This conversation has come up twice in the last few days, so I had to write something about it. The conversation revolves around modern movies’ need to overuse digital effects. To use Stephen Colbert’s phrase, the “destruction porn” of the latest GI Joe and Transformers movies are prime examples.
I was a big fan of the GI Joe and Transformers cartoons when I was a kid, and I’m not sure I like where the franchises are headed. The same could be said of Star Wars, which is really the point of this post.
In the late 90s, when the so-called Special Editions of Episodes 4 through 6 came out, it was nice to put some focus back on the franchise, but, let’s face it, mistakes were made. The beauty of the original films was in the models and the photography of those models. They didn’t clutter everything up with lens flare effects and explosions with weird rings.
Digital effects are ok as long as the movie is about the heroes instead of being about the effects. And the best effects will never make up for flat characters and a predictable, cookie-cutter plot. Loud and shiny is not the goal.
Speaking of heroes, Han was bad. Greedo didn’t shoot first. Han did. Because he was bad. Softening his character early in Episode 4 SE makes his character development throughout the trilogy less impactful. Flawed heroes are ok. Family friendly with thick, rose-colored glasses is not the goal.
Han was a smuggler, and he wasn’t a nice person, and that’s ok. I don’t think they went into details about what he smuggled (other than fugitive princesses), but I guarantee he wasn’t smuggling ice cream to the nearest orphanage.
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