Extras got injured. If you were driving a car recklessly, and injured people, a personal injury lawyer would have a bailiff visit you with a piece of paper.

I write often for a celeb site. Tom Cruise would do himself a HUGE favor if he took five years off and stayed on a remote ranch, away from cameras-and people. His name doesn't carry the cache it used to just a few years ago. His last two movies didn't do well at the box office and the Scientology stuff, along with a fear that he has somehow brainwashed Katie Holmes, or holds her captive, has damaged his reputation-BIG TIME.

Usually, production companies are careful to follow OSHA regs, but I fear this accident has more to do with the "blockbuster era", than anything else. Hollywood is taking unnecessary risks to include eye popping effects in movies.

For years, I've written about the dumbing down of movies because Hollywood focuses so hard on making movies that cost 100 million to make, with all kinds of visual noise, that completely lack substance. Book inspired epics aside, decades from now, is anyone going to remember
any of the huge budget movies? I don't think so.

What movies endure? Movies with excellent writing, like Casablanca, Meet John Doe, and The Guns of Navarone. George Lucas pretty much ushered in the blockbuster era with the first Star Wars trilogy. They were whiz bang movies, but the writing was excellent. The second trilogy, made a decade and a half later, were left wanting because of very poor writing and extremely poor casting.

I've become a huge proponent of euro movies because they are made with much smaller budgets, and they concentrate on the quality of writing and acting. I often use this euro movie as an example because it is a masterpiece, but The Memory of a Killer cost only four million to make and in terms of writing and acting, it is superior to anything Hollywood has cranked out in 25 years. Hollywood has virtually lost the art of good storytelling, and we, the fans of cinema, have suffered for it.

Since this is a WW2 forum, let's compare movies about D-Day and Pearl Harbor.

Tora Tora Tora-(1970) excellent movie, gripping, very close to the truth, endlessly interesting.

Pearl Harbor-(2004)Didn't get anything right, and invented history.

The Longest Day-(1965)Not graphic, but accurate. Excellent writing, and the fact that actors in this movie had actually participated in D-Day made the difference.

Saving Private Ryan-(2003) the first ten minutes are superb, after that, it turns into a long anti war chant. Truly sad, so much wasted potential.

My point, because today's Hollywood celebs have pretty much come from privileged backgrounds, they aren't common people, never have been common people, and don't begin to understand common people. The Celebs of yesterday were common people, who stormed the beaches of Normandy (Eddie Albert), flew B-17's (Jimmy Stewart), and served in support (Don Rickles). These celebs understood what people really liked because they made the movies they wanted to watch. The movies cranked out today are made by elitests who make movies for elitests, and the public who subsidize their crap have fallen victim to Dudester's Axiom.

Dudester's Axiom-fed garbage long enough, people will aquire a taste for it.

I mourn for tomorrow's children because of the legacy handed them and I pray they develop a taste for retro movies (movies reliant on writing and acting intead of CGI).