"Consider Ridley Scott’s 1985 Legend, wherein Tim Curry’s onscreen presence as a horned devil is heavy, weighty—despite playing a fantastical devil, his clopping around in hooves comes across as ontologically solid. Your eyes are not deceived. And moreover, under the slathered makeup and prothestics, he is still acting—when his lip curls, that’s a real lip. Compare that to Steppenwolf, from the 2017 Justice League. After almost a quarter-century of “progress” in cinema he comes across as digital dust, a void where physicality should be. His superstrength is unthreatening, because deep in our occipital lobes we know Steppenwolf weighs nothing, impacts nothing. Therefore the entire movie has no stakes. Of course the bad guy will be defeated, he’s a hologram."
Yes, of course the article ignores the hundreds of old movies with terrible prosthetics and costumes. I think the author tries his best to compare similar things. For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies. Specifically, he discusses how the desert scenes _look_ to our eyes:
"Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin costumes hanging out in a desert ... For instance, the shadows both characters cast to their right. In the 2021 Dune, it is a monochrome chunk, despite the billowing fabric around the character. In the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, the shadow of the fabric is actually see-through. It has dimensionality, thinness and thickness. Because it’s a real shadow. So despite both being filmed in similar locations, one scene unconsciously triggers more belief in the ontology of the fictional world—the directionality of the light, the blue above the dune—while the other comes across as an ersatz reality."
I felt this coming out of the latest Star Wars movies: the space battle scenes felt so... flat, despite being technically amazing. There's something to be said for actually shooting on location and using physical props.