NYU Press Chapter Title: Introduction: Seeing Past the State of the Art Book Title: More Than Meets the Eye Book Subtitle: Special Effects and the Fantastic Transmedia Franchise Book Author(s): Bob Rehak Published by: NYU Press. (2018) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvf3w4fp.3 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms NYU Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to More Than Meets the Eye This content downloaded from 130.58.34.230 on Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:20:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction Seeing Past the State of the Art At first glance, the relationship between special effects and contempo- rary Hollywood blockbusters might seem so straightforward as to go without saying. As of 2017, the top ten movies enjoying domestic U.S. grosses in the $500 million to $1 billion range were all pointedly spec- tacular productions, such as the dinosaur theme- park adventure Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015) and Christopher Nolan’s IMAX Batman epic The Dark Knight (2007); spots two and three belonged to Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997), brainchildren of writer- director James Cam- eron, a “technological auteur” renowned for his cutting- edge use of visual effects technologies;1 and two others, The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015), assembled teams of amazing superheroes to combat world- destroying villains.