People will write books about this era of film. To be fair, books will always be written about film, but the past few decades have been dominated by one instrument of change in particular–digital effects. Certainly special effects have always been relevant, and since essentially the beginning of film as a medium have been gradually improving and contributing to it, but nothing has made fantasy in film authentic like digital effects. And not only have digital effects taken film to an entirely new level of imagination, but they have done it with remarkable speed. Personally, I am a massive fan of effects work, to the point of occasionally applauding films that might not have much else going for them (e.g. TRON: Legacy), but as with anything, it can’t all be good. This digital effects renaissance has a flip side, and it is movies like Priest. Movies that are so horridly assembled in every way besides the special effects, they just end up being laughably bad.
Peter Wertz
Wertz of Wisdom 