Congratulations are in order to The Hurt Locker and Kathryn Bigelow for winning the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars last night. My heart was with The Hurt Locker in the Best Picture category, but my money was on Avatar. Same goes for the Directing category. No offense to James Cameron or Avatar, but let’s face it, Cameron could make a two hour movie of himself in a bath robe eating Cheetos and watching football and it would gross over $500 million and become an instant front-runner at the Oscars.
The 3D technical wizardry of Avatar is no doubt stunning and Cameron is to be commended for the many advancements in 3D technology he pioneered making this movie. There are a lot of movies coming out in 3D and it’s probably too soon to tell whether this is simply a fad or a major change in how movies are made and viewed. I spent the afternoon before the Oscars at the movie theater watching Alice in Wonderland, the latest 3D extravaganza to hit theaters. Tim Burton’s trippy adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic draws more inspiration from Through the Looking Glass than from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but ultimately it’s a mash-up of both stories with a few changes. In this version, Alice is 19, much less neurotic, and tasked with defeating the Red Queen and her Jabberwocky. It’s a story we’re all familiar with but what makes the film worth seeing is Tim Burton’s distinct imagery done in acid flashback-inducing IMAX 3D.
3D has certainly come along way. I can remember my first experience with it as a soon-to-be teenager sneaking in to see Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Back then audiences had to watch 3D movies with flimsy cardboard glasses with one red lens and one blue one. The only memorable thing about this 3D experience was the occasional blood splatter that appeared to fly off the screen and the numerous times Freddy Krueger turned toward the audience and slashed at the screen with his metal claw-gloved hand. The whole thing seemed more like a gimmick than an enhancement of the cinematic experience. Recent 3D movies such as Up, Avatar, and Alice in Wonderland tend to use this effect to draw the audience into the story rather than just trying to draw them into the theater.
There has been a lot of talk recently about 3D and the effect it will have on the entertainment industry. Movie theaters can’t add 3D capabilities fast enough to keep up with the amount of 3D films being planned by the studios. ESPN has announced plans to launch a 3D TV network and home 3D entertainment systems were all the rage at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
If you haven’t been to the movies lately to see a 3D movie, then I highly recommend that you do so. It really is quite stunning these days. When it comes to movies like Avatar, Up, and Alice in Wonderland, 3D definitely serves as an enhancement of the film. If a movie is visual in nature or really trying to pump up the spectacle factor, then 3D is a great tool. However, some films just won’t be helped by it. Up in the Air is one of my favorite movies from the past year (and I’m kind of bummed that it didn’t win any Oscars) however I can’t imagine any way in which that movie would have been enhanced with 3D. Similarly, The Hurt Locker – a gritty film about the adrenaline rush of combat as told through the eyes of a bomb disposal unit in Iraq – probably would have been ruined by adding 3D effects. The Hurt Locker is a story driven film where the psychology of the main characters is a major part of the plot. There’s just no way 3D could have enhanced it. Besides, an Iraq War movie in 3D might prove to be an unnervingly heavy dose of reality for war sanitized American audiences.
3D is definitely a cool new addition to the ever expanding equation of entertainment options. However I don’t see it becoming the standard platform replacing 2D. Some movies are cerebral and story driven making them incompatible with 3D while other films are visual and effects driven, making them perfect for 3D. I just hope that a certain sub sect of the movie industry that is based in the San Fernando Valley doesn’t start releasing films in 3D. That would just be disturbing.
- Dan Phenicie
