3D Or Not 3D: Is The New Dimension Worth It?

Not many people know the name William Castle these days, but back in the ’50s and ’60s he was one of the most innovative producers in Hollywood. This was the man who rigged a glowing skeleton to jump off the screen in the final moments of House on Haunted Hill, had vibrating buzzers go off under punters watching The Tingler and fitted cinema chairs with seat belts to ensure audiences remained in them for the duration of I Saw What You Did. He was, in short, the master of the cheesy gimmick – so much so director Joe Dante built an entire film, Matinee, around his exploits. (Die Hard producer Joel Silver paid his own tribute by remaking some of his classic B-movies under the Dark Castle imprint.)

 

Castle is no longer with us, having flown up to that great picture palace in the sky back in 1977. If he was, though, what would he make of Hollywood’s current obsession with 3D, a stunt that was considered in his day to be just as tacky and trashy as any he cooked up? (1952’s Bwana Devil was representative of those primitive early days, promising punters “a lion in your lap and a lover in your arms!”) Would he gaze open-mouthed at the state-of-the-art technology employed to make the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Monsters vs Aliens and Coraline leap off the screen into the audience’s lap? Or would he smile knowingly, recognising this flashy fad as just the latest incarnation of his old joke-shop trickery – an inflatable skeleton with extra bells and whistles?

It’s a moot point, of course. Whether we like it or not Hollywood has signed up to digital 3D in numbers, convinced that it has the power to draw jaded consumers away from their widescreen TVs and computer games back into cinemas. (The fact that the blurry images projected onto screens can’t be pirated might also play a part in their thinking.) Big-name directors like Jim Cameron, Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg all have 3D features in the works, while every major animated feature heading our way this year (Pixar’s Up, Fox’s Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs among them) will require special eyewear. Not only that but music acts are getting involved too, tween sensations the Jonas Brothers becoming the latest stars, after Hannah Montana and U2, to repackage their live show as a big-screen event.

 

Fans of The Simpsons will remember the episode where Springfield got huckstered into building a monorail it did not need and could ill afford. Indeed, you only have to look at all the underused, outsized IMAX cinemas littering our towns and cities to see how easy it can be for even the most sensible of individuals to be seduced by the extravagant and eye-popping. With 3D, though, it’s looking increasingly like a fait accompli. There may be some people out there who’d prefer not to don plastic glasses in order to see the new Pixar animation, or find that when they do the image appears markedly darker than what they’re used to. Such is the industry’s collective desire to make 3D succeed, though, that their voices will most likely go unheard – rather like those who, having switched over to digital television, find themselves underwhelmed by all the channels they don’t want and images that freeze and pixellate at the slightest provocation.

 

At the moment, it seems that the majority of filmgoers are happy to go along for the ride. How will they feel, though, when their ticket comes with a surcharge to cover the cost of their 3D glasses, or when they are asked to pay a rental for the spectacles that now come gratis? Both these moves are currently being considered as a way of recouping the cost of making films in 3D and providing cinemas with the equipment it requires to screen them. More pressing than that, though, is what 3D will do to the movies themselves. Right now the technology best suits big-budget, tentpole product full of spectacle, fantasy and visual jokes. If 3D takes off like the studios want it to, will we ever see anything else?

 

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