A Rant for 3D

I have a lot to say about the current trend of 3D video.  As a home theater nerd, I have to have an opinion on it.  I have a basic understanding of the various ways 3D is displayed, both in theaters and in the home.  I know that if you purchase a 3D TV and glasses and enjoy the experience, you will still end up disappointed at the lack of available content, especially through cable/satellite providers.  I know that, wherever you watch it, 3D's glasses will limit the amount of light getting to your eye, thus detrimentally dimming the image.

I...love....3D.  Despite its shortcomings, I believe it is spectacular when done correctly.  3D Blu-rays look almost as good as a theatrical presentation (see Prometheus), and video games on the Playstation 3 and XBOX 360 are twice as cool in 3D (see Uncharted 3).

However, Hollywood is killing me.  3D is being treated like a gimmick, and it has to stop.  Here is the problem: movies are being shot in 2D and converted to 3D, without the proper care, in post-production.  The results, in live action movies, are always, always, underwhelming to embarrassing.  Basically, the trend of Hollywood doing this so that they can charge moviegoers more money started soon after Avatar, with this hunk of garbage.

Unfortunately, I went to see Zack Snyder's Man of Steel on opening night.  But let's not focus on that tragedy; the point was the 3D.  It was flat.  The post-conversion was garbage.  It was a waste of money, both for Warner Brothers and audiences.

I have only seen three films in theaters (Prometheus, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Avatar) that blew me away with their sense of immersion, depth and tangibility thanks to 3D, and all of them were shot using James Cameron's 3D cameras.  Check out what he says if you don't believe me that post-converted blockbusters aren't up to par.

ValkyrieSDF1

The Smurfs Look Even Cartoon-ier in 2-D

My search for reference-quality blu-rays had a close call last month, as I narrowly avoided buying one of the Transformer films just to have them. Instead, I went with a movie I can actually stand, Avatar.

This movie was like a gosh darn roller coaster in 3-D, and the computer animation was the most convincing I'd ever seen. However, even though the blu-ray is probably the best ever made, it can't make the Na'Vi look like they're anything other than cartoons. So half the movie looks like a cartoon. The 3-dimensional effect is the only thing that made Cameron's movie look like the greatest achievement in visual effects ever. And the other half looks like it was shot on home video. The whole movie might just as well have been made in a computer.

If I had wanted to buy a cartoon on blu-ray, I would have bought Toy Story.

Zack Snyder's Movie can Beat Up Your Movie

I found 2009 to be a particularly disappointing year for movies. There were very few released that I actually want to own on home video, and that's saying something.

This year will be remembered forever for one movie: Avatar. Whether the 3D craze it started lasts or not, the film became the highest grosser of all time, and now everyone is struggling to catch up with James Cameron. 3D will be applied to a lot of movies, even ones that were shot in 2D.

But Zack Snyder's Watchmen was the most noteworthy film of the year. An unfilmable graphic novel was filmed, and, using the miracle of cinema, audiences were completely tranported to an alternate reality. The last sixty years of U.S. history were rewritten. A god walked among us. Every healthy young male on the continent realized that their lives were missing something and that her name was Malin Akerman. Snyder crafted an epic that was cast to the letter and used c.g. special effects in the best way possible: to tell a story.

Snyder also shows a Danny Boyle-like appreciation for montage, which is apparent in the opening credits sequences of Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Watchmen. I'm sure plenty of critics would say that editing footage to a catchy song doesn't count as good filmmaking, and they'd be right- that's done every day on MTV. But Snyder uses his little music videos to better his films; the credits of Watchmen are brilliant, and they're my favorite six minutes of cinema from all of 2009.

If you've seen any footage of Snyder, you know that he's a successful filmmaker who can also beat you up. Dang, his forearms are big! Look for Legend of the Guardians, a c.g. film, next from Snyder this fall.