In Your Face 3D – Revenge of the Stupid Glasses

Yes it’s rant time again. This time I will have to mention a filmmaker that this website more than loves. Martin Scorsese. Sorry Marty, but you gave me the idea for this rant. I love the new HBO show Boardwalk Empire that you got off the ground together with Mark Wahlberg (out of all people). I love most of your movies, and admire the rest of them. But when I read, that you too are now starting to shoot movies in 3D (click here for the story at Slashfilm), I almost choked on my food. I am sure it will be a good movie, because well, you’re making it. But why the hell in 3D? Because your producers told you that makes the most money? Because you’re curious? Well let me give you a break Marty.

My problem with 3D movies in general is not that most of them are bad (most of them are), or that it is a marketing ploy to get more young people to watch it and to get everyone to pay a higher ticket price. What sucks about 3D movies is that they are not 3D, they look somewhat 3D if you wear those ridiculous stupid fucking glasses! That’s right people, they are fucking ridiculous. And I mean not in a fashion sense, because nobody will look at you while you sit there ruining your neck watching Avatar 3D. They are ridiculous because handing out these stereo-vision glasses is what IMAX did in the early nineties as well. It sucked then, it sucked now. The only difference is that it looks a bit nicer now. If you watch 3D Avatar and regular Avatar in a row, the difference is not only minimal, but you almost feel cheated. With the billions of dollars they are pouring into this 3D technology, it is almost hard to believe we still have to wear those retarded glasses to get the 3D effect. I had more fun with the Terminator 4D show at Universal Studios than watching Avatar, because there, the experience was mostly real. Now, to be fair, especially Pixar-type movies do look quite nice in 3D. But then again, they are animated movies, and thereby a whole different type of cinema altogether.

So, aside from the fact that we haven’t managed to improve the 3D experience one bit since it was first invented, and the fact that cinema is in its nature moving pictures, and pictures are two-dimensional, we have another problem. There will always be 2D movies and always be two-dimensional versions of 3D movies (at least I hope). So this puts an extra burden on a director to create a movie that fits both his two-dimensional cinematic vision and the stupid three-dimensional wish of his or her producers. Not to mention, that from the internet, to your iPhone and your living room TV, most people on this planet will watch most movies for the rest of the time in two-dimensional settings anyhow. So what then is 3D other than – again – a way to get you to run to the movie theater and pay 15 bucks for a ticket of a movie that looks just as fine and is just as bad in two dimensions? In some places it costs more than 15 bucks even. How many awesome movies could you stream to your home theater or buy on on-sale DVDs for that money? Holy shit.

Dear Hollywood 3D movie people, why don’t you wear those stupid glasses yourselves? Leave me the hell alone appreciating the fine art of cinema, which are moving pictures in two-dimensions!