My wife and I had a baby 18 months ago, which, practically speaking, means we’ve taken a year and more off from going to the cinema regularly. We’ve only just started to get our heads out of the water and down to the movies.
Somewhere in the past year or so, it seems as though every studio exec has decided to greenlight one or more blockbuster in 3D, using a pretty impressive technology that employs polarised glasses to give a reasonably convincing illusion of depth. I have astygmatisms in each eye that make it difficult for me to converge most 3D, but I find I can get a pretty good effect with a minimum of (literal) headache if I sit in the centre of the back row.
And the 3D is … nice. Neil Gaiman’s remarkable Coraline is thankfully devoid of the gimmicky 3D effects that characterised the last couple of waves of 3D filmmaking. No viscera skewered on pikes hovering inches from your nose, no gag cans of spring-snakes leaping off the screen.
Just some lovely, quiet enhancements that are nice to have in a movie that is pretty fine to begin with.
But I’m sceptical.
Here’s why: I just saw Up, the new Pixar movie, which is nearing the end of its run in Canada (the movie doesn’t open in the UK until October, but it’s been playing in North America for months now). Up is a tremendous movie; it made me laugh and cry, and was intended to be seen in 3D. (Pixar has the luxury of making its computer-rendered movies 3D simply by re-rendering them to produce the desired 3D effects.)
Because Up has been out in Canada for so long, it’s been moved out of the rare 3D auditorium and into a regular screening room. And it’s just fine, even without the 3D. Not for one second did I think, “Oh, what I must be missing! If only I’d seen this in 3D!” Nothing was obviously missing from the 2D experience that made me feel like the 3D was a must-have.
And of course, that’s true of all 3D movies. Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services — none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn’t be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse. So no filmmaker can afford to make a big-budget movie that is intended as a 3D-only experience, except as a vanity project.
What’s more, no filmmaker can afford to make a small-budget 3D movie, either, because the cinema-owners who’ve shelled out big money to retrofit their auditoriums for 3D projection don’t want to tie up their small supply of 3D screens with art-house movies. They especially don’t want to do this when there’s plenty of competition from giant-budget 3D movies that add in the 3D as an optional adjunct, a marketing gimmick that can be used to draw in a few more punters during the cinematic exhibition window.
I have no doubt that there are brilliant 3D movies lurking in potentia out there in the breasts of filmmakers, yearning to burst free. But I strongly doubt that any of them will burst free. The economics just don’t support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting “BANG!” and “CRASH!” in your ear.
Such a film would be expensive to produce and market and could never hope to recoup. It won’t be made. If it were made, it would not be followed.
In 10 years, we’ll look back on the current round of 3D films and say, “Remember that 3D gimmick? Whatever happened to that, anyway? Hey, giant robot, watch where you’re throwing that building!” – guardian.co.uk