Nerd Rant

There's a certain grunginess to '80's sci-fi that disappeared when CGI became a standard. The ease and range of stuff you can achieve with computers might be more desirable but the attention to detail is missing from modern FX and replaced with this weird sense of sterility I never really bought into.

It's most apparent of course in the Star Wars prequels - and I think it largely contributed to their lackluster reception by the general public. I'm going to make a general statement and blame The Matrix for this shift in aesthetics. Nothing against that movie but I think it inspired this kind of push towards boring visuals and simplified plot devices (like everything Kurt Wimmer had done thus far). Minority Report tends to stand out as one of the only mainstream movies of the 2000's that didn't adopt that sterile simplified look, although the color treatment definitely pays homage to it. There are other films from the last decade that would illustrate my point, but this tangent is a little long already. Suffice to say that dirty, gritty, apocalyptic look that I fell in love with during my formative years is slowing seeping back into the mainstream. Now that I sound like a hopeless nostalgic, here's the movie that inspired this rant.



Also took the liberty of re-watching the abysmal failure that is David Lynch's Dune. What can I say it still looks cool.