Roger Ebert believes not, and that its use in films is an annoyance and a distraction
Has it really come to this? I read in Variety, the film industry journal, that ‘Mark Thomas of Elsinore Films is producing a 3-D musical Hamlet targeting the Harry Potter and High School Musical market’. I am not concerned for Hamlet, which has been kneaded into so many preposterous shapes and survived. What horrifies me is the prospect of seeing the film in 3-D. Variety helpfully explains: ‘Hamlet lends itself to a 3-D treatment. The producers hope to include a ghost that hovers in front of the audience’s eyes, cannon fire that flies into the auditorium and a sword fight that appears to happen all around viewers.’ Yes, and no doubt Yorick’s skull thrust into our faces.
The 3-D process is an abomination that has died many deaths. It failed in the 1950s as a novelty, and again in the 1970s as a device to breathe new life into exhausted franchises. It even fizzled as a promising innovation in porno. Somehow, audiences didn’t find it erotic to witness the legs of The Stewardesses extending above them as they zeroed in on the money shot.
Simply put, has anyone ever attended a 2-D movie and thought, ‘If only it were in 3-D’? I doubt it, because 2-D creates a perfectly effective illusion of depth and dimension. When I see Lawrence growing from a dot far across the desert sands, it never occurs to me that I’m watching a 2-D image. When I watch 3-D, however, I’m constantly reminded that it’s in 3-D. Objects approach and recede alarmingly, drawing you out of the actual film.
Animators are among the worst perpetrators. They seem obsessed with a 3-D bungee effect, in which characters such as the Kung Fu Panda spring from far below into the near-foreground, their faces frenzied, and then fall back to earth like Wile E. Coyote. It crystallises much that is wrong with the process. The planes of a 3-D picture are rarely rendered into a seamless progression from foreground to background, as in 2-D, but call attention to themselves. Characters seem more concerned to demonstrate their dimensions than their personalities. And, by its nature, the entire 3-D image must be in focus at all times, depriving cinematographers of the use of focal planes. The process is an annoyance and a distraction.
Now, though, 3-D is back from the grave as the object of a campaign to market digitally projected animation. It is most prevalent here in the States, but it is being pushed worldwide. Its supporters cite recent box-office numbers: Up ($291 million in America), Monsters vs. Aliens ($198 million), Ice Age 3 ($195 million), G-Force ($117 million). But let’s be clear: a majority of those tickets weren’t sold for 3-D screenings; all four films grossed more in 2-D, because of the limited number of 3-D projection facilities.
Never fear, though. That is being remedied. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the high priest and snake-oil salesman of 3-D, has announced that all animation at his DreamWorks studio will be in 3-D. Pixar, the leader in animation, is apparently following. To promote his (pretty bad) Monsters vs. Aliens, Katzenberg barnstormed North America for a month, meeting personally with film critics and exhibitors. Two weeks ago, he keynoted an animation summit conference in Los Angeles to encourage cinema owners to upgrade to expensive new projectors and silvered screens.
Katzenberg knows animation. It is his infatuation with 3-D that is suspect. He masterminded the modern rebirth of animation at Disney in the 1980s with such titles as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Disney later purchased Pixar, which will 3-D versions of its Toy Story movies this month. Most worryingly of all, Pixar has technology that can convert any 2-D movie into 3-D from scratch; an ominous development, like the outrage of colorisation, that threatens existing films.
To my mind, it all comes down to one simple question: does anyone like 3-D? I’ve certainly never met an adult who does. Many of them complain about the goggles, which rarely fit properly over existing eyeglasses. Some cannot see stereoscopically.
No live-action movie has ever been very successful in 3-D, in part because our minds require more realism in the realistic world than we do in animation. The process itself leads to a dimming-down of picture brightness, which animation can try to correct for. If you remove your glasses, you can see what you’re missing. Yet Katzenberg promised me during a stop on his tour that many of Hollywood’s serious dramatic releases would eventually be in 3-D; virtually all films, I gather, except those by reactionary auteurs like Werner Herzog and Lars von Trier.
There may be a clue to this fervour in ticket prices. American theatres have started adding a $3 surcharge for 3-D. At a typical first-run American theatre, adults pay $11 and children $8. For 3-D movies, it’s $14 and $11. Do the maths. Two adults and two children cost $38 in 2-D and $50 in 3-D. They’ve got rid of the children’s discount and raised the adult price, neatly eliminating the loophole in much animated cinema, which is that so many admissions are sold at children’s prices. Many multiplexes showing a 3-D version don’t book 2-D on another screen.
Movie critics are sometimes asked why all movies cost the same to view, even though some may have cost $100 million to make, and others $500,000. It’s a reasonable question. I suppose the reasoning is that you get about two hours of movie either way. Now 3-D has provided exhibitors with a subterfuge to force consumers to subsidise their upgraded projection facilities — which is deceptive, because most theatres are upgrading to digital projectors anyway. This could be called the 3-D children’s tax.
Do kids really care? My experience with a good many children is that they either ‘like’ a movie or they don’t. I’ve never heard a single one mention 3-D. Sure, they think it’s ‘neat’ to put on the glasses, but I rather doubt it’s a decisive factor for them. It certainly isn’t for me. Or, rather, it is; but not in the way the studios intend. I was recently able to see Pixar’s Up in 2-D, and I thought it was remarkable. In 3-D, I would have had just one more damn thing to think about.
For a director who takes himself seriously, to add 3-D would be like a novelist choosing a distracting typeface. The only encouraging aspect of this marketing outrage is that eventually we’ll have more cinemas with better projection. But it still leaves a bitter taste in the throat.
Roger Ebert is film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.
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