Just a few years ago, Hollywood filmmakers and moguls could be seen on the hustings, going city to city trying to convince critics, media reporters and theater owners that 3-D would save a floundering movie industry. How better to coax audiences out of their home entertainment centers than with a souped-up visual experience they could have only in theaters — at a nearly 50 percent markup on the ticket price? Their refrain was so redolent of the 1950s it was difficult to believe they were speaking in the 21st century: 3-D! It’s the future!
If 3-D is the future, I’m over it.
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The Washington Post's Jen Chaney revisits the initial release of the movie Titanic and how an expected flop became one of the most popular films in Hollywood history.
No evangelist was more passionate than DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, who stopped by Washington some years ago on his 3-D crusade. Like a cinematic “Music Man,” Katzenberg brought a sizzle reel of outtakes from the 3-D cartoon “Monsters vs. Aliens,” touting the wonders of its digital 3-D processes and insisting that the visual effect would be the most important development in cinema since the advent of sound.
The sizzle reel fizzled. But while cynical journos smirked behind the new-and-improved shades Katzenberg had handed out, he sang the praises of the coming revolution, predicting that soon every filmgoer would possess his or her own pair, to be grabbed reflexively on the way to the multiplex along with car keys and a debit card. Gone are the days of gee-whiz gimmicks and dorky red-and-blue glasses, Katzenberg enthused, evoking visions of Creatures From Black Lagoons and the popping paddle ball in “House of Wax.” Thanks to high-end production and presentation values, 3-D was on the verge of becoming as subtle and essential a filmmaking element as cinematography and music.
Katzenberg has been proved both right and wrong in the ensuing years. As one of those bespectacled skeptics, I’ve been forced to concede that he was correct about the recent onslaught of 3-D movies. His more grandiose point — that 3-D would migrate from being a cheap stunt to a legitimate part of cinematic grammar — has had more trouble finding purchase, although some recent films have admittedly used it to subtle, expressive and exhilarating effect.
Still, whether as a commercial lifeboat for a movie industry desperate to get tushies in theater seats or as a simple aesthetic element, the all-important third dimension quite simply has not lived up to Katzenberg’s evangelical zeal.
By the beard of Zeus, forget
the glasses! Give us blindfolds!
That sobering reality was driven home over the past several days when two movies — coming from opposed poles of the cinematic spectrum — tried and failed to make 3-D work, albeit for vastly different reasons. “Wrath of the Titans” arrived in part as penance for “Clash of the Titans,” the disastrously cheap-looking 2010 swords-and-sandals adventure that had been so sloppily converted into 3-D that even Katzenberg was forced to admit the revolution might not be completely camera-ready. This year’s sequel, a mind-numbing piece of escapism, at least had the benefit of being filmed in 3-D. But, aside from an odd serpent biting through the screen or Liam Neeson’s Zeus-worthy beard occasionally threatening to break the fourth wall, the benefits of the added effect were negligible.
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