I find it genuinely funny to think that the majority of the movies currently in theaters have little or no real-world content, as almost every sequence is generated using digital manipulation and satanic devil-magic ones and zeroes. No matter how many computers you use, they’re still just cartoons. It won’t be long until the programs look so realistic that everyone will be animated for the sake of convenience. Tom Cruise can only make so many action films before directors get tired of him hogging all the avocado smoothies, and absolutely ruining the bathroom every time he needs to take a turbo dump. At least you can generate his features from a safe distance, so animators won’t actually have to look him in the eye or talk to him the way someone would on set.

I’m not saying that any of this is a bad thing, but it’s important that we don’t let the appeal of having a massive Michael Bay-esque orgy of explosions draw attention away from the lackluster plot and acting. A movie should be judged on the merit of its terrible B-list actors, not the overwhelming amount of lens flares in each shot. Without their fancy effects their movie would be about twenty minutes long and consist of one closeup shot of the female protagonist’s — er — talent.

If the directors were smart they wouldn’t need any of the fancy explosions; they’d simply remake Italian Spiderman every year until the sun collapsed in on itself and engulfed our little corner of the universe in a glorious ball of cleansing fire.