Movies that "Pop"

Critics complain about, studios put up with, scriptwriters reluctantly write in, and children eat up special effects. Those brilliantly realistic shards of glass and twisted pieces of metal exploding from the car that (as Mythbusters has proved) couldn't produce a mushroom cloud the size of an actual mushroom, even on a full tank of gas. The futuristic ship with tons of valves and mechanisms (probably far more than would actually be required, but hey, it adds to the "realism," right?). The CG creature with fur/hair ruffling in the breeze, muscles rippling under the brightly-colored skin, and liquid eyes rolling in sockets in such a lifelike-yet-not fashion that Uncanny Valley doesn't even begin to cover it. Soulless might.
Audiences, studios seem to feel, are demanding that those poor movie folks, whose glasses are rapidly approaching the thickness of a 12-ounce slab of steak, push themselves further and further into their coffee mugs and growing blindness in an attempt to create bigger, and at the same time even more "realistic," special effects for them to goggle at. And if it's not rendered in HD and given twenty programs simply to place hair movement on the CG head, it's not worth watching; I remember seeing Happy Feet, supposedly a "realistic"-looking CG film for its day, and cringing at the texture issues suddenly made apparent by the high-def flatscreen on which it was being played. Kids will often pan anything made in the age before large-scale computer-generated images as "boring."
And yet, today, my family was somehow prevailed upon to watch Mary Poppins, a film where, upon seeing it for the first time, we could readily point out exactly how each "special effect" had been created (wires, reversing footage, cleverly painted backdrops). Yet the result was electrifying. We ooh'd and aah'd as if we had never seen animation spliced with live footage before, and I distinctly heard my father say, "Whoah!" when Mary Poppins slid UP the banister. My brother, a self-proclaimed break dancer jaded by a daily intake of dance battle videos on Youtube, gasped during the chimbley sweep dance sequence as though he didn't know that the backdrop of London's rooftops was painted and that mattresses were waiting for the dancers who didn't quite make it from one ledge to another.
I won't chalk this up to "Disney magic does it again," but there is something to be said when a movie from 1964 manages to outstrip Spielberg's Tintin in terms of audience reaction. It's not realism. It's not flashiness. It's not even the special effect itself. It's that spell of wonder that the effect can cast on the experienced film critic as well as the six-year old who, only moments before, was still noisily trying to wrest the bag of popcorn from his sister.
In creating that sense of wonder, filmmakers must give time for audiences to wonder. Sometimes, the explosion, the stunning backdrop, the humongous computer facilities are glossed over in an attempt to make the cinematographer as well as the characters look as though these massive objects are either routine or not unusual enough to warrant their interest. Making the effect a part of the story's reality in this way may work, but it is important to remember that while this is a normal part of the movie's reality, it is not a part of the audience's, and thus must be given the proper screentime for them to marvel at, and then assimilate into their world.
And secondly, the filmmakers must give time for characters to wonder, too. Audiences look to the key characters in the story to understand how to react to events, and if the character treats something as the eighth wonder of the world, so will the audience. Even commonplace items may suddenly become extremely important to an audience member if a character draws attention to it; think of all the everyday objects that movie geeks have infused with significance - bowties, blue pills, and black forest cake being only a few. Special effects will be given the recognition that their creators probably more than deserve if they are recognized by the movie. Even a simple tour-guide like explanation given by a minor character, while the camera slowly pans over the complex gadgety thingymajig will serve to make it worthy of interest.
Mary Poppins generated childlike delight because she delighted children. Literally, the faces of those two little kids gave the movie its push from technically advanced (for its time) to "magic." Films like Harry Potter (any one of them, really), BBC's Sherlock TV series, and stopmotion animation flicks on Youtube all can create a sense of wonder, even with second-rate technology and a low budget, because they pause to marvel at what they've created. That's the joy of movies: if the movie says it's magic...it is.