Emotion and character are what we remember… not spectacle. At best, spectacle is salt on a good steak.

On the other end of the spectrum, necessity is said to be the mother of invention, and nowhere have we seen this old axiom play out more often than in the movies. Magic happens at the movies most reliably when filmmakers do not have unlimited resources from which to draw, and must find creative ways to “make do” instead.

The most famous example is “Jaws.” As the legend goes, Steven Spielberg’s rubber shark, named “Bruce” after his lawyer, was chronically broken and so Spielberg had to figure out ways to suggest or imply the shark’s presence in scenes without the audience being able to actually see it. The result was a brilliantly understated thriller that plays more like Hitchcock than Roland Emmerich.

All of which cries out for a question be asked… what if bigger isn’t better?