James King talks 3D!
Another week, another film in 3D.
Scrub that - another TWO films in 3D.
Yep, I'm talking about family animation How To Train Your Dragon and ancient Greek epic Clash Of The Titans. Two big movies for the Easter hols and both pretty cool, despite the first featuring the voice of Gerry Butler and the second featuring the line 'They are soldiers from Argos!'. Wow, I've never seen them in the catalogue.
But here's my point. Are we getting too many 3D films? Do we really need them? Why don't the glasses ever feel comfortable? (Maybe that's just me and my problematically shaped boxer's nose).
The crucial fact here is, Clash Of The Titans wasn't even going to be in 3D until the success of Avatar. It wasn't filmed as such and no-one expected it to be. Then out comes Cameron's 'Pocahontas In Space' and all of a sudden the producers of Clash wanted to spend a few million on the 3D conversion process. I'm sure they'll get their money back.
But watch it and there's no real reason for it to be in three dimensions. The action is intense, the scenery breathtaking, Gemma Arterton's legs smokin' - but there's never a point when you really immerse yourself in the 3D. Why should you? It's just been used as a late gimmick to give an extra whammy of publicity to an already entertaining movie.
We all know that Hollywood is out there to make money and I'm never going to have a go at that. But if we as movie fans are going to spend our (extra) money on the multitude of 3D films coming out of Tinseltown over the next few years, then let's actually get something different out of the experience. Avatar immersed you another world - with James Cameron spending 8 years on the project, you'd expect nothing less. At the other end of the scale, trashy horror such as Final Destination 3D also had fun with the process, playing out like a fairground novelty but still delivering the goods.
At least you felt 3D had a point. Too many more quick cash-ins though and we'll lose patience, however good the actual film.
Comment number 1.
At 30th Mar 2010, Mark wrote:I think these film studios are jumping onto this 3D technology far to quickly. They have seen the success of Avatar and think they can benifit from som extra cash by making it 3D. I saw Alice in Wonderland a few weeks ago - , and though there was no beifit from the 3D.
I have written a post on 3D movies where I go into more detail on the subject, check it out -
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Comment number 2.
At 7th Apr 2010, Chris wrote:I like the 3d revolution although it never seems to jump out at you as the old school ones did. The floating arm from Jaws 3D always haunts me still!!
Trips to Thorpe Park a few years ago to watch Pirates 4d with Leslie Neilson is still the best I've seen to date but I think its getting there. Its more perspective 3d than in your face 3d but its subtle and soothing. The glasses are crap though!!
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Comment number 3.
At 10th Apr 2010, pete71 wrote:I saw clash of tthe titans last night.After seing avatar and a christmas carol in 3D i realised it didn't look as good,but the real problem was the group of people behind me.I could hear them talking at the end of the film and it was there first 3D film and they were not very impressed.now they have a bad impression of 3D when it can look really good when properly used .
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