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?"

Comments

Let's face it

[elrous0]

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.

Re:Let's face it

[poetmatt]

there isn't a lot of money in it. They think there might be a lot of money in it. There's an enormous difference between those statements.

The difference between speculation and reality is in the execution, something which 3D doesn't do well because it's gimmick.

There's infinite money to be made in selling air! Our profit margins are infinite! etc. This is what people tell themselves. And then comes the reality.

Re:Let's face it

[Electricity Likes Me]

And, yes, I am aware that 3D viewing requires that one pay attention only to the main element of the scene (trying to look at the background when only the foreground is in focus will always result in blurring even with the best 3D).

This to me is actually the biggest flaw of 3D. I love looking at the backgrounds of films - I like seeing all the effort and little details that have gone into them, even if the focus isn't on them. Which is why, despite seeing Avatar in 3D (because of the 3D and the "must see" that was going around) I was thoroughly disappointed in the technology: in a movie supposed to be all about the detail of the world, you spend a whole lot of time in scenes struggling to track the focus point because you WANT to look at the backgrounds when they're around.

Re:Let's face it

[pla]

And, yes, I am aware that 3d viewing requires that one pay attention only to the main element of the scene (trying to look at the background when only the foreground is in focus will always result in blurring even with the best 3d).

Except, you've just described my biggest peeve about 3d movies - I don't consider that a minor nuissance, but an outright show-stopper.

In an action scene (main elements moving around rapidly) or a landscape (panfocal background shot), it doesn't so much matter; Put two people talking in a room for more than five seconds, though, and I start looking at the scenery rather than the talking heads. A little bit of blur in that, I can accept; Making my eyes hurt when I dare to focus on something other than what the director wants me to, total BS.


3d will always remain a cute gimmick until we have a truly immersive environment like a holodeck. Some films can use it well, but the other 99.5% of movies should stick with 2d.

Re:Let's face it

[oh_my_080980980]

RTFA

3-D is waning. It's not they money maker they thought it was. People are not paying for the 3-D movie, they are opting for the 2-D movie instead.

Again RTFA, because Warner Bros. got their ass handed to them for Clash Of The Titans and The Last Airbender, they were not eager to push 3-D.

So yes 3-D is a fad. When DIRECTORS WANT 3-D, 3-D will take over, NOT when STUDIOS WANT 3-D.

Re:Let's face it

[netsavior]

I think 3D is more about providing an experience that can't (yet) be pirated successfully. I have seen damn good CAMs where they have used the Hard of hearing accessibilty device to rip the sound straight from the equipment, recorded in a dark empty theater on a tripod on an HD camera (this is done by theater employees).

with a telesync that good, or a screener dvd rip, lots of people have projectors or nice big TVs in their house and there really is no reason to go to some crappy theater where people will be hollering and the floor is sticky.
3D and IMAX movies are the only movie theater experiences that are significantly better than pirating (or waiting for DVD) for me nowadays.

I still go to other movies sometimes, but I really make time for decent 3d releases that I (or my kids) want to see.

I think the pirating problem is not as big as the film industry thinks it is, but I think anti-pirating is no small part of their push for 3D.

Re:Let's face it

[Eivind Eklund]

A bunch of us happen to like it. I preferentially select watching a movie in the theater when it's in 3D; otherwise, I'll more often wait until it is available on DVD.

Eivind.

Re:Let's face it

[geekoid]

3d is no more of a gimmick then sound or color. 3d does make them a lot of extra money. Book money not speculation money.
3d is atoll that is now here to stay. It won't be used for all movies, but there will probably always be at least one or two movies using it.

Re:Let's face it

[bennomatic]

I remember when I saw Toy Story, thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if, in addition to a normal DVD release, they released a version with all of the model, action, sound and lighting information, but where you could grab the "camera" and move it anywhere in the story's defined universe?" With live action films, stereoscopic projection is as good as it will realistically get, but there's no reason that 100% CG movies couldn't allow for some more immersive features.

Even DVDs, when they first came out, were supposed to be revolutionary because they allowed directors to include multiple angles for the same scene. How many movies have that? I haven't seen any. But imagine if you could re-shoot the whole thing. Even if you couldn't change the audio, sets and the action, imagine being able to muck with the lighting and camera angles and make a noir version of your favorite episode of Dinosaur Train...

Let me say:

[RulerOf]

has Hollywood's latest bandwagon hit the skids already?

I sure as hell hope so.

Here's to hoping

[Pojut]

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.

We only see the 2D version

[roc97007]

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.

Don't ask the monkey, ask the organ grinder

[Rogerborg]

Just because WB won't pay to shoot in stereo doesn't mean they won't then get some Korean sweatshop to post-processed the movies. Why invest more than they need to, when they already know that audiences paid a premium to watch Alice and Titans in "3D"?

So, no, I don't think we're seeing the end of "3D", I just think we're seeing the end of pretending to care about the quality of it.

Re:Don't ask the monkey, ask the organ grinder

[Rogerborg]

It's much much cheaper to shoot in 3D than to do it in post-processing

Says you. A CGI professioanl says shooting stereoscopic is more expensive. Who am I going to believe?

We'd have to reinvent drama for 3-D

[Gopal.V]

Most of the action/epic movie genre shot in real life, rather than on a green screen heavily uses perspective effects to achieve drama.

Something like the famous contra-zoom would be a complete failure in 3-D. The entire sequence in LoTR where Gandalf and Frodo are in the same shot would just not work in 3-D unless you went in and fixed the perspective for every frame.

Half of the hollywood real-life special effects would need to be re-invented for 3-D to work right. Or the CGI versions need to catch up to the old-school effects.

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. I want 3-D movies, but not this polarized lenses in each eye monstrosity (I wonder if I could get contacts with those).

Re:Is Hollywood leaving money on the table?

[O('_')O_Bush]

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

3D

[ledow]

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.

HP

[Spad]

The only reason that Harry Potter has "abandoned" 3D is because they couldn't retro-fit it into the latest instalment in time for the planned release date. They're still fully intending to go back and 3D all the old films plus this latest one and re-release them to cash in.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

good riddance.

[Triv]

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.

Went to the movies last night

[OzPeter]

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.