Aliens invade, monsters stalk, comets crash, the world ends with one bang after another.
This season's digitized spectacles include mammoth tidal waves, toy warfare, and a 20-story version of Godzilla, seen at left on a summer stroll. Turns out it's the finger-wagging critical elite, which is left trembling by them. At season's start, The New York Times gathered expert opinion about how dangerous digital special effects really are. This censorious expert class, ever with us, gags on cultural pleasure. Over the years it's condemned theater, the novel, the waltz, jazz, the tango, movies, comics, rock, etc.