(You can watch this on YouTube.) Surprisingly thrilling, as people in 1906 seem to have a death wish. No road rules. Pedestrians everywhere. Stupid crazy drivers. I swear, I just witnessed seven near-death experiences. Are we sure no one was harmed in the making of this film? There's an essay in here about the nature of thrills in action scenes. Early movies are fun to watch because we know there is an actual element of danger in what's going on - e.g. Harold Lloyd. Modern films need to find a way to reestablish that sense of danger and thrill. These days an action sequence, or a thrill, can be well choreographed, but we all know that the whole thing is safe as milk. This desire is perverse, I guess - it's not that I want people to be hurt, or even to risk being hurt. But it certainly does give a film an edge. Maybe this has to do with the popularity of YouTube videos, and even the Jackass series - real people doing really dangerous stuff.
Fantasy works best in cinema because film is fantasy - nothing we're seeing is actually real, so why pretend it is? Let's do away with that altogether, and embrace the possibilities of crazy costumes and sets and camera tricks. I was surprised over and over again that things that appeared to be matte paintings actually had dimension - like the rocket itself. The fun of a certain kind of movie is trying to figure out what's real and what's a camera trick. And a camera trick is just like a magic trick - we should be wondering and guessing, "how did they do that?" Nowadays, there's none of that left. The answer is just "CGI. They did it on a computer." It's all animation. Nobody ever wonders how Bugs Bunny did that. Movies have stopped being magic shows, and that's a shame.