The great 3D fad

As my little review shows, I loved Avatar; I’m grateful in many ways that it was my first 3D experience (my dad’s had been the Robert Zemeckis motion capture Christmas Carol, I think), and on the whole, I think it’s the future of cinema as a whole once the technology has been perfected for the user end – let’s face it, those glasses serve as something of a barrier for the action, and in many ways took me out of it – then there’s the fact that Avatar was so expensive, and most of it, save the beauty shots, weren’t even in 3D…But it’s prompted quite the reaction from Hollywood, as Avatar rakes in close to 1.4 billion USD after five weeks of release.

AOL site cinematic, poses the question: “what films should be released in 3D next? Disney has already reissued Toy Story in 3D, and plans to do the same with Toy Story 2 before the third instalment comes along, which will also be in 3D; but I remain unconvinced entirely that every film needs the treatment, as the cinema purist in me feels that it takes away some of the essence and intent of the original film – much like I feel George Lucas took much of the purity and innocence that I attach to the Star Wars trilogy before he reissued them as a special edition and made the prequel trilogy. It’s my assertion that films, such as the vast library of disney classics, and modern releases of Beowulf and even the Dark Knight don’t need the 3D treatment, as they were never the way they were intended to be seen…I think in many ways, it would be a hollow effort,, indicative of cynical Hollywood marketing execs attempting to squeeze every ounce of revenue from a film for the sake of it.

Would you want to see Casablanca, or Gone with the wind, or Citizen Kane in 3D? Of course you wouldn’t, because in my view, such films are perfect in their own intimate, unique way. I’m wary of 3D becoming just another gimmick, especially as companies such as panasonic and sony are pushing sets with the technology built in – it really kind of was that “laserdisc” feel to me.

While we’re on the score of films, I’d like to say that I’m one of the people firmly in the camp of believing that Sony did the right thing in canning the Spider-man franchise. I would HOPE it means they have a gameplan in mind for the continuing series, without the participation of Macguire or Raimi, but I know one thing to be true. Two actually. One is that I never saw Tobey Macguire as Peter Parker anyway, and the other being that the last outing of Spider-man was truly, truly awful. I’m not a big fan of Spider-man as a whole anyway, so I didn’t care for the character as deeply as I would for the X-men (as an example) – bt I still take a fair amount of interest in comic books, because that’s just how geeky I am.

On the downside, Spider-man: The musical is back on it seems. Topless Robot seems utterly convinced that words were spoken, and hands were shaken on the part of studio execs and Mephisto – I might be inclined to agree here. In fact considering the kind of work U2 has been putting out lately, I think it’s a good possibility that bono is Mephisto.

And with that, I leave you with a closing though: Some friends would insist that I need to wake up – to which my response is: At least I’m not one of these people