Because real life isn’t real enough.
Artwork by Mia Nogueira
Hollywood is all about the gimmicks.
Anything the cigar-smoking, jeweled-fingered, greedy bigwigs can do to get poor saps to spend money and watch their movies is used with full effect, just to get that last greenback. Directors and producers over the years have employed everything giant screens, stealing the IMAX away from the scientists and the documentaries, using HD cameras, split screens, and multiple endings to get some dough. But they’ve also used cheaper tricks like “Sensurround” (giant speakers that literally made the theater rumble) and, I wish I were kidding here, Smell-o-Vision. Now, add 3-D technology to the mix, because it’s Hollywood’s favorite new movie gimmick.
Everything from Pixar animations and horror movies to the Jonas Brothers has been turned into a 3-D spectacle, and it’s becoming more and more ridiculous. Sure, it was funny and cute the first time I saw some pots and pans flying into my face, but the last thing I need inches from my mug is one of the Jonas Brothers’ guitar. Avatar was the gem that really used 3-D to its advantage, but now movies are just relying on 3-D alone. Clash of the Titans, a recent box-office release, has been a flop, mostly because the storyline is so overused that there’s no real reason to even glance at the new version without seeing it in 3-D! I’ve been a skeptic of the 3-D fad for a long time; but once, long, long ago, I was just as fascinated as the rest of the world.
In the sweltering summer of 2001 I took a trip to Disney World with my family. One of the memories that -to this day- stands out clear as crystal in my mind is the MuppetVision 3-D at Disney’s Hollywood studios. As a young boy of nine, I was captivated by the outrageous shenanigans of Jim Henson’s Muppets, cavorting around on screen and coming out to touch my face. It was absolutely mind blowing for my childhood consciousness. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the 3-D attractions at Disney World, it was but two years afterwards when my love for the third dimension was violently shattered.
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over was the demon that took my childish fascination and innocence, slammed it inside a blender of cheap imitations, and hit puree. Not only was the Spy Kids series ridiculous, but it had gone on three-movies-worth too long. I saw some of this movie at a church movie night, complete with 3-D glasses. I didn’t expect much from the flop of a movie, but I was also disgusted at how cheesy the 3-D animation was. How the technology could go from amazing, life-like, exciting, and hilarious 3-D Muppets to this garbage was beyond me. Later, I realized that it had everything to do with the 3-D technology; how it had progressed from the red and blue glasses to the polarized lenses nowadays and how expensive it was to film a movie in 3-D. If you want to know exactly how 3-D technology has improved over the years, check out Popping Out From Theaters and Into Homes, by Rachel Wilson. Yet, this shoddy performance was enough to kill the wonder for me.
The 2004 release of The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D was enough to wrestle my grudging respect of the third dimension back, but as I grew older, I began to get confused and distracted when objects started flying off the screen at the audience. Then I began to think about why these objects needed to pop out at the screen, and there were very few reasons I could come up with.
3-D effects can be narrowed down into two classes: the good and the gimmicky. Imagine if you will, a dark corridor in an apartment building, rain pounding on the flimsy windows, lit only by a few flickering lamps and the occasional flash of lightning. A man cowers in the corner, pleading for his life. The villain raises his weapon. A flash of lightning silhouettes the gun, its every detail pointed in the faces of the audience. As the building goes dark, a blinding flash of light and a loud bang are all that the audience can see or hear. That is good 3-D, used sparingly and dramatically to emphasize a certain object or event. I would be flat-out amazed if I saw a scene like that where the villain’s weapon was pointed in my own face, so close I could touch it. Avatar’s environments were also an example of good 3-D, so lifelike, wondrous, and yet so real that one feels one could just reach out and touch them.
Gimmicky 3-D is pretty much everything that it sounds like: cheesy tricks and fancy effects that really have nothing else to do with the rest of the movie. This is when the producers and director decided to try to get a lot of people to see the movie by making everything from the snow outside to the character’s nose fly off screen and poke the viewer in the eyeball. It’s like when a bad writer drafts a horrible script, and the directors throw a thesaurus at him, hoping that using swanky language is enough to fix a broken script. Instead of throwing a thesaurus at the writer, however, producers now throw 3-D at the editors, just to get people to see it. When movies are based solely around the fancy 3-D, viewers forget about other vital information, like the plot!
Alice in Wonderland, one of the recent additions to this fad, is hard enough to watch in regular 2-D, with Tim Burton’s insane color scheme questioning if it was really Tylenol you took before watching, but in 3-D, epileptic-acid-trips are the norm. I had a hard time watching some of the 3-D in Disney’s recent rendition of A Christmas Carol, mostly because it seemed like the effects were thrown together at the last minute, and the editors created a whole chase scene where Scrooge was shrunk to the size of a mouse and was chased around by the Ghost of Christmas Future ONLY to show off the 3-D!
The list of 3-D fad keeps growing, and Hollywood is adding new movies to the jumble by the month. The most ridiculous addition I’ve seen recently? Step Up 3-D. Yeah, that’s right, the Step Up dance series. Why would anyone want dancing in their faces? I’d cringe every time someone’s foot flew in front of my nose! It’s absolutely ludicrous how anybody could think this movie is worth watching! It is the very definition of gimmicky 3-D! I’d be willing to bet an insane amount of money that the movie was written, created, and directed just because some Hollywood genius thought some shmuck would watch dancing in 3-D. I, for one, have had enough of the charade, and will be all too glad when the 3-D fad joins the list of retired, gimmicky failures, right next to good ol’ Smell-o-Vision.
