3 of The Last Of Us season 1 was that good for me too (not the rest, alas). San Junipero in Black Mirror is such a jewel (they tried to recreate that magic in their latest series in an episode called Hotel Reverie but it was nonsensical, hollow and ghastly).

It's such a wonderful feeling when you think "See? THAT's what art can do". A rare and precious thing indeed. Given the sea of mediocrity, it feels like a miracle every time it happens.

I guess film was born in spectacle - Arrival Of A Train at La Ciotat Station had people screaming. The magic of the movies and all that. But spectacle for its own sake has long gone. There are probably exceptions, but I'm pretty sure that thinking of the stunts and moments first, then tying them together afterwards rarely works. Or some technology that can do something amazing, then thinking "how can we use THAT in a story"? FAR better to ask the question "How on earth are we going to tell THIS story"? Or else it's tail wagging the dog.

[Thomas Mavian]

Great post Guy, I share many of the "spectacles". I also remember whenever a new James Bond movie was released. If you wanted to see "proper" stunts and explosions nothing could top a Bond movie. I haven't seen the last 4 yet because stunts and explosions are everywhere

[mark]

Splendid post Guy, even if a tad depressing! Went with the family to see the final MI film yesterday evening on an IMAX screen. Surprised that in its first week of release the cinema wasn't full, but high London ticket pricing was perhaps to blame. Frequent (over?)use of sub bass content and fast edits kept the surface level of excitement high, but it was the final aerial sequence that truly got the heart racing. Why? Because we trusted what we were seeing could be believed. Tom was really hanging from that biplane!

[Tanuj Tiku]

A great and timely post Guy!

You are right in feeling that the visual effects challenge is no more. AI is moving at an incredibly fast pace and still has the ability to massively surprise us. Every few months feel like a big step up. It reminds me somewhat of the 'Wait but why?' article on AI. It was long but worth it!

My personal feeling is that films will continue to be resilient. The basic contract of story-telling and its consumption is intact. What is changing is how we tell these stories, where and how we experience them. As long as the basic contract built upon 100,000 years of evolution keeps working, films in one way or another will survive. Same with music which is arguably older than story-telling as explained by many historians. In fact, it was essential before the invention of writing. It is how information was passed down. Songs and musical rhythm was how information was coded for thousands of years, especially in the ancient history of India.

We have also been here before. All music has already been written! Bach did all of the variations and every melody ever to be conceived is lurking in the inner workings of his masterful counterpoint universe. Cinema is dead! Tonal music is dead! We have all heard of these things either through history or through our own experiences.

Certainly, there will be winners and losers. Phil Tippet's story is especially poignant in the ILM documentary. Let us hope we are not out of an industry to hold a job in for the next 20 years!

I think some people will push further and we will need more innovations in the future. It is hard to predict what happens from here but I hope we will see more Spielberg's and hear more fabulous music in the future. The world certainly loves and needs a good film and great music!

[Tanuj Tiku]

I also want to add that I think cinema should go all in at this point. More big screens, more investment and solid story-telling as well as human craftsmanship. Technology maybe changing very fast but humans do not and we will see how much of it survives as well. Concorde come to mind!

There are still great minds out there pushing and delivering great works.