goodbye flat world
I've said it before and I'll say it again: CGI is the worst thing to have happened to the mainstream American film. This has not stopped me from seeing it the way it is meant to be seen, on digital projection. However, I never bought into 3D (since my memory of 3D, back in the 70s when 3D was also supposedly the future, wasn't so great), until I went to the 3D 'Monsters vs Aliens' today. Suffice to say, this 3D was nothing like the 3D I knew as a child. It was, in one hyphenated word, eye-popping. And it will be, I think it is safe to predict, the worst thing to have happened to the mainstream American film since CGI.
Because of the advantages 3D affords (higher ticket prices, piracy-resistance), I have little doubt it will be the format studios are now plumping for. And filmmaking will be poorer for it, as hacks not only have to write scenes in service of CGI set pieces, in the way dialogue fills out the spaces between sex in pornography, they have to devise scenes expressedly to show off what 3D can do. The irony is of course this technology, designed to immerse you in the very texture of the film, is constantly calling attention to itself, is helpless to do anything but, because it is also designed to make you go 'Wow, that's amazing!'. And so we take another step toward the day when, finally, we won't be able to tell Hollywood blockbuster from gameplay.
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