In this season of political grumbles and social gripes, I’m taking a well-needed and long-in-the-coming stand. I’m am officially raising a protest against … 3-D movies and all the headachey eyestrain they stand for! I’ve got my signs ready, I’ve packed a lunch and I’m ready to set up a tent city. Let’s go!
You few remaining 3-D fans may be gritting your teeth and thinking I’m living in a bizarre dimension all my own, but, c’mon, you’ve got to admit, dimension number three in moviedom has lost most of its shiny new appeal. And you know what? It’s not the first time.
If you’re a youngster you might be thinking that this fancy, glasses-wearing tech just got rolling, but it’s been around for a while and it keeps going through fazes of popularity and disregard. The whole stereoscopic image gimmick started way back in the 1800’s (when I was a kid) and then it made a pretty big splash in the 1950s, then again in the ’80s. In the early 2000s it came back again, mostly in kids’ movies.
And then James Cameron’s Avatar came along in 2009.
That’s when the majority of the influential movie makers and animation companies in Hollywood started referring to the well-rounded tech as the future of cinema. In fact, DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg went so far as to pronounce it 2-D’s death knoll. And it kinda made sense at the time.
The fact is, at that point 3-D was raking in the bucks. According to boxofficemojo.com, Avatar‘s 2-D screenings were making about $15,800 per screen, but its 3-D showings were raking in around $26,880. That’s a 70% bump if you simply upgraded your equipment to 3-D. And since other pics were starting to follow suit, studios and theater owners figured the money train had finally pulled into the station.
But deal with reality, you 3-D crowers. Wearing dark glasses in the moviehouse bit might feel kind of cool—and it does give an audience a certain Fonzie panache—but it isn’t really delivering much after the promise of Avatar. Either the tech has been layered over movies that were initially filmed in 2-D—which adds pretty much zippo to the viewing pleasure—or the directors aren’t adding a lot even when they start out with a third dimension in mind.
All those specs on the bridge of our noses really do, then, is make the picture a whole lot darker and muddier. Hey, the recently re-released Finding Nemo with all its sparkling charm just looked a little duller with a 3-D set of fins. So, who wants to pay an extra four to six bucks for that? Read my sign! “Nobody!!!”
When you consider big movies like the last Harry Potter pic, Captain America, and this year’s The Avengers, the majority of the moviegoing multitudes have decided to spend their hundreds of millions on a cheaper 2-D view. “In each case, 3-D’s more-money-from-fewer-people approach has simply led to less money from even fewer people,” noted boxofficemojo.com’s Brandon Gray.
Now, you may be thinking, “OK, OK, Hoose. Stop waving your shirt over your head and tell us: If fewer people get their headaches from a pair of 3-D glasses, what’s the big deal?”
Well, here’s the big deal: It looks like no matter what happens … it’s gonna cost us. That’s right. According to an article in Screen Trade Magazine, all those theater owners who ponied up the bucks to upgrade their equipment are now working on a collective way to recoup their losses. Joe Palette, CEO of Spotlight Theatres suggests it’ll happen by getting rid of the 3-D upcharge. “Yay,” you say? Hold on, happy chum. They’re not actually going to drop the 3-D price much, if anything. They’ll eliminate it by … raising the 2-D price. Making everything equal. Everything, that is, except the amount left in our wallets.
So I say, “Boo!” “Hiss” and whatever other semi-mean things I can spell out on a poster board and nail to a stick. Are you with me comrades? Are you …
Hey, where’re you going? I’ve got cookies.
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