Just a little rant inspired by some recent movie-watching:

We just re-watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade over the last couple days and it really struck me how dated the special-effects sequences in the movie look … and how little that mattered in my enjoyment of the movie, either back then or today, when we’ve seen much, much better special effects. It’s not hard to figure out why: The terrific storytelling and the humorous and witty banter between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery more than make up for whatever shortcomings there were in the effects, and the movie was a showcase for the story and the dialogs rather than for the special effects.

The dated effects were especially obvious during the dogfight scene when Indy and his father were fleeing from the Nazi blimp:

Nice sky in the background, isn’t it?

If you saw something like that in a movie today, you would laugh at how bad the effect looked. And yet, even when I rewatch this movie today, that doesn’t get in the way of my enjoying the film at all. I think it speaks volumes about what Hollywood blockbuster movies focus on these days compared to 20 years ago, and it’s a shame. Give me 10 Last Crusades over the mindless, CGI-laden crapfest that is the Transformers movies, that abomination of a Star Trek film, or the thoroughly mediocre fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series. Compare that last Indiana Jones movie with The Last Crusade, and the difference in the approach to movie-making is stark. For instance, one scene from The Last Crusade had Indiana Jones and Nazi stooge Elsa crawling through the sewers under Venice looking for an ancient coffin. They run into a giant pack of rats and at one point, they’ve got rats all over them.

What is this? Real rats?

Just imagine if they shot that scene today. Would they use real rats? Dream on! They’ll probably just plop the actors in front of a green screen and add in some CGI rats later. And they’ll probably end up looking about as real as that CGI gopher or the ants army from the last Indiana Jones movie.

Now that I think about it, the same holds true for computer games as well — really great story-telling trumps deficiencies in graphics. That’s why those old Monkey Island games are still a joy to play, despite not having voices or super-amazing graphics, and why I still keep an OLD computer around just for the times when I get in the mood to play those games again. Computer graphics have made leaps and bounds since those games came out, but the story-telling aspect of computer/video games haven’t really improved (if anything, they’ve regressed). That’s why I’m very happy to see a company like Telltale Games (the name says it all, doesn’t it?) picking up where those great story-telling games left off.

Now, if only we can get someone in Hollywood to follow suit …