Why cant Visual Effects be the star?

I just thought of something, it seems like the unique selling point of films has somewhat changed. a unique selling point is basically what your product or service has that makes it different from another and encourages others to purchase it. This very much applies to films and helps sells the film to the audience. This is also a great marketing tool.

At first the directors were the unique selling point of a film, directors such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick were enough to solidify the film and make it appealing to audiences. Actors were just tools in the directors vision (and certainly didnt get paid 20million for a movie)

As time progressed the celebrity culture began to increase and the audience became more and more interested in the actors and this became a unique selling point, it was a about watching the latest marilyn mon roe film, the latest clint eastwood western or watching sean connery play james bond.

and it was this way for some time.

Now people are paying more attention again to consistantly good and famous directors like Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, etc. But however another unique selling point has arisen and that is the Visual Effects. There are now films where visual effects is the unique selling point. For example Lord of the Ring had a budget of around 100 million for all three films and they spent the majority of that in their visual effects budget. were there good performances....yea, good storyline...yes, but the main attraction was the visual effects. The same with Avatar, it had a horrible storyline, mediocre performances but it was one of the most popular films of millenium simply because the visual effects and animations were out of this world.

Peter Jackson has been 'dubbed' by some as one of the best directors with Visual Effects and his name on a visual effects movie solidifies it.

I think it is only a matter of time before they start to use phrases such as "I cant wait to watch that new ILM movie", or "Double Negative just produced a new movie". and it will be the visual effects that will take pre-dominance in a film, and not the actors.

Its already been proved that they can replace actors altogether with films such as Beowulf and The curious case of benjamin button being complete CG renders of the actors.