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I have a standing deal with my girlfriend: I force her to watch a movie I want to see in the theaters, and I see something she likes. More often than not, this means she is subjected to gratuitous violence, and I get my romantic heartstrings tugged. In a recent case, I brought her to “Inglourious Basterds,” and she brought me to “Alice in Wonderland.” I got the raw end of the deal.
Aside from gripes about the story itself — stifling linearity, nonexistent character development — “Alice” failed on its primary selling point, which is technical execution. For a 3-D movie, it didn’t offer any advantages over the normal 2-D experience. In almost all cases — “Avatar” included — audiences get massive headaches because our eyes naturally try to focus on the background for additional information on the scene. In 3-D, it is impossible to bring this region into focus. In fact, I would argue the trend to make movies in 3-D is at best a novelty and at worst a scam.
“Avatar” brought immersive 3-D out of the planning stages and into proof of concept. From a design perspective, it was as big an achievement as any we have seen in the contemporary era of film. It also served as evidence of two other important concepts: 3-D cannot make a bad, contrived story better, and it is expensive. Record-setting expensive. So expensive, in fact, it’s unlikely we will see productions of such scale more than a handful of times in a decade.
So instead of taking the time and money to create 3-D on the same level as “Avatar,” Hollywood will be content with making movies like “Alice in Wonderland” on a budget. The differences are glaring. Often, the 3-D in “Alice” was so simplified it reminded me of a pop-up book. Instead of the pervasive depth-of-field in “Avatar,” it was like the “Alice” art department just made the background a bit blurrier than the frame’s dominant element — the digital equivalent of holding one photograph 10 feet in front of another and expecting the two to merge seamlessly and believably. Even cheap 3-D tricks like throwing an object toward the audience were excluded, and there was simply no sense of the audience participating in an immersive experience — arguably, the only strong point of 3-D.
This is what 3-D will be remembered for. Taken in a historical context, its development has more to do with economics than creativity. Movie studios are claiming lost profits due to file sharing and piracy. Studios actually did a commendable thing by pioneering 3-D to get seats filled in theaters, but the current execution and future plans smack of exploitation.
Because we are still in the honeymoon stage with 3-D, we will pay to see just about anything using the technology. The equation is so simple it should go without saying: If a new technology drastically increases sales, then that new technology will be deployed everywhere, in everything, even when it is unnecessary. It is not unthinkable that old classics will undergo a 2-D-to-3-D conversion.
The question that should be on everyone’s minds is, “Why?” Why create a poorly made 3-D movie when a normal 2-D movie can often be as, if not more, effective a cinematic experience? The answer is the same reason we’re still in the big-budget, free-of- substance, Michael Bay-splosions era: We pay for it.
Every time we see the next “Transformers” film, even out of morbid curiosity, we cast a vote with our wallets. I’m as guilty as anyone, because I paid to see the new “Rambo” just because I wanted to watch a ‘roided-up Stallone beat the hell out of some bad guys. But we have to stop.
We have to reinvestigate our consumption model if there is even a single criticism of the value of what we consume. Failure to do so is irresponsible and simply encourages poor decisions. I for one can try to rationalize my behavior in the understanding that my “Alice” dollars were offset by seeing and purchasing a masterpiece like “Inglourious Basterds.”
Andrew Catalina is the production manager of The Maine Campus.
