Unless the person signing your cheques is James Cameron or John Lasseter, work as a digital effects artist in Hollywood is a pretty thankless task at the moment. The best you can hope for is to be ignored, however more often than not critics will use your life’s work as a stick to beat the whole industry with. Why is it that in spite of the huge possibilities CGI has brought to modern filmmaking, it is treated with such snobbery?
After the critical and financial success of last year’s Star Trek reboot the pressure for a sequel was inevitable. However, it’s reassuring that when the writers/directors/producers are questioned about it they seem determined to wait until the right script is in place. It’s all too common for modern Hollywood studios to set a release date first and then desperately scrabble around trying to put a film together to meet it (see the dire Quantum of Solace for a recent example.) I was a massive fan of the Star Trek reboot, and it’s great that J.J Abrams and the gang are taking their time, but there is a word present in pretty much every discussion about the sequel that has me worried: Khan.
