3D? No thanks!
May 18, 2009 by John Attridge
I’ll say it as it is; for people who claim to truly love the cinema, the introduction and preoccupation with the new 3-D craze can be nothing but an annoyance. The movie-going public have been bombarded of late with new ‘special event’ and ‘limited screenings’ of 3D films such as Bolt and Monsters vs. Aliens, not to mention the re-release of cult-favourite The Nightmare Before Christmas. Is all of this really necessary?
At a recent My Bloody Valentine viewing I wasn’t mesmerised by fantastic special effects because the visual quality of a picture is only a single aspect to be enjoyed; everything else about the film sucked. Even then, I would argue the 3-D elements weren’t that fantastic. They were simply a blurry distraction, like something straight from a poorly designed and graphically inadequate computer game.
Usually you know if you have seen a great film because you forget about the visual quality or screen size and are drawn right into the story. 3-D doesn’t involve the viewer as is claimed, but merely detaches us from the narrative experience. Although digital improvement is certainly possible and probable, the clumsy and amateur qualities of 3-D currently do little to refine picture quality; instead the simple shapes and colours merely detract from the visual richness and detail we are otherwise capable of seeing.
Surely most movie-goers, whether they value a moving story, provocative characters, dense plotting or exhilarating action will get tired of the in-your-face element 3-D offers, because really it enhances nothing. It is a gimmick designed to distract us from the poorer elements of a picture. We go to the cinema to set our hearts stirring, our pulses racing, our mindset questioned. Can a bunch of over-seized pixels really be the answer to trite scripts and inferior film-making? Lets hope not.
[Ed: Also see 3D - The real future of film, by Itchy Parkin]
Tagged: 3D, Bolt, Cinema, Monsters vs. Aliens, My Bloody Valentine 3D, The Nightmare Before Christmas
The article you posted at the end is misleading. The technology used now is very different from the 80s stereoscopic red/blue glasses, and instead relies on differently polarised filters in each lens of the glasses. This gives more faithful colour reproduction whilst producing a similar 3D effect as the previous generation. Which if the author had actually been to see a recent 3D movie they’d know… It also kinda explains the recent 3D renaissance; in that the new technology doesn’t suck as much as the 80s stuff.
I don’t believe that 3D cinema detracts at all from the quality of a film, and can actually enhance it in some cases (Coraline 3D being a good example). Sure it’s gimmicky, and can be used to distract us from the fact that a movie lacks any kind of plot (Monsters vs Aliens), but the 3D technology itself isn’t to blame.
Personally I hope it’s not just a fad, and that more research is done into improving the technology. For CGI films it adds a real depth which you just don’t get in the 2D versions.