Daily Inspiration Quote by Jan de Bont

There is a faintly exasperated shrug baked into Jan de Bont's observation: CGI has become so competent, so omnipresent, that it no longer reads as an effect. It reads as the world. Coming from a director who cut his teeth in a more tactile era of spectacle, the line is less a flex about technology than a warning about perception. When the trick disappears, the audience's relationship to images changes. Not "Can you believe they did that?" but "Why should I believe anything I'm seeing?"

The intent isn't to praise seamless VFX so much as to describe a new baseline of visual literacy. Viewers once watched blockbusters with an extra mental channel running: spotting miniatures, clocking matte paintings, admiring practical stunts. De Bont is pointing out that channel has gone quiet. The subtext is double-edged: filmmakers have won the battle for realism, but that victory risks flattening wonder. If everything can be rendered, nothing feels earned.

Context matters. De Bont's career is anchored in physical jeopardy and material environments, the kind of action where bodies and weather and gravity do a lot of storytelling for you. CGI can mimic those textures, but it also makes them optional. His line hints at a cultural moment where audiences aren't simply less discerning; they've been trained to accept the synthetic without comment. That raises the stakes for directors: if realism is cheap, authenticity becomes the real special effect.