Film’s future may be in three dimensions but its past should stay in two

James Cameron’s Titanic is soon to be back in cinemas – in 3D. Even if you are a great fan of Titanic, and a great fan of 3D, this is not something to celebrate.

I love 3D. In fact, I’m quickly acquiring a small reputation as someone publications and radio stations come to when they want a film critic to stick up for it – but even I think 2D-to-3D conversions are an abomination.

3D could be a fabulous new frontier in filmmaking. There are great filmmakers, such as Martin Scorsese, who recognise this and make exciting new films suited to the opportunities it offers.

And there are great film-makers, such as George Lucas, who use it to desecrate classics in order to make even more money from their fans.

Woody Allen refuses to watch any film he has made after he has finished making it; faced with a clip from one of his movies in an interview, he will turn away from the screen. Part of the reason is that, were he to re-watch his films, he would see only mistakes he would want to correct, and he prefers not to torture himself with them.

Lucas is the anti-Allen: he is a filmmaker who has tortured himself by watching his own films too often. He has seen many ‘mistakes’ in the Star Wars films and, through the various re-releases he has given them, both for the cinema and for home viewing, fans have seen (and, in general, fiercely rejected) all of his corrections.
    
But now he is going even further. By re-releasing the Star Wars Saga in 3D, he is no longer tinkering with his films to make them into the films he feels they should have been to start with – he is twisting them into films he couldn’t possibly have imagined them being until a few years ago.

Lucas should learn from his friend, Steven Spielberg, who is not wasting his later career converting the likes of E.T. from 2D but spending it filming the likes of The Adventures of Tintin in 3D.

James Cameron falls between these two categories: like Spielberg and Scorsese, he does commendable new things with 3D (as in Avatar) and, like Lucas, he does money-hungry retrofits too.

But distorting 2D films into 3D films isn’t just bad for the films and their fans. It is also bad for 3D.

So much of the potential of stereoscopic cinema will never be realised if filmgoers tire of 3D before filmmakers have fully mastered it – and filmgoers will tire of 3D very quickly if they see too many lazy retrofits and too few original 3D features.

Titanic and Star Wars should no more be re-released in 3D than Casablanca and The Third Man should be re-released in colour.

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