In wake of recent mega-hits like Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon and last week’s Clash of the Titans – it appears that we ought to prepare ourselves for a new cinematic format.
These four films are all blockbusters that have been released within the past five months. And these films, as of now, are all responsible for bringing in a ton of bank for their respective studios.
I can understand why Avatar made almost three billion dollars worldwide. Say what you want about its screenwriting, but the movie broke grounds and actually used 3-D to immerse the viewer into the visual extravaganza which Cameron created.
After seeing it in both 2-D and 3-D formats, I can tell you that I noticed an extreme difference – enough to rate it one camel in 2D and four in 3D.
What separates Avatar from this crowd however is that the movie was originally planned to be in 3-D – Cameron simply wouldn’t have it any other way.
So in that way, I have respect for Avatar. But I have little respect for recent releases like Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans, two films which were both not filmed in the 3-D format, but the studios decided to convert them for the release because they knew they could make more money.
3-D is a golden ticket for the studios to make money, because since each cinema charges the viewer for a ticket AND a pair of glasses, they make an extra $5 on each ticket sold, which makes a big difference.
I saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D, and the effects added absolutely nothing. The set was lavish, with weird plants and the oddly-shaped creatures mixed and matched with vibrant colors, and from a visual standpoint I could see how perfectly suited Burton was to direct the picture (though I have my thoughts on the film itself).
The film had zero need for a third dimension. Instead, it needed a couple of script revisions.
I never saw Clash of the Titans, but I’m going to take my main influence, Roger Ebert’s stance on it: “Explain to kids that the movie was not filmed in 3-D and is only being shown in 3-D in order to charge you an extra $5 a ticket. I saw it in 2-D, and let me tell you, it looked terrific.”
Ticket prices are already higher than ever, and adding these five bucks simply to have it in 3-D is wallet-draining for us moviegoers.
But 3-D is an extremely lucrative opportunity for the people pumping money into these projects, so there’s no way this whole concept of putting everything in 3-D is going away anytime soon, is there?
