Feb 13, 2012

[Movies] Fake 3D Movies Must Die

This weekend, theaters around the world celebrated another weird moment in geek movie history - the release of The Phantom Menace in 3D, which heralds the eventual release of all 6 Star Wars movies in the 3D format despite not having been shot in 3D originally. And as if the movie wasn't bad enough on its own, the marketing behind the movie decided to position things in an even campier fashion that we thought imaginable:



Oh yes, they thought that they could redeem the movie by marketing it to kids. And I acknowledge there's another trailer promoting it as a 3D masterpiece, this whole things just annoys me to heck. Beyond the insulting marketing that treats kids like shallow simpletons who just might appreciate Jar Jar Binks, it also stresses what 3D really means to us - that's it's little more than a lousy marketing gimmick and a sad excuse to charge more for movie tickets.

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And to be fair, some movies that go the lengths of shooting with actual 3D camera in order to create an immersive experience are trying to make the most of the medium - movies like Avatar and a lot of the CGI animated features from Dreamworks and Disney-Pixar. Those may deserve come credit in the long run. 

But for those movies that are shot with non-3D cameras and then somehow magically converted into 3D during post-production, well, that's just a load of bull. That's not really some magical transformation process to turn the movie into 3D - that's just a cheap way to pad box office ticket prices! If they were really serious about creating movies in 3D in a manner that stresses it as an art form or something, then start with the right equipment, commit to the full process and proceed from there.

3D movies have a lot of issues to begin with after all. They're darker than standard movies and they're annoying for people who wear glasses (like myself) unless I remember to wear contacts when I go to the theater. The glasses are uncomfortable and most of the time the 3D effect only adds some weird dimension of depth to things without really adding to the value of the overall production. It doesn't really help the story nor does it add some extra edge to make me feel like I'm actually in the movie production.

So enough with the fake 3D movies Hollywood. I'm done paying for your lies. I commit not to watch any 3D-converted movies starting this year and I'll hold strong to that. And I'll keep reminding people to steer clear of such converted movies every chance I get until we stop this horrible practice once and for all. Enough with the gimmicks - spend your money giving us truly original and creative content!



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4 comments:

  1. Hear Hear! And George Lucas needs to quit milking Star Wars to death and try to create some new material. There is a lot more out stories out there to tell, do we really need to keep paying you to retell the same old ones over and over again? 

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  2. I completely agree.

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  3. Haha, take the campaign to the streets!

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  4. Oh gods yes! But that also assumes he has new ideas beyond the Star Wars franchise.

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