Elgo Versus the Third Dimension

What is with the media's sudden love affair with 3D? It seems every second week a new movie comes out in 3D and there are many more around the corner. Earlier this year we had My Bloody Valentine 3D, which was met with fairly mixed reviews though slightly skewed to the lesser ratings. This coming weekend we have Coraline and in the summer we have Avatar as directed by James Cameron.

I don't have a problem with the occasional movie being shot in 3D, but the notion that there are those in the movie industry that believe 3D is the way of the future, that all movies will be 3D. Well, I have something to say to them: It won't happen. It is just not feasible to have all movies/films in 3D as they just won't work. Imagine a movie like Michael Clayton in 3D. Yeah. Wouldn't work.

And it's not just that. 3D movies will inherently be sub-par because they will always be full of cheesy shots that are blatantly thrown in to have something thrown out amongst the audience. Take this past week's episode of Chuck for example. It was a half decent episode, but there were a couple shots here and there of something flying at the camera that would have been shot differently had it not been in 3D. But that animosity towards Chuck versus the Third Dimension episode is due to the glasses not being so readily available in Canada (Safe to say my eyes were a little sore at the end of the episode!).

Now, before everyone says I'm just a nay-sayer afraid of change, I'm not. I embrace leaps in technology all the time...when they work. 3D is just a gimmick like the POV Cam from Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, and Quarantine fame. When we first saw this style of shooting, we all thought it was a great step forward. Now any movie with POV style camera-work inherently has a strike against them because we've seen it so much. With all the movies coming out in 3D now it will only be a matter of time when people will stop caring, when people realize that 3D is nothing more than a gimmick.

That is why 3D won't work. It's a gimmick, a fad. And like all fads this one will fade. Which could be the reason why theatre multiplexes are reluctant to make one or two of their cinemas 3D enabled; because it's a phase. Maybe sometime during this weird phase we may actually get a 3D movie worth seeing. We'll see if Coraline falls into this category this coming weekend.