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Has Christopher Nolan Turned the 3D Argument?
brumgrunt writes "Not only has Christopher Nolan resisted pressure to make his third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, in 3D, but his explanation is very much centered on it being the right decision to suit the film. With Harry Potter (temporarily) abandoning 3D too, has Hollywood's latest bandwagon hit the skids already?"
The reason the studios are pushing so hard on 3D is because there is a lot of money in it. They can charge a lot more for a 3D ticket. And once the overhead on the equipment is paid (the projector for the theater, the cameras for the production, the trivial costs of some cheap plastic glasses), all that extra money is almost pure profit. The reason that Nolan is able to resist their push is because he's already established himself with the franchise. If they were appointing a newbie to do it, you can bet they would be TELLING him to do Batman in 3D.
3D has always a been dubious contribution to the art. For every James Cameron who likes to see what he can do with it, there are dozens of filmmakers who have it foisted on them by the studio (many of them after-the-fact). And while the big boys can resist, I doubt the pressure will let up anytime soon. As long as there is money to be made, the studios will ride this train. The only thing that will stop it would be if audiences starting to forgo the overpriced 3D versions for the 2D versions in droves, or if some kind of studio/theater price war started on 3D tickets (making it difficult for the studios to rape us so easily).
Is this a fad that probably SHOULD pass? Maybe. Is it being overused now? Definitely. Is it going anywhere, as long as the studios can reap big money off of it? Almost certainly not.
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3D is great, so long as a movie is made from the very beginning with it in mind, isn't used in a gimmicky sort of way, and isn't thrown in "just because".
I've only seen three movies that meet those requirements: Avatar, UP, and Coraline.
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We've skipped movies because the theater was only showing 3D. After the novelty wore off (took about two films) the greater expense and poor user experience killed it for us. If producers try to force 3D on us in theaters, I'll wait for the video release.
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I put "3d movies are" into the google searchbar, and it autofilled:
"3d movies are a gimmick
3d movies are overrated
3d movies are bullshit
3d movies are crap
3d movies are annoying"
as the first 5 options.
I think the massive backlash is because many people view 3d as the first result, a gimmick to pass off lower quality films while trying to keep the same revenue. After all, the hollywood revenue stream has two factors. One being ticket prices, which can be boosted for the gimmick, and the other being production costs which can be reduced if the film expectations are lowered.
My $0.02
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3D has come and gone in just about every decade for the last 5-6 decades.
It's pretty but there are a number of things that have never been solved:
- it doesn't work AT ALL for a percentage of people. If they don't go, your audience is lessened by their numbers plus a bit more (to account for those groups who say "Yeah, but John can't see it - let's go watch something 2D instead").
- it can induce headaches, motion sickness and all sorts of problems in others.
- it's not "true" 3D, I can't get out of my seat and look at the film from the side. I also can't "stick my head inside" an object that's coming out the screen towards me. It's usually only ever "2D plus depth tricks" which isn't the same.
- it's more expensive than 2D
- it requires more specialist hardware than 2D (and often requires people to don some sort of equipment THEMSELVES to do that)
- it's used as nothing more than a gimmick rather than an actual way to put the viewer "on-stage".
Even a simple theatre is more "3D" than "3D TV" and they can do all sorts of tricks that makes you think an elephant has disappeared, that actors are smaller than they actually are, and that there's a ghost hovering mid-stage. I can't name a single work of art that uses "3D technology" to its advantage and yet an awful lot of art is designed to be 3D (e.g. every statue).
I have at least three games on my hard drive that use "3D" technology if my display supports it - some of them go back decades. Trackmania can do the red/blue glasses thing and, way back when, you could do it in Fractint too. I have "3D" pictures collected from comics when I was young. I played on a "3D" holographic game in the arcades before I was young enough to even work out what buttons I was supposed to be pressing (which, incidentally, was infinitely more impressive than anything you can get on a 3DTV). Nintendo have a console that FLOPPED despite being years ahead of its time because it relied on the "3D" gimmick. I have regularly dug out a pair of red/blue glasses from my childhood days to amuse myself with things that come in boxes of cereal. Even in my parent's day you could go watch a 3D movie at a cinema without having to track one down.
But still, the above problems are always there with any type of "3D". When you *solve* them, come back and we'll take a look. Otherwise, it's a faddy gimmick that'll disappear and be revived next decade too.
This *should* be the reason you use any technology.
Unfortunately, it usually becomes "the right decision to maximize profit."
Good, I-don't-realize-its-there-because-it-seems-so-natural 3D would enhance almost any film by making them more realistic, just as realistic color and life-like sound did in years past.
Jarring, "it's obviously an effect" 3D also works well for some films, just like not-quite-realistic colors and unrealistic use of sound is the right decision for some films.
We don't have "I-don't-realize-its-there-because-it-seems-so-natural 3D" yet. Until we do, directors must make a conscious decision "does the current technology add or detract from my artistic intentions." When realistic 3D does arrive, then directors will be able to ask "is there any artistic benefit to NOT using this technology?"
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I think this 3D fad is one of the most poorly-executed technologies that will end up with an impact like the original laser disc or divx players. First, Avatar has been the only real 3D movie.. and it was awesome. Then, Alice in Wonderland came around and claimed 3D and it looked like a hackjob.
Every part of this '3D' technology is executed badly.
1. The content.. There is a lot of talk about content yet very little available. Where is my ESPN 3D sports channel? Where are all the 3D movies?
2. The home theater.. '3D capable' does not seem to mean shit since even techno-geeks like me don't know what exactly you need to watch 3D. I know the technology requires 120hz+ refresh rates and a 3d-capable player and glasses.. but are all brands interchangeable? If I have a 240hz TV, is that good enough or do I need to blow money a '3D' tv?
3. The glasses.. lol.. Charge me $99/pair? WTF.. Why can't we just use the cheap ones you get in the theatres at home? But seriously.. $99/pair? They're the cheapest plasticky things you can get at the electronics shop and they're $99/each? Freaking joke.. They can't cost more than $3 to make.
The technology looks impressive when watching Avatar at a good theater.. or watching the demos at the Sony store.. But getting that into the home looks like an exercise in frustration even to the most geeky of consumers.
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I remember using one of the first 3D shutter-glasses system with an old 3Dfx graphic card. One of the demo had that "out of the screen" effect and not only did it look like crap, trying to focus on objects in front of my screen just gave me a headache pretty fast.
The demos that tried to add depth to my screen, however, were really amazing. I seem to recall playing Quake 1 in 3D with only in-screen depth and it completely changed the game (in a good way).
When you go see a movie, the action takes places on the damn screen. If things start coming out of it, it's just stupid. You can't have the movie happening inside the theater. But if you use 3D to make the screen have depth, there is still that needed disconnection with the movie vs the theater yet you gain a perceived dimension for the movie itself.
As soon as they stop doing "out-of-screen 3D", we'll be better off.
Good. Get rid of them. I'm sick to death of trying to find a theater playing movies in 2D - the annoyances associated with the fight between my glasses and the stereoscopic ones and the nausea induced by the movie essentially forcing me to look at it cross-eyed to figure it out completely destroy any immersion I may have experienced. I want my suspension of disbelief back.
we chose to go to the movies rather than watch something on Netflix not because of wanting to see a film in 3D, but because there is a new theatre in town - Cinebistro You have to be over 21 to buy a ticket, they serve food and alcohol at your seat in the theatre and they treat you like adults. *That* is an experience that will bring me back to going to theatres, not some 3D gimmick.
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And then there are people like me who accidentally distracted by the background. I take a look at it and then my eyes sort of complain about not being able to bring a backdrop object into focus. Totally kills the immersion for me.
That's a bigger problem than you make it out to be, and it affects everyone, from the directors to the viewers. Use of selective focus for dramatic purposes is an incredibly widespread and effective tool in film. However, it just doesn't work at all in 3-d. The 3-d director must make a choice between two bad options: 1) use normal selective focus, eliminating the point of a 3-d scene and going 3/4 of the way toward collapsing the illusion, or 2) allow the eye to focus anywhere, giving up the most successful technique in the artform for drawing the eye to a particular point. Even Avatar had this problem, and it's the main reason it was better in 2-d.
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