'Visuals effects are a main attraction for audiences'. How far do you agree with this statement?

Since the first film in 1894 (The Sneeze - Thomas Edison) the production of films has changed drastically, from being silent, sepia films from 1894 to 1927when the first sound film 'The Jazz Singer' was produced to 1973 when Westworld was made which was the first film to use CGI. Since then CGI and varying types of visual effects have become what modern film rely on in order to win over an audience.

Films like "life of Pi" strongly relied on visual effects due to the narrative of film, because of the visual effects used and the way they were used allowed the film to win awards in the categories of Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. However films like The Fault In Our Stars didn't need to rely on visual effects in order to be a success and attract an audience, due to the massive fanbase of the book the film is adapted from. The book by John Green already had a huge following, as well as his other books, because of the storyline and how original it was. Although this film uses the visual effects when the texts between Gus and Hazel appear on screen for the audience to see it is not the focal selling point of the film, the narrative and originality of it is what attracted the audience to the opening weekend in which the film quadrupled its budget of $12,000,000 so in opening weekend alone the film with little visual effects made $48,002,523 with an overall gross of $307,239,013 worldwide and 'The Life of Pi' has an overall gross of $580 million, which is a film that fully relied on visual affects to be a success and attract an audience.

Independent films with a small budget, like 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower with a budget of $13million, have little money to spend during the production of the film meaning visual effects aren't a high priority within spending the budget. Like 'The Fault In Our Stars' 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' was also a book adaptation, although it's pre-existing following wasn't as large as the following for TFIOS. In it's opening weekend 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' made only $228,359 and has made a worldwide gross of $33,384,127. It could be argued that this is due to the lack of visual effects which often attract an audience to watch a film. Others would say it's just a coincidence that the film had little to none visual effects and flopped in the box office; like mentioned in item B 'The Blair Witch Project' used no visual effects but used a different style of filming rather than relying on technology to bring in an audience as it's budget was $37,000 and made $248 million overall, proving that visual effects aren't an overly important factor in attracting an audience. 

The use of stars in films acts as an attraction, 'The perks of Being a Wallflower' uses Logan Lerman and Emma Watson who are both stars in the genre of this film. Emma Watson being known as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, which as a franchise has made over $7 billion. Using a star like Emma Watson in a low budget film like 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' takes off the pressure of need over the top visual effects that are usually sued as a luring technique to attract large audiences, as just the mention her name gets Harry Potter fans interested due to her and the franchises success; this got the film a lot more publicity and interest. Stars can have just as much affect on the overall success and attraction of an audience as visual effects and 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' supports this as although it was a flop in the box office it still got some recognition and praise on the internet which is where it matters as the internet is now just as powerful as the word of mouth.