There seems to be an audience that demands everything be explained to them; that everything be easy. And I don’t think that’s doing us any good as a culture. The ease with which we can accomplish or conjure any possible scenario imaginable through CGI is almost directly proportionate to how uninterested we’re becoming in all of this. I can remember Ray Harryhausen’s animated skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts; I can remember Willis O’Brien’s King Kong. I can remember being awed at the artistry that had made these things possible. Yes, I knew how it was done; but it looked so wonderful! These days I can see half a million orcs coming over a hill, and I am bored. I am not impressed at all. Because, frankly, I could have gotten someone — a passerby on the street — who could have gotten the same effect if you’d given them half a million dollars to do it. It removes artistry and imagination and places money in the driver’s seat. And I think it’s a pretty straight equation, that there is an inverse relationship between money and imagination.
