4/9/10

It's been a long, long time since the movies received a true technological upgrade.  Surround sound was a pretty big deal, and before that you have to go back to widescreen in the 50's and before that color in the 30's.  Some have compared the advent of Digital 3D over these last few years to that of sound in the late 20's, but color is the better comparison.  Once anyone had sound (both mono and surround) it was clear everyone needed it.  And right or wrong, as soon as anyone's movie screen wasn't shaped like your TV at home, nobody was going to set themselves up to come out on the wrong end of that comparison.  But it took almost 50 years for black and white to lose its grip on the imagination of filmmakers (and it still hasn't totally happened.  Think anybody's gonna go silent or mono as a stylistic statement anytime soon?).  As late as 1967, they were still giving an Oscar for B&W cinematography.  And as great as 3D can be under the right circumstances, it is gonna take a LONG time before it's so ingrained in the public's cinematic consciousness that people demand it even for their romantic comedies and costume dramas.

For one thing, the technology isn't quite there yet.  Not everyone can see the 3D effect (perversely, the better your vision, the better you see through those glasses), and its quality varies depending upon where you sit in the theater.  Plus, filmmakers are still trying to develop a language that allows them to actually communicate information to us through 3D.  Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a great fantasy adventure movie, but it doesn't really gain anything from being in 3D.  On the other hand, it's hard to imagine David Ellis' The Final Destination without it.  Destination is an Old School "throw crap at people" scarefest, but most people have been hesitant to really embrace "stuff comin' at ya!" in the digital era.  Which leaves you with the way a well-composed 3D shot can seem to be taking place inside a life-sized diorama laid out before your eyes (Coraline, perhaps the most consistently amazing 3D movie to look at, shows stop-motion animation to be tailor-made for the process) and the absolutely beautiful way digital 3D records reflective surfaces like water and windows.  There have been other successes:  James Cameron made the skin of aliens and the vegetation of a strange world more believable than they'd otherwise be in Avatar, the Pixar crew who retrofitted the Toy Story movies did amazing things with the look of plastic, and Ellis was able to capture something about the texture of human skin that's eluded other live action directors.  A good measure:  does it make you feel like you could really reach out and touch what you're seeing on-screen?  If not, it needs work.

Which brings us to Clash of the Titans.  I mentioned Toy Story and Toy Story 2.  The surfaces in those movies are a 3D triumph, although other effects were less successful, but it's unlikely any movie shot/made in 2D will receive a more thorough retrofitting than it did at the hands of the perfectionist Pixar team.  More typical is the retrofit on the originally 2D animated feature Battle for Terra, that featured some arresting snow but otherwise few effects of note.  But with classic movies like Star Wars and Dawn of the Dead reportedly in the shop for 3D conversion, sooner or later somebody was going to get the idea to take their 2D movie, have it upgraded and reap the box office rewards.  Warner Bros. took the plunge with their Clash remake and the results were not impressive.  In fact, they beg that question of whether what we've seen was a rush job or the limit of retrofiting technology.  It makes sense that turning a live action film into a 3D extravaganza is easier said than done:  cameras record the action from multiple angles when a 3D movie is being shot, and you can't go back and recreate that.  You CAN move elements to different parts of the frame, but sequences like the battles against giant scorpions and the Kraken don't end up gaining anything from the process because they weren't designed to be seen that way (the Star Wars movies and their epic space battles would make better test cases).  Everything in a 3D movie needs to be focused:  we don't need the illusion of depth created by blurring parts of the frame because 3D IS the illusion of depth.  So Louis Leterrier's perfectly reasonable 2D shot choices are just flat-out crazy in 3D, and in the end the only sequence that benefits from the conversion is an opening journey through the constellations which, not surprisingly, is completely CGI.

The 3Dization of Clash has generated a lot of bad buzz, but it remains to be seen how general audiences will process it and how it will affect their choices the next time they have to decide:  3D or not 3D?  Because, in case I haven't mentioned it, 3D COSTS, as much as 3 extra bucks at most theaters.  And some don't even provide the glasses anymore without charging an extra quarter.  As long as studios and theaters continue to see the effect as a license to print money, they also need to provide value for that money.  Not just some guy standing in front of a blurry mountain.  More Warner Bros. movies have already been signed up for the conversion process, including the upcoming Harry Potter sequels.  I'm sure somewhere Ted Turner's itching to see Citizen Kane in 3D as well, but the jury remains out on what 3D can add to most new movies, and for the movies of the past... maybe we should just wait and see if George Lucas can lick the process before anyone else gives it a try.