3D: A Mini-Rant

How 3D Killed Summer Movies: A Mini-Rant

I remember as a kid, going to see a 3D movie was a cool event, it was a rarity and a treat and almost every single scene was designed and shot just to use that technology to its fullest, just as it was back in the 1950s when it was first used to mass effect. See back then, a 3D movie was a big deal, you had to shoot a movie in a completely different way, you had to use special cameras and when framing your shots would have too basically pander to the fact the film is in 3D, and ofcourse, it would be awesome, be it a spaceship flying at you headlong at a breakneck speed and shooting its photons as fast as Machine Gun Kelly would shoot a tommy gun, or Jaws coming up out of the water at you like you're a fun size snickers bar and he's had nothing to eat all day long, and all the many uses in between, but either way, shooting a film in 3D was alot harder then it is now. See nowadays, like with most things in hollywood, 3D is simply a filter applied to an already finished digitalized copy of a film, normally a final theatrical cut made as a second disc after the master has already been put on blu ray. Its a simple filter that anyone with Avid editing software and is aware one of the many filters you can get to add onto it is infact the same 3D filter that is used by the studios (Avid is still the king of hollywood video editing, no matter what mac tries to tell you about their video editing software). And though that has lead to so many interesting changes, just like in the theatrical films, it really seems unneeded and just another excuse to milk more money out of us all.

Now to some this might just sound like me being an angry nerd who bitches and complains about just about anything that isn't what I feel my personal idea of something should be, and I guess that statement wouldn't be 100% wrong, but it also wouldn't be 100% right either, for you see, its simple common sense and logic, mixed with a love of film that its hard for some to understand. Now, for just a minute, think about all the movies that have come out in 3D in a post Avatar cinematic landscape, now, of them, how many of them actually fit the concept of 3D? How many of them had something flying at the camera every scene? How many intentionally aimed things at the camera every single scene to give you that "brought into the film" feel that you get with 3D? Now, how many of them only had one or two scenes where the 3D visuals were even used? And how many had no scenes at all where it was needed, and felt like you were just suckered into paying an extra 4 dollars just to watch a film with a pair of glasses that weren't cleaned before you wore them and all you can smell is whatever the person before you was eating while wearing them? I'm betting there is alot more in that last category then in the others. Honestly, did you really need 3D for Captain America? I loved that film, but no. Did you need it for Transformers: Dark Of The Moon? Again, I loved that film, but no. Did you need it for The Smurfs? I don't know because I refused to watch that pile of dung, but from what I've been told it didn't need it, nor did so many other films, it seems like for the past year and a half or so, every single movie has been available in standard visual format, or "2D" and as well as in the modern take on 3D. And honestly it just doesn't need to be. Its not worth the ramming it down our throats, just for afew extra dollars and some glasses we're gonna steal because we got suckered into paying extra for a film that didn't need extra effects. I've always said this, if a film needs some extra filter tacked onto it in post production just to get sales, its not a good film. Did The Godfather need gimmicks? no. Did Back To The Future need gimmicks? no. Did Ghost Dad need gimmicks? Well it might have helped that pile of shit, actually. But anyway my point remains, a good film, should be seen as a good film, not a film where the only thing you remember from it is the one scene where Yogi Bear shot bear snot at the screen, or where a prehistoric piranha spit out someone's penis right at the camera. Thats not cinema, thats pandering to the easiest and lowest demographics for the easy cash. Its an insult to movies everywhere. Maybe I'm an old bitchy grumpy bastard on this, but it bothers me beyond more then when a well deserved film gets passed over for some flash in the pan gone in a month then on dvd two months later that really pissed people off instead of making the theater raving about what they just saw.

And now I've gotten that off my chest, I'm good now



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BC