Movie Rant: 3-D
By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 22, 2010 5:40PM
Psst. Got an extra $2500 burning a hole in your pocket? Then head on over to your local Best Buy, where you can buy a brand-spanking new flat-screen 3-D television.
Now of course just buying the TV isn't going to cut it. You need 3-D glasses as well, sophisticated devices that create the illusion of three dimensions using liquid crystal LCD shutters in perfect sync with your new TV. Those will cost about $150 a pair.
Okay, you've got the gear. Now what are you going to watch? Good question. At the moment, according to the Sun-Times, 3-D programing is "limited to a handful of movies, some sporting events, three channels from DirecTV and the Discovery Channel 3-D." But if you buy a Samsung 3-D TV you're in luck: it comes a with a free 3-D Blu-ray disc of Monsters vs. Aliens. Of course you'll need to shell out another $359 for a Samsung 3-D Blu-ray Disc Player to watch it with.
So, excited yet? We aren't. We don't like 3-D in the movie theater and we certainly don't want to have to wear a stupid pair of glasses in the comfort of our home just that so that things can (appear to) be thrust at us, whether they're spears or hockey pucks. Roger Ebert has written eloquently on the subject before, so let us quote him at length:
There seems to be a belief that 3-D films are not getting their money's worth unless they hurtle objects or body parts at the audience. Every time that happens, it creates a fatal break in the illusion of the film. The idea of a movie, even an animated one, is to convince us, halfway at least, that that we're seeing on the screen is sort of really happening. Images leaping off the screen destroy that illusion ... Ask yourself this question: Have you ever watched a 2-D movie and wished it were in 3-D? Remember that boulder rolling behind Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Better in 3-D? No, it would have been worse. Would have been a tragedy. The 3-D process is like a zombie, a vampire, or a 17-year cicada: seemingly dead, but crawling out alive after a lapse of years. We need a wooden stake.
But it seems that 3-D will be around for awhile. Too many people are just making too much money off of it: first it was $15 movie tickets and now it's $3000 TV systems. We say, no thanks. It's just a big headache.