"That's not always the big spectacle actions that we were having in the fall".
It's not just the rather cryptic story that has made this classic so enduring – there's a lot of spectacle and action that means it's always as entertaining as it is confusing.
But, in a classic Washington spectacle of action followed by coverup followed by collapse, Flynn soon started backpedalling, saying, through a spokesman, that he "couldn't be certain that the topic [of sanctions] never came up".
Perhaps Baz Luhrmann thinks the same of the jazz age – that might explain his decision to use 3D for his adaptation of The Great Gatsby, a story heavier on conversation and decor than spectacle or action, though its party scenes must also appeal to the expressive director of Moulin Rouge.
The movies traditionally offer spectacle, drama, action and speech: they offer the thrilling interplay of those externals, while literature can give you direct, unmediated access into consciousness: you can go inside characters' minds and hearts to discover what they are feeling.
She added: "Mainstream science fiction cinema tends to focus on things like spectacle and action and effects rather than on characters.
I think the success of the young-adult trilogies that are usually not only female-driven but have a romantic bent and are not necessarily about the spectacle of action but contain it is great.
Somewhere amongst Watch Dogs' innumerable, practically overwhelming shortcomings is a game both trying to take a more sophisticated approach to violence and achieving greater spectacle, better action sequences, than all of its peers.
"Ridley Scott's third venture into science-fiction, after 'Alien' in 1979 and 'Blade Runner' in 1982, won't become a genre benchmark like those classics despite its equivalent seriousness and ambition," wrote THR critic Todd McCarthy, "but it does supply enough visual spectacle, tense action and sticky, slithery monster attacks to hit the spot with thrill-seeking audiences worldwide".
Actually, when exhibited, the videos are are projected in high definition onto canvases, echoing both the immersive experience of abstract expressionist painting (where you stand in front of a canvas and let it envelop you) and the intense spectacle of action films.
