Jesse Alexander has written an article over at io9 titled What The Hell Happened to the Mid-Sized Scifi Movie?.
You could argue that for most genres, the only ones in the ‘middle ground’ these days seem to be rom-coms or contemporary dramas. Although looking at box office mojo there’s quite a few sub-$100 million sci-fi movies from recent years, I guess it depends on your definition of mid-sized: Cloverfield ($25m), Signs ($72m), The Faculty ($15m), Evolution ($80m), Jumper ($85m), Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ($50m), Children of Men ($76m), Babylon A.D. ($70m), Resident Evil ($33m), Underworld ($22m) and Blade II ($54m).
On the other hand, I do agree about CGI:
But one thing does kind of suck about it. Most of that money is spent on CGI. Maybe Avatar will be the game changer, but for me — CGI jeopardy isn’t usually that compelling. Are you still blown away by green screen vistas and pixel generated monsters? Are you still terrified by tidal waves and explosions that took rocket scientists months to render?
I like that stuff. I like it a lot in fact. I read Cinefex every month. But CGI just doesn’t freak me out or put me on the edge of my seat like it once did. I think one of the great things about science fiction movies that don’t have a gazillion dollars to spend is that they need to make choices. They need to come up with ways to use filmmaking techniques and practical effects to adjust for the fact that they can’t afford 1000+ CGI shots. They’ve gotta build suspense the old fashioned way: Hide the creature for a while. Shoot on location. Blow stuff up. Crash a car. Pay a stuntman to do a full body burn. That’s the stuff I miss. I miss movies like Star Wars, Escape From New York, Alien, Aliens, Outland and Predator. Movies where a big part of my suspension of disbelief came from recognizing a world where physics could be painful and not everything was in focus all the time.
A good example of this has been the old Star Wars movies, versus the new. Where previously there was a used universe that was gritty and tactile, it’s been replaced with the shiny and blatantly not-real CGI version, which takes you out of it.
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