Posted on: April 13th, 2009 3-D: The Gimmick Lives…

I remember when big-ticket summer flicks first started showing on select IMAX screens. Oh… you didn’t see Matrix Revolutions in IMAX? Well, no wonder you thought it was shitty. Sarcasm aside, let’s be honest with ourselves – if the scenes aren’t shot specifically with an IMAX camera (The Dark Knight, Transformers 2), then who really cares; most regular theaters have pretty fair digital projection and sound systems. With IMAX, apparently seeing the movie in theater on opening day isn’t enough to brag about around the water cooler anymore.

Oh but wait… is IMAX even enough anymore? No.

So what do you do when you’re a movie studio looking to put butts in seats? You do what you always do – you look to the past. But wait, you’ve remade all of the pre-existing films? I know! 3-D! We’ll bring back the third dimension! Popcorn sales will be through the roof!

Well newsflash kids: 3-D is stupid. It’s always been stupid. And unless James Cameron can really develop and utilize a new technology for Avatar like he’s been talking about, it will most likely continue to be stupid.

You do of course remember the glory days of films in 3-D… eyeballs popped out of the screen in Friday the 13^th Part III, the shark exploded all over the cinema in Jaws 3, and Michael Jackson actually touched kids in the audience in Moonwalker. It was after these hefty stinkers that the red and blue paper glasses were pretty much doomed to line the garbage cans in theme parks. But we’ve since seen a few major releases pop up over the last decade, and the number of films using (see, cashing in on) 3-D in the last year alone is frightening.

Since 2005 we’ve seen the following titles strain our corneas:

• Polar Express
• The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
• Chicken Little
• Superman Returns
• Monster House
• Ant Bully
• Open Season
• The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D
• Meet the Robinsons
• Beowulf
• Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D
• Bolt
• My Bloody valentine 3-D
• Coraline
• Monsters vs. Aliens

We’ve also got plenty of titles coming up:

• Up
• Ice Age 3
• G-Force
• Final Destination: Death Trip 3-D
• Disney’s A Christmas Carol
• Avatar

Anyone else see a trend here? I’d say there’s only about 15% of movies that are released featuring 3-D that are worth even giving a shit in a regular screening. So what is 3-D supposed to do, distract us from the inadequacies of the film’s script, character development, acting, directing, etc., etc. Call me a cynic, but I have always been of the belief that if you had done your job right then you wouldn’t need to take the audience out of the film by wearing an extra pair of glasses for a few “eye-popping” scenes that really don’t do anything to progress the story.

I’m not saying 3-D isn’t cool. But cool doesn’t make a movie good. Cool doesn’t need a point. Movies do.

I’m also not saying I don’t understand why 3-D is being pushed so heavily. It’s the same reason Jason Statham has a career right now and the same reason Michael Bay walks red carpets. People go to the movies to shut their brains down, eat popcorn and laugh at farts and guffaws and explosions. I understand this completely. 3-D is just Hollywood’s way of force feeding the masses while still keeping up with technology. The thing that kills me the most is that a fair amount of these films are animated films. With these films you can pretty much do anything. You can create anything the mind can imagine, shoot it and edit it all with the computer. You can create as many cameras as your hearts desire. So why bother with 3-D?

Take a look at Wall-E – that film was amazingly shot with stunning cinematography, some of the best I’ve seen period. Would 3-D have made it any better? No.

Now take a look at, oh I don’t know… Punisher: War Zone. A steaming pile of feces. A stain on the face of film. Would 3-D have made that film better? No. It would have made it Punisher: War Zone 3-D.

It’s a pointless, flashy gimmick that we need to get over, fast or else we’re just going to see the market become saturated while more and more legitimately good movies get brushed under the rug.

Think about it this way – if I have a kid and that kid is crying, wailing for nothing but candy for dinner, am I going to give in and just feed it sugar? Probably not. But then there’s some parents who say (from Maury’s sound-stage) “but my baby wants candy so my baby will get candy!”. How is that good? If we just cave in and get just what we want, then we’ll always take the path of least resistance and just stick with being satisfied. The same thing goes with movie-goers.

Also, it f*cking costs extra?! It’s roughly $3 extra to see a film in 3-D. This is just ridiculous. If a film is intended to be watched in a way that is optimal, it should only cost the price of admission. Does this mean that the people who saw Monsters vs. Aliens sans 3-D who paid the regular, merely-subtle-ass-rape ticket prices are seeing a poorer version of the film? My head is about to explode…

So the next time you go to the theater and put those glasses on, really ask yourself is this necessary? And when the credits roll 90 minutes later, take a minute to reflect on whether or not the 3-D aspect made the movie truly any better.

Christ what’s next, Smell-O-Vision?

3 Responses to “3-D: The Gimmick Lives…”

1. dale Says:
   April 14th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

   Most of the movies you listed were kids movies you weren’t going to see anyway and I don’t see any harm in the horror movies that have been done a dozen times looking for a little variety. The kids seeing those movies never had the experience of the crappy 3D of our youth, so it’s something new to them, but only better.

   I don’t see any harm in variety, but I agree with you that any movie made around a gimmick is one that shouldn’t be done at all. One good point of the 3D movie, is that it serves as a filter to sift out the mouth breathers that would crap up my movie experience in another movie.

   Your point about the few scenes in movies that are in 3D (ie the dark knight) that are features to some showings are distracting and dumb, but there’s always an alternative showing that doesn’t have them, isn’t there?

2. Jon Stephens Says:
   April 14th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

   I’ve had the same stance on 3D films for a long time, and this is a subject we’ve addressed several times on MovieGuys with VERY heated debates:

   3D is fun as a gimmick, as an “every once in a while” thing. But there are a lot of people who can’t view 3D properly because of eye problems, so the whole shift to all movies being 3D is ridiculous. Here’s a clip of the post we initially wrote about the eventual shift to all programs being in 3D:

   “Jeffrey Katzenberg announced today that he wants ALL movies, not just animated films to be 3-D in the next five to seven years. WTF !!! Katzenberg explains, “3-D is how we see, how we take things in. Its natural. This is not a gimmick, its an opportunity to immerse the audience, to heighten the experience.” He added that the migration to 3-D will happen on all screens, including mobile phones and laptops. Katzenberg was joined by (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group President) Mark Zoradi, and others stressing the industry’s commitment to 3-D as the future of film.”

   I don’t want to be told how to watch my movies. 3D is something I can enjoy with my kids from time to time, and something sometimes even I can enjoy from time to time, but I don’t want to be forced to watch things in 3D.

   And you are right about inflated prices. Screw that.

3. Metallicat79 Says:
   April 14th, 2009 at 4:28 pm

   I have no problem seeing Kids movies done in 3D , but moving towards every movie being 3D is a bit overkill. I don’t know much about how DVD and stuf works with 3D, but I can imagine that it would not stop at the theater and pretty soon, you will need a special palyer to play your DVD’s, which considering we are in the midst of transistion from DVD to Blueray, switching to something new after finishing the conversion to Blue Ray, may push DVD/Blue Ray fans such as myself over the edge, but like I said i don’t know much about fromat and how all the 3D on DVD works, so I may be way out in left field.

   I don’t enjoy 3D, simply because I have to wear something over my glasses and that gets a little annoying, especiall if you are sitting there for 2+ hours. I think it should be used more as a once in a while thing rather then everything.

Leave a Reply