I hate 3D. In the real worlds it’s somewhat OK so you don’t crash into the car in front of you. But in the theatres it’s just a pointless rip-off of which I hope it’s going to die again – and soon.
Movies in Technicolor and with sound – that were revolutions in the theatres. The evolution of special effects from Ray Harryhausen to CGI – that’s what brought movies forward.
3D? Not so much. The horribly boring Avatar started a trend which just won’t stop so far. And what’s even worse is that ever more theatres fail to show the 2D version at all because it’s much easier to milk your customers with the 3D ticket prices.
Don’t get me wrong; despite my actual glasses I don’t have a problem to perceive the 3D effect. It’s just that in my eyes (no pun intended) no movie became any better with it than it would have been without it. Either the movie is good on its own or its not. It’s just that simple.
Just to make one thing clear: I’m not an art house fetishist, I’m watching standard summer blockbusters which sometimes allow you to check your brain at the door and just enjoy the nonsense on the big screen. And I still would not want to watch Armageddon 3D because even that movie works for me because of the wonderfully out-of-tune “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver and Steve Buscemi’s ride on the nuke – and not because of the short CGI sequences where Bruce Willis is almost crushed by a ricocheting asteroid fragment.
The whole 3D subject wouldn’t be worth a note to me if (as hinted at earlier) the 2D version would still be shown at the theatres or if they wouldn’t ask for such a steep extra charge.
I would love to watch Man of Steel on the big screen, but I’m seriously considering not doing it.
For one, I’m a movie-in-the-original-language (“O-Ton”) watcher. But the local theatre only show it in O-Ton at 4:45pm. But for a movie evening with friends I’d be willing to watch it in the German dubbing.
But even the base prices for the tickets have gone up over the past few years. Now you pay at least €6 on “Cinema Tuesday” on the weekend you pay at least €9.
Since the movie runs for 148 minutes you pay another €1 for its length.
AND another €4 for a 3D feature I neither want nor need. That adds up to €11 for a single seat on “Cinema Tuesday” and a surcharge of 57% on the base price of €7.
But thanks to per cent calculation it’s only 40% surcharge on the weekends. 😉
As of now I have a personal limit of €13 or £10 which I’m willing to pay for Blu-rays and then I can watch the movie as often as I like – in English.
So now I’m asking myself if a one-time consumption like a visit to the theatre in the wrong language and with too many dimensions is really worth the asked price just to have a big screen – and I’m seriously leaning towards “nyet”.
Luckily Man of Steel has already made a ton of money or else we would read in the Die Zeit (a German weekly magazine) again* how all these evul movie pirates are destroying cinemas all over the world.
*Die Zeit blamed the theatrical failure of Cloud Atlas on the pirates and Google, not on the convoluted plot and general mainstream inaccessibility.
PS: I’ve created a Facebook page for 3D Haters. 😉