The whole "Hollywood is out of ideas" statement has never been more just than now with the whole 3D craze. Once upon a time in Hollywood, you would have 2 similar movies come out around the same time to prove this point. Generally, you would have a so-so movie and a much better quality movie. Armageddon and Deep Impact. Dante's Peak and Volcano. Antz and A Bug's Life. And the exception to the rule, in my opinion (and it's my blog, so that's okay) is The Illusionist and The Prestige which are equally fantastic in their own ways. But now, we've been force fed a far greater foe in the form of this horrible 3-D fad. Movies that should not be in 3-D are coming out in 3-D. Movies that were not originally meant or shot to be in 3-D are coming out in 3-D. 3-D has become what "EXTREME!" was to the mid-to-late-90's. It's more of a buzz word now than actually being a form of art. And to make it worse, in some movies, it does nothing more than make the tickets more expensive.
I will admit that I have only seen one movie in the theater since this 3-D business began again. And that was Toy Story 3. It was fantastic. The 3-D elements weren't "in your face" or ridiculous. The 3-D was in the details. The 3-D came after the story and the overall design of the movie. And most of the time, it was so subtle that if you weren't looking for it, you probably either didn't notice or your mind just processed it in the suspension of disbelief. The scene that really sticks out to me is one scene in the daycare, and if you look out the window in the background it really looks like it is a full world outside of the building. It doesn't even look like a matte painting. The real. Goddamn. World. In fact, the most 3-D in the whole experience was during the opening short "Day & Night," and that was what 3-D should be! The cartoon was basically characters cut out of a black screen with the "real world" behind them.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
But does the rest of Hollywood follow this mindset? No. Instead we are overrun with regular movies that have had the 3-D added in post-production using computers. Therefore we get The Last Airbender wherein the main complaint I've read about is that the movie was very dark (in lighting terms) on it's own, and the 3-D made it very difficult to even see. On top of that, this coming year you have a steady stream of 3-D films that shouldn't be 3-D: Step Up 3-D, Piranha 3-D, Saw 3-D (which is actually the 7th one!?!) and so on and so on.
The last one, Saw 3-D, is what makes me the angriest about 3-D movies. This movie will be filled with "shock" value meant only for 3-D. Things like hands reaching "toward" you, the traps coming "toward" you, or something else jumping out "toward" you... Look, this trick has only worked in 2 movies I've seen: Captain EO and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Why? Because 1) They're both Disney World (Epcot) Attractions, and 2) When something or someone is coming toward you, its almost believable because its on a huge screen. And in the case of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, it's a fully-engrossing experience with water and moving chairs and air guns. If you try to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) without 3-D glasses, you miss all of those little effects and it's basically really annoying and stops any pacing the movie had going up until that point. And if a movie, like Saw 73-D, is going to completely rely on that, there will be no plot and it will just be filler between sight tricks.
Oh, so just like it is now!
Not that long ago, computer generated effects were completely obvious to the naked eye, but it was so new to us that we suspended our disbelief a little farther to enjoy the movie. But even back in it's infancy, left in the right hands, shoddy CGI could be masterfully and seamlessly introduced into a film. Look at The Abyss or Jurassic Park. Amazing, even for their time. And those led to James Cameron being able to create the world of Avatar. Here's hoping that with a little more time and proper effort, 3-D can become something to cherish and maybe even become as standard as everything else we love about movies.
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