I don't want to have to wear these every single time I go to the movies. (Photo CC by 2.0, via pink_fish13 on Flickr)
Like I’ve said before, I am one of the few people I know who still attends movies regularly. My attendance has dropped off lately due to an overload of work commitments, but at one point, my boyfriend and I would see about a movie a week. So it was with great amusement early last year that we attended the first 3-D movie to come out in a long time, the slasher flick My Bloody Valentine.
The movie itself was atrocious, but it was atrocious enough to be funny, and the novelty value of the experience was high. But seriously, the effects were so cheesy overall, I figured the rebirth of 3-D would remain mostly that, an occasional novelty.
Avatar seems to have changed all that definitively with its astronomical box-office success. Sadly, I have to be a partial Avatar naysayer. I duly lined up in the early weeks to see it in the be-all, end-all version: IMAX 3-D, with a ticket that cost about $20. I enjoyed the movie itself, with its visuals and corny but uplifting plot.
The theatrical experience, though, was sensorially exhausting. The sound was crushing, and the scale of the screen combined with the 3-D effects left me with a headache for hours afterward. (I’m no square, either — I write about loud forms of music as my “day job!”).
These days it seems like almost every big-budget movie that’s not a romantic comedy or something is destined to come out in 3-D. It seems unnecessary. For instance, while bored at the mall the other day we decided to pop in and watch Clash of the Titans in 3-D (though not in IMAX).
Clash of the Titans really didn't need to be in 3-D. (Image CC by 2.0, via perry_marco on Flickr)
The experience wasn’t as tiring as Avatar was, but I had to question the necessity of 3-D at all — especially since the movie was rendered 3-D after the fact, leaving a frequent strange flattening of shapes in the movie’s foreground. The most irritating thing was the price. Each ticket cost $5 more. Sure, we got to keep the “Real 3-D” glasses, but considering you don’t have the option of bringing your own and paying less the next time around, it seems like a waste of plastic.
If 3-D is going to rule the movie theater experience from now on, hopefully the technology will change so that it becomes less physically fatiguing. And hopefully theater prices will stabilize. Otherwise, the novelty factor will eventually wear off, and attendance will continue to drop off — especially as 3-D television at home approaches.