Given free rein to imagine massive stakes (and the "appropriate" destruction to convey them), it's no surprise filmmakers regress and succumb to childish destruction fantasies. Guillermo del Toro—whose "Pacific Rim" is a perfect example—has unknowingly verbalized this phenomenon best, noting that "there's [a] primal fantasy, certainly for a male child … where you give them a robot and a dinosaur, and the instinct is just to have them fight." Hollywood is doing just that: giving filmmakers CGI dinosaurs and robots, and the encouragement to let those primal fantasies get triggered. The result is a model that asks directors to lower their inhibitions and pursue their childish "wouldn't it be cool if…" instincts. And so we get "trailer moments" like Vin Diesel being launched off a car, a space laser buckling London into oblivion, an invading force of digital army men toys mowing down the White House, an entire fake city demolished by super-powered people.

So what's the problem with all this? The fallout is not just the inherent lack of sophistication in movies where filmmakers pursue their inner-kid. There's the storytelling—already endangered in blockbusters—that's being squashed by the Darwinian ascent of "required" destruction. There's the fact that stakes and disaster can only go so far, and that dead-end will come really quickly—if " Thor: The Dark World " threatening the entire universe hasn't already hit it. Then there's the much discussed lack of concern blockbusters display for the hypothetical collateral damage their hypothetical disasters would cause. But the real problem is that filmmakers are not thinking about the audience anymore. They're out to capture their own inner child, not ours. These modern spectacles leave us wondering: "Was this really meant for us? What was this supposed to make us feel?"

Most recently, Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" calls that question to mind. The very existence of "Smaug" as a second film in an indulgent trilogy of one novel is already a compelling argument for a director intent only on satisfying his youthful self. As was the announcement/justification of the trilogy, which was anchored to a whole lot of "I" and "us" and "we," and may as well have translated to "I want to keep playing with these toys." But the film itself evokes this entire trend. The finale in particular feels like one relentless and repetitive renewal of stakes and trailer moments. For what feels like an hour, Bilbo and the dwarves (like little Warhammer figures) escape one close-Smaug-call after another for reasons that seem to be more about Jackson wanting to continue playing with his big toy dragon than entertaining an audience. Sure, that was probably his intent, but after about fifteen minutes of justinthenickoftimes I grew desensitized with collapsing structures, singed beards, "This way!" and "Run!", rooms entered with fire licking at characters' heels, and it felt like the only person who was having fun anymore was Jackson.