Is 3-D the future?

The NYtimes.com have posted a really interesting and important article on their website. Interesting because it’s about movies, which I presume you love, and important because it’s about the future of movies, namely those of the three-dimensional variety. We’re all aware that the popularity of 3-D movies is swelling, but check out this quote from Dreamworks head Jeffrey Katzenberg, who believes that “this is the single greatest opportunity for the moviegoing experience since the advent of color,” and that by 2009, “a significant percentage of the big mainstream films will be made and exhibited in this format.” This could mean the biggest change to movies since the advent of colour. Them some strong words, Katz.

The Times article comes on the heels of a boom in the 3-D industry, that sees some of Hollywood’s top directors embracing the format to bring audiences unprecedented access to cinematic worlds. Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg have just signed on to direct a 3-D movie on the Belgian comic-book hero TINTIN, while Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming motion-capture epic BEOWULF will screen primarily in 3-D. And then of course, there’s the queen bee of all 3-D films, James Cameron’s hyper-ambitious $200 million sci-fi tale AVATAR, which is likely to revolutionize the entire industry, film and 3-D. Here’s a little article extract:

The widening embrace of 3-D by Hollywood’s leading directors and major studios comes at a critical moment for the movie industry, which faces expanding competition for leisure time from home theaters, the Internet and games. And it also solves, at least temporarily, the continuing pressures from the thriving trade in bootleg movies. A 3-D film cannot be recorded easily from a movie screen because the images are blurry to the naked eye. And so far there is no way to show a movie in 3-D on DVD.

This raises some crucial points: what will the 3-D experience be like at home, and will this be a (temporary) resolution to Hollywood’s current piracy crisis? I’m all for filmmakers crossing new boundaries into uncharted territories. It’s the only way to advance the medium. If it wasn’t for the technological aspirations of moviemakers, we’d still be watching plays, instead of TRANSFORMERS. And who wants that? The only thing that scares me is all this future-speak. The thought of everyone sitting in a dark theatre with their uniform shades on, seems way to future-is-now for me, and the thought of every film employing this technique seems a tad much. Let’s let the visionary directors make their visionary films in 3-D, 7-D or -6.13-D if they want, but there’s something classic about movie characters NOT popping out of the screen, and I like my movies classic. Check out the article HERE. It’s well worth it.