Studios are pumping out post-produced 3D movies at a disturbing rate, trying to give them just enough layering to justify charging an extra $4 a ticket, or more if they can show them on a larger screen like IMAX. It’s the same movie, but you’re getting the premium experience I guess. I’m sort of morally and philosophically opposed to this because I like the idea of movies being a democratic medium, unlike something like theater, where tickets are cheaply priced and there’s not a hierarchy of viewership where the wealthy will get to experience far more than the less economically advantaged among us.
But at the same time, there are so many movies that get released where the 3D adds very little. In some cases, it looks worse than 2D prints would look, because the job they do on the layering is so lazy—I shouldn’t say lazy; they probably just don’t have enough time to do a decent job—that it looks like a pop-up book. You have two layers, often: foreground actors, and background scenery. Usually the background is out of focus, but the 3D just makes the people pop out more. This does not resemble how we view the real world at all. It heightens the artifice of the storytelling, and takes us out of the moment. It looks like crap. But these rush jobs end up bagging the studio millions more, and leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of people who already have sore eyes and red lines on their faces from wearing two pairs of glasses.
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