http://www.blogcdn.com/www.cinematical.com/media/2010/03/titanslame3d.jpg
I’m not about to pretend to be a big expert on the art/technology of 3-D movies, but I do know a few things: 1. I once spent an afternoon on the set of the My Bloody Valentine remake, and (say what you like about the movie) those guys spent a lot of time working on a massive camera / monitor hook-up that looked like a cat-scan machine combined with a airplane cockpit. 2. As a child of the '80s, I grew up suffering through several horrid 3-D movies (research the year 1983, movie freaks), but even the worst of those flicks were created with* the intent* of being shown in 3-D. For all its lameness, even something like* Amityville 3-D* was composed, framed, and photographed with the three-dimensional exhibition process in mind.
But guess what, moviegoers? Someone out in Hollywood figured out a way to “3-D-ize” an already finished film. Yes, a film that was (again) composed, framed, and photographed with a flat surface in mind is now being retrofitted with a gauzy, tacky 3-D “conversion” process that may look great on the marketing materials … but really suck eggs when it comes to entertaining an audience. Oh, and it’s more expensive, too. Suckers.
The nicest thing I’ve heard about the 3-D version of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland](Alice in Wonderland (2010) - Movie | Moviefone) experiment is this: “I’m not really sure why it was in 3-D.” (I’ve heard much nastier things about the movie itself.) 3-D films – be they actual 3-D productions or after-the-fact “conversion” jobs – demand higher ticket prices, you see, which is why a perfectly and happily mindless piece of popcorn entertainment like Clash of the Titans](Clash of the Titans (2010) - Movie | Moviefone) will be arriving this weekend in both the wow-fancy 3-D and the “lame old” 2-D varieties. The studio makes a few more bucks from the families who wander into the 3-D presentation, but here’s the problem: those ticket-buyers are wasting their money.