Sure, Raiders was fun, and Roger Rabbit was inventive, but it was all dreck. In the 90's, aside from rare exceptions like Jurassic Park and Total Recall, which seemed to be a hold over from the 80's anyway, special effects movies have tended to be numbing, joyless affairs. On paper, and in one's imagination, a trumped up, state of the art Godzilla sounds like fun. And two T-Rexes should be twice as suspenseful. In fact, most of the big effects movies of recent summers have been lacking the basic kernel of fun that maybe we were taking for granted for all of those years.
Special effects are better than they've ever been.
Each summer's crop makes the previous summer's offerings look like home movies. In the past year alone, we've seen brilliant effect work in The Fifth Element, Titanic, Starship Troopers, Flubber, and Men in Black. To browse through the ILM coffee table books at the local bookstore is to be infused with the spirit of creativity. This maverick group of scientists, engineers, carpenters, and film makers met challenge after challenge posed by nonchalantly demanding directors. You got it.