It’s a feeling I get whenever I open up my dad’s paperback copy of Dune and read it. Turns out the same thing is true for movies as well — I love science fiction, but lately I’ve found myself yearning for the tactile nature of practical effects.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this as of late. I just finished rewatching John Carpenter’s masterpiece The Thing for what is probably the 100th time. Every cannibalistic chest burst still sends delightful shivers down my spine, and while I know Rob Bottin’s creations would look amazing done completely with CGI, I can’t help but feel like they wouldn’t elicit the same response from me.
Don’t get me wrong, I love some flashy computer graphics as much as the next guy. I cried watching Avatar on the big screen (okay, I’m crying now too thinking about how amazing that movie was), and have happily lost myself in the photoreal backgrounds of recent Marvel movies. But practical always hits different for me. Maybe part of it is because I was raised on films that demanded creative solutions. Artists pouring god-knows-how-many hours into sculpting, building, and operating creatures and worlds with nothing more than latex, mechanics, and pure imagination.
When I was five years old and watched The Empire Strikes Back for the first time (yes…I’m that old) Frank Oz’s puppetry was so realistic I forgot I was watching a movie. His eyes moved subtly, and wrinkles appeared and faded as he opened and closed his mouth to speak. It was tangible to me because it was tangible to him. There was an actual puppet on set that Mark Hamill could touch and react to and use to help form his performance. I think Yoda from the prequels is technically a more “perfect” version of Yoda, but there’s something lifeless about him. Too perfect. Humans hate the Uncanny Valley for a reason.
About ten years ago I visited the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and was lucky enough to tour their special effects exhibit. They had pieces from Aliens, including one of Giger’s xenomorph heads. I stared at that thing for what felt like hours amazed at the detail. Someone had taken their craft so seriously that they had spent weeks/months/fucking years making something that, in the movies, most people would spend two seconds staring at. I could see individual teeth. Separately sculpted. Molded. Painted. The individual intricacies of the biomechanical skin, the inner workings of the rib cage that allowed the jaw to slide forward when sensing new prey. I was blown away someone could care about something so much.
I feel like we’re losing that these days. The weight of imagination. Stop Moving Stones used detailed models for the space battle in Episode IV. Models that obeyed physics in a way computers still struggle to mimic. Light reflected off those models in ways our brains are programmed to understand as “real”. That was an actual spaceship sitting on that soundstage. Not just strings and tubes hooked up to computers telling LED screens what to display.
Philip K. Dick explored this concept often in his work. What does it mean when we can no longer trust our own eyes? When every photograph could be Photoshopped? A puppet? Practical effects force us to remember that things exist in the physical world. A CGI dragon may look realistic, but there was no actual thing for Luke Skywalker to attack in Return of the Jedi. Someone built that Speeder gangly witch ride. Someone hung those actual lightsaber props off R2-D2’s shoulders in that hall on Endor. It’s tangible.
The magic of cinema tricks us into forgetting movies are just compiled light. Cameras record light bouncing off objects. Without objects you’re just looking at a bunch of pixels that can be edited anytime to do anything. But you know when you’re watching something that’s physically there? Filming Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford slipped and fell during a takes. It was kept in the film because it was real. You know when you see an effect and you know someone was actually there to create it. That’s the key: someone. A team of artists who had to solve real world problems in order to create these fantasy worlds.
Compared to CGI, practical effects require humans.
I remember when The Force Awakens hit theatres and I was so delighted to see BB-8 actually rolling around on those desert sets. You could see sand get stuck on his body. You could tell Daisy Ridley was interacting with an actual presence rather than some silly tennis ball on a stick that gets digitally removed in post-production.
I’ve even noticed it when writing reviews, finding myself scoring films significantly higher when they’ve struck that balance. For example, Mad Max: Fury Road. George Miller could have created that entire movie in post, but instead he opted to actually drive those stupid vehicles through the Namibian desert. Not only does it look incredible, it’s damn near palpable. You feel the impact of metal scraping against itself, the force of sun beating down on our protagonists, the tug on Niccolò’s chest as he leans over that damn war rig.
Denis Villeneuve leans into that as well. While Dune is heavy on CGI, everything else is real. When Paul and Jessica are journeying through that desert, they’re actually in a desert. When those massive sand worms come rolling through the cracks you can feel sand scraping at their costumes because it’s real sand. Contrast that with the digitally projected backgrounds of say, Avatar and you’ll understand what I’m getting at. The best science fiction literature is rooted in reality. Human drama we can all understand told against the backdrop of aliens and lasers.
Practical also breeds creativity. When Stan Winston and his team were fabricating the T-800’sendoskeleton for Terminator 2, they had to actively solve problems in order to film James Cameron’s vision. There’s happy accidents that occur when you’re not just plotting everything out in previs and letting a computer do the heavy lifting.
But the point many will bring up is that CGI has allowed for more filmmakers to bring their visions to life. You no longer need the budget of a blockbuster film to create your own world on the big screen. And you know what? That’s fair. Some of my favorite science fiction films in recent years have been from up and coming directors using digital effects for narrative, not just spectacle.
But I also feel as though we’re losing something when we go fully digital. Horror films are the perfect example of this. We respond to things that exist in our world on a fundamental level. I’d much rather watch a shitty-looking puppet smash a bunch of teenagers’ brains in than some uber-realistic CGI beast we know in our hearts wasn’t actually there.
It’s something I’ve noticed when digging through archives for this project. A lot of these older science fiction films have personality. The Creature Shop creatures from The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth look how they do because they were built by artists using their hands. Painted and molded by people who understood the limitations of their medium.
Each movement of those puppets was limited by the puppet itself. Lips that couldn’t move quite right. Heads that would only turn so far. Things that wouldn’t have been able to be animated if it weren’t for some wizard working tirelessly in a tiny crawl space beneath the costume. CGI can create these flawless interpretations of our imagined monsters, but life is imperfect. Our brains understand that and as such we connect with those imperfections.
Sure Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films was ground breaking, but he’ll never have the same effect on me as say, an Uruk-Hai or one of those bizarre Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. Stop moving stones. Stop looking at screens and remember what it feels like to be inside that moment with the actors. Hugely ambitious, but practically filmed sets ground you in a way that empty sound stages projecting CGI backgrounds will never.
Christopher Nolan gets this. He went to great lengths to shoot much of Interstellar with practical effects. The reason McConaughey’s_arc damn near flew right off that screen was because Nolan physically built that giant set, had it spin, and put his leading man inside of it. He knew the physics would be right because it was right.
I’m not saying we need to throw computers out, but remember what makes movies great. Too often these days we’re content to simply look at pictures move across a screen. <a href=”https: //dystopianlens.co.uk/why-retro-sci-fi-still-holds-up-better-than-most-modern-movies/”><a href=”https://dystopianlens.co.uk/why-retro-sci-fi-still-holds-up-better-than-most-modern-movies/”>Special effects should</a></a> show us new worlds, yes. But also make us believe they’re real. And I, for one, believe in magic.
Kathleen’s a lifelong reader who believes science fiction is literature, full stop. From her book-filled home in Seattle, she writes about thoughtful, character-driven sci-fi that challenges ideas and lingers long after the last page. She’s a champion for under-read authors and timeless storytelling.