Marshall and the Movies

The directors of the new and already forgotten movie “Skyline,” the Strause Brothers, were quite outspoken about the movie’s visual effects.  They worked on movies like “Titanic,” “300,” and “Avatar” but decided to make their own movie on a sort of DIY scale.  The movie’s release certainly made them feel entitled to call out in Vulture the special effects that movies still mess up: fur, dust, water, and breath.

I’ll admit that they are right, to a certain extent.  Those are things that are often botched, and much of the technology that has come out recently have been to correct the obvious errors in these elements.  But I’m not writing this post to speculate on visual effects’ flaws today; I’m writing to talk about visual effects of the past.

It’s so funny to watch “Spider-Man,” the 2002 release that sparked the superhero craze all over again, and see the visual effects.  Not that they are terrible because I remember being so wowed by them in third grade.  It was the talk of recess for quite some time.  But I want to say just how incredible it is that we can look at a movie only eight years old and see what incredible leaps and bounds technology has taken in that time.  You don’t watch it and say, “Oh, that looks terrible.”  You watch it and say, “Oh, we can do that so much better now!”

It’s an interesting phenomenon that I invite anyone who loves nostalgia to take part in.