3-D Why I Hate It.

[jacey]

Prompted by Benjamin Tate's blog via jpsorrow 

I'm a regular moviegoer - fantasy and SF films most Wednesday afternoons (on the Orange Two-fer deal) if my cinema pal H is available - and so I've seen a few 3D movies in the last year or so... and HATED them. Not the movies themselves, necessarily, though I did find that some of them were more effect than content, but certainly the format. Avatar was the least noxious of the bunch, Tron Legacy easily the worst. We actually walked out of that hlfway through, though the crummy script and boring plot certainly didn't help.

H and I have now declared a policy of always going to the 2D version of a movie if available. Unfortunately our local Cineworld wasn't offering a 2D version of Tron. (We assumed there wasn't one, but apparently there is. Bad Cineworld. No biscuit!) To add insult to injury we not only had to see the 3-D version, but we had to pay more plus an additional surcharge for 3D on the 'free' ticket.

Sorry, Cineworld, but if you're not showing the 2-D version of the movie we'll stay at home in future. 3-D is actively driving us away from movies. We don't get headaches, but we do get eyestrain and find the blurring behind the 3-D visually irrtating.

'Inception' is easily the best movie I've seen for some time, and it had no need of visual gimmicks to support the brian-melting concepts and great images.

What works for me in a movie is good plot, great script, excellent acting and clarity of sound and vision. I'll take quality over gimmicks any day.

Comments

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I saw Avatar in the Imex in Sydney and thought it was an amazing immersive visual experience - the plot etc was wildly derivative, but I loved the world. I haven't seen any other 3ds besides Alice.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I didn't think much to Alice, but then I've never been wildly fornd of the book. Things I've seen in 3D include: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Beowulf, Clash of the Titans, Alice, Avatar and Tron Legacy

Only Avatar didn't make my eyes cross, but I also thought it looked good in 2D on the small screen, too, so I wouldn't have been devaststed not to see it in 3-D. (Absolutely right about the derivative story, but overall it was an entertaining movie.)

Most of the above were guilty of having something leap off the screen directly at my eyeballs - which I do not appreciate. I was deeply disappointed with Beowulf, Titans and Tron for the quality of the overall movie not just because of the 3-D. Alice was a bit 'meh' and Journey to the Centre of the earth really didn't need 3-D at all. To be honest I preferred the original 1950s version, anyway, with James Mason and Pat Boone.

You can't take a mediocre movie and turn it into a good one by adding 3-D, but you can take a mediocre movie and turn it into a terrible one.