This weekend, Mad Max: Fury Road will storm into theaters like an unstoppable freight train of explosions, gore and well – madness. George Miller’s long-awaited return to the Mad Max franchise promises to be a spectacle of the highest regard – with super-loaded cars racing through a dystopian outback. Scavengers mutated from the chaos ride atop vehicles speeding through the desert, swinging from poles and risking everything just feet above certain death. Sure, next to the (literally) sky-high fights in Avengers: Age of Ultron  – Max‘s idea of danger might seem quaint on paper. But seeing is truly believing – regardless of the smaller scale, Fury Road has a sense of danger that you rarely see in a summer blockbuster. Perhaps it’s because, unlike the computer-generated antics of Marvel’s heroes – every stunt in Fury Road is real.
Director George Miller commented in an interview with Hero Complex. “We crashed a lot of cars; every stunt was done, if not by the cast then by some very fine stunt men; and it was shot on a real location. I’ve had enough experience with CG to know that you can’t really get some of that immersive material authentic in a way. Cumulatively, it’s appreciated by an audience. It feels more real.” Miller’s not alone in the desire to go back-to-basics. Last month at Star Wars Celebration, as he was introducing a new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, director J.J Abrams declared the film’s commital to practical sets – to roaring applause from the crowd. While computer generated effects will still be a large part of The Force Awakens, it won’t be relying upon them. “Even before ILM [Industrial Light and Magic, the digital effects studio] gets started, you can watch the movie and see what it is.” Abrams noted.
This is a particularly massive shift for Star Wars, due to the fact that the prequel trilogy is often credited with making CGI a mainstream tool of the blockbuster trade. The technology behind centerpiece pod-racing scene, and the inclusion of an entirely digital supporting character (universally beloved cultural icon Jar Jar Binks) were unheard of in 1993, when the project was announced (For more info on how Phantom Menace came to be, I can’t recommend this hour-long behind the scenes documentary). Digital paint covers every inch of those three films (Within Phantom Menace in particular, only a single sequence didn’t require digital alteration), the only way Lucas saw fit to realize his vision. But it came at the sacrifice of reality itself. As you watch those films, it can become obvious that actors are really on a green sound stage – looking into imagined landscapes.
But it’s not all tragedy. Without the steps taken to portray a war between battle droids and Gungans on Naboo, Peter Jackson may have never had the tools to portray the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Jar Jar Binks, for all of his grating quips, was the original motion-captured digital character (central to the magic of Avatar, or Rise of the Planet of the Apes). That’s the ultimate legacy of the Star Wars prequels – and what The Force Awakens may prove to dismantle.
Of course, neither film will completely toss the progress of the digital generation out the window. Mad Max‘s epic vistas of a world gone insane are the product of computer generation, Star Wars still needs a little magic to make a lightsaber glow in the night. But their approach may trigger a larger shift in Hollywood. While the impossible destruction brought to us through computer generated imagery may be wonderful, it can stand to occasionally take a backseat to a real actor, living through the action that we believe to be imagination.