If you’re selling entertainment on the extraordinary stuff that some hero does, it seemed to make sense that you should try to make it seem to the audience that this was real, that they really did it. That they weren’t a cartoon, that it wasn’t, uh – I mean, it’s a difficulty I’ve often had we began to get digital effects was if it is too fantastic then I start to not care. And I’ve always tried – and used as many gimmicks as I could find – to say to the audience, you know, “This is really happening. This guy’s really in this situation!” My reasoning was that it made it a better experience for the audience. That if he is a god or if he is, you know, an utterly fantastic creature, then the situation is of no challenge, and the resolution is never in doubt, and somehow, it’s, I dunno, it becomes a sort of bizarre religious ritual or something.
– John McTiernan