I’m rewatching Final Destination.
And it dawned on me that all of the shots were choreographed for 3D animation.
I remember disliking 3D movies whenever we had those red and blue lens glasses.
And whenever the movie industry switched over to the new clear 3D glasses. I still didn’t see the point in 3D movies. I watch them and then threw away the glasses at the end of the movie. The experience sucked, just like always.
So I’m curious.
Did anybody actually want 3D movies? Or was this something that the movie industry was just trying to shove down our throats?
If a movie was shot in 3d and the CGI was designed in 3d and the movie was produced for 3d I’ve generally enjoyed them (Avatar, Gemini Man, Alita Battle Angel). If however the 3d is produced by an off shore sweat shot rotoscoping a 2d shot then layering everything over a parallax background that’s an immediate pass.
I’d love if there was a 3d movie distribution app/platform for VR headsets though. I had to buy the 3d Blu-ray release of a movie, a PC Blu-ray drive, Blu-ray ripping software, then render that to a stereoscopic player and set a VR app to copy my desktop in stereoscopic mode just to watch it. That cost like $100 for a movie, and it seems more people have a quest or some shit then ever had a 3d TV.
Oh man, Alita had some amazing sequences, so damned good in 3d. I’m still crushed we’ll never see the rest in theatres.
Good news! There will be a sequel! We (the fans) did a lot of stuff to I guess convince “them” to go ahead and make the two sequels. I wrote a blog about it - there is also a link way down to SCREENGEEK that talks about the sequels
I enjoy them, but only when they are well made and use the 3d to add proper depths to shots. Too many 3d movies tried to rely on cheap “object comes out of screen” tricks that get old very fast.
No for two reasons.
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I already wear glasses, these are just uncomfortable.
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My brain stops noticing the 3D effect after a few moments. I think it’s cool when concentrating on it, but it’s not worth the extra cost and equipment.
Yeah ive always loved 3D effects, and never understand what folks have against it.
It’s not that I hate 3d effects, but I’ll avoid them if I can, for a variety of reasons.
As other people have said - I wear glasses, I having to put the glasses over my own glasses just makes it difficult. They don’t stay on and I have to hold them, it makes the image askew, it’s uncomfortable on my nose and ears when it does “fit”. They really should come up with a more inclusive way to watch these as a good portion of the population wears glasses.
For another, I suffer from migraines and 3d effects not done well tend to trigger them, and I already have enough triggers that I can’t avoid.
A strange one needs a little bit of backstory - I was never great a sports as a kid, could never quite catch a pop-up or hit a fast ball, but I was great at throwing or other aspects. People wrote it off as just “unathletic” and I went on to live my life as a weird nerdy kid despite the rest of my family being athletic. Fast forward to my adult life when I was put on a very strong medication and needed a very thorough eye exam and a result to set a baseline to make sure the medication doesn’t end up damaging my retinas (thorough to the point that the exam was 5 hours and I had tests done I’d never seen it heard of before).
It turns out my eyes/brain only interpret half the depth perception of the average person. So what I’m seeing during a 3d movie is not what’s meant to be seen. And since this is not an eye exam that would be regularly given - who knows if it people that are complaining about the movies have the same issue I do? Cartoon-y 3d (like Disney world/theme Park things) is fine for me, but things like Avatar just give me migraines.
I wear glasses, so 3D glasses on top of my regular glasses are annoying. Some 3D movies make me motion sick, too (not always, but sometimes). But i do it anyway because friends/family are worth a bit of discomfort . I don’t feel super strongly about it or anything, but that’s what I have against it.
It’s definitely the tech getting in the way of the experience. There’s comments to be made about the gimmicky nature of content made for 3d but if it really took off you’d eventually see stand out art and ultimately it would become so standard and expected that even for a film not taking particular advantage it’d probably be there, literally, adding another dimension to the experience of the film. The problem is, in all it’s history we just haven’t figured out a way that isn’t clunky and irritating on the viewing side. A pair of plastic glasses may seem a pretty minor inconvenience but people balk at that type of thing and only have the desire and patience for it during brief spikes where it re-emerges as a fad.
It also, from memory suffers from making the films seem darker, the glasses are prone to being lost, or scratched. To make them comfortable you’d really have to make them as good as actual glasses, which are expensive. It’s also problematic from a theatrical perspective because a session has to be 3d only, you can’t have people in the same session watching it without glasses, the screening is unwatchable without them so you have to tie up 2 screens with a 3d and 2d version. I think I recall hearing about advances the last time this fad was big, where they finally didn’t need glasses, but it resulted in narrow viewing angle requirements.
If you’re picking up a theme here, it’s that all the complaints are about the practicalities of the tech, not necessarily the entertainment value of 3d itself. The trouble comes when that entertainment, while fun, isn’t worth it.
Because it’s pointless.
- the effect wears off after the first or second scene. So then I’m just watching a regular movie where a handle occasionally comes out of the screen.
- it’s gimmicky. It just doesn’t add anything of value for me.
- it’s a hassle. I don’t want to wear (and eventually toss) a cheap pair of plastic glasses.
VR on the other hand. Rules.
I definitely don’t. They give me a headache.
