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Originally Posted by crabapple

At the same time, realism "sells" fantasy. Realistic details are what made the "Star Wars" world believable--all that dust and grime and worn-out spaceships and robots. It allows you to suspend disbelief. In a sense, it is a most important part of any good fantasy.

All those lens flares and camera-shake and handheld camera effects, which have been incorporated for so many years into visual effects shots, are mainly there to give the impression that "this stuff is really happening" and there just happened to be a guy with a camera filming it. That sense that what you are seeing on the screen "really happened" and that the movie is proof of that--well, that has always been a subtle selling point in narrative cinema, all the way back to the split screen matte shots of "The Great Train Robbery" (1903).

Part of "escaping into the fantasy," I believe, is seeing enough of the earmarks of reality there to stop questioning that fantasy, and just accept it...you might say that in the movies, fantasy and reality are two sides of the same coin.

Excellent.

That explains a lot of unanswered stuff for me. Thanks, crabby.