"The Land Of Permanent Bliss"

So I was watching Jurassic Park earlier this evening. It's been awhile since I last saw the flick, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it (made me want to re-read the book again, too...for probably about the 20th time. I used to read that book like at least once a month). I'd also forgotten just how impressive the special effects were. Whatever else you can say about the film (and it does have flaws, Lord knows), the special effects are mind blowing. They did things with CGI that no one had even thought possible back in 1993. And the nice thing is that you really cannot tell when they're using a CGI shot and when they're not. It's very seemless. Makes you wonder why more recent films--such as anything Arnold the Governator did after Terminator 2--don't seem to have the same quality. Okay, sure, Jurassic Park made use of Industrial Light & Magic, which is the same thing as playing a game of pickup basketball and having Michael Jordan on your team, but it's still mighty impressive that even ILM could make stuff like that over a decade ago. The quality is almost as good as anything from LOTR.

It is neat to see the way that CGI has developed over the years. Sure, folks like Lucas might overuse it, and it means you occasionally get real stinkers like Troy, but you also get things like Pixar films and Gladiator (where over 2/3 of the gladitorial arena were CGI) and the aforementioned LOTR trilogy. CGI has its place. Speilberg mentioned he thought it was a great tool for allowing filmmakers to tell stories. He thought it would help make things a little easier for filmmakers. And it does. God only knows what we'll be able to do with it in another five or ten years. Hell, even I could probably make lifelike CGI in another decade or so with off the shelf software. I already have more computing power in my current computer than we did in the first PC my family ever owned (way back in the day. Pre-Windows. MS-DOS, baby. And it made us strong. And accurate--you couldn't screw up command lines in DOS, or you paid for it). Technology progresses at an almost alarming rate sometimes, but that also means that sometimes we get the chance to see new and exciting things.

Of course, we're not going to mention what they did with the two Jurassic Park sequels. Hell, I don't even like to remember those movies were made. Sometimes technology is abused.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: The Band, "Stage Fright"