Does the current 3D “boom” stand a chance? History, business, and aesthetics shape the debate surrounding this unresolved trend in postmillennial cinema.
It would be naïve to think that the filmic image tends toward total identification with the universe that it copies, through the successive addition of supplementary properties from that universe. Perception, on the part of the artist as well as the audience of art, is a synthesis—an artificial process—each of whose elements acts on all the others.
André Bazin, “Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?”
Returning to the blogosphere a few weeks ago, my RSS feeds were awash with news of the Avatar event that took place on Friday, August 21. Avatar, the newest film by James Cameron (Titanic, Terminator), released a 15-minute teaser on more than 100 IMAX screens nationwide (and another 30 internationally). This specially ticketed, one-night ballyhoo featured an introduction by Cameron himself, who welcomed audiences “to the 22nd century”—effectively hyping up the hype itself. A shorter version of the official trailer was posted the same day on Youtube, far in advance of the December 18 release date.
The publicity stunt highlights not only the film’s automatic franchise status but also its “groundbreaking” new technology—which is pretty cool, I admit. The film, shot entirely in 3D, used improved motion capture gadgetry along with a “Simulcam” (similar to those used at LucasArts and DreamWorks) that enabled Cameron to film, in real time, his actors in their computer-generated environments. That is to say—with little more than an actor and a network of sensors on a sound stage—Cameron was able to raise his camera and instantly see, through the viewfinder, a blue, elvish creature against a jungly backdrop. And long after the actors had gone home, he could “re-shoot” the same scenes, tweak movements, performances, lighting.
Before my inner science geek buys into puffery, my film critic must wonder if—beyond merging the aesthetics of virtual and physical film production—Cameron may have simply reinvented the wheel, to a fault…
I have been following the resurgence of 3D since Up, with mixed emotions. Cameron gives tidings of a cinematic age when “every film will be in 3D,” while Ebert has been kvetching that he would sooner gouge an eye out—just one, of course. Increasingly polarized opinions often focus on one facet of the three-dimensional debate: the history of stereoscopic cinema, new technological advances, the economics of the trend, and its aesthetic value. In discussing the current strengths and limitations of a largely separate art, I attempt here to briefly round these bases.
Cameron wrote an elaborate treatment for Avatar 15 years ago. He claims he was simply waiting for technology to catch up to his imagination—and probably making thwarted efforts to sell major studios on the whack premise. (On that note, “10 Movies Avatar Unfortunately Resembles” on SpoutBlog.) If it was indeed a technological standoff, Cameron is all but a spokesperson for proponents of 3D, who maintain that technological progress has finally met the demands of the medium; 3D movies are here to stay, so they say.
On the other hand, critics of the recent trend point out that stereoscopic cinema follows yet a larger trend: every 30 years or so, it emerges from hibernation to ravage the likes of Hollywood, only to dip back into relative obscurity a few years later. What reason have we to believe that the current boom is any different?
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Though the mid-50s are often cited as the best example of why 3D is merely a passing fad, feature-length 3D pictures have been around since the 1922 release of The Power of Love—a full five years before the first feature-length talkie, The Jazz Singer. And before that, 3D picture viewers (à la View-Master) predated the motion picture by more than half a century as mass entertainment.
Yale prof Charles Musser describes an “early imitative relationship” between these 3D viewers and filmmaking, citing the novelty of turn-of-the-century movies. Many early films, like the Lumière brothers’ L’arrivée du train—the iconic shot of a train approaching the camera, rumored to have frightened audiences—simulated a 3D feel through the use of extreme perspective and point of view. (Even so, the Lumière brothers reshot L’arrivée du train some years later in 3D.) That said, unlike its flat counterpart, 3D cinema rarely surpassed its novelty status as a “cinema of attractions” until the 1950s. While The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were competing for Academy Awards, collections of narrativeless, single-shot shockfilms depicted guns firing, water streaming, swordsmen jousting, and pitchers pitching towards the camera in 3D. “They fairly leap at you from the screen!” one ad exclaimed.
Jump to November 1952: Bwana Devil became the first 3D feature to be released by a major studio, breaking movie attendance records only a month later with promises of “A LION in your lap! A LOVER in your arms!” Though it bombed with critics, it decidedly sparked a two-year 3D boom when, two days after its release, Warner Brothers signed a new 3D feature: the original House of Wax (1953). Other notables include Academy Award–nominated Broadway adaptation Kiss Me Kate (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), John Wayne’s Hondo (1953), and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954).
A sudden, renewed interest in stereoscopic film was largely a case of tail-wags-dog: the film industry, now at competition with an emergent television, sought to bait spectators back into moviehouses. Wrote Bazin in 1953, “In the last five or six years, the American film industry has lost approximately half of its national audience; this has meant the closing down of five thousand movie theaters (all of France doesn’t have that many).” The solution is always the same: a glittering counteroffensive, a return to spectacle—something that 1950s television, and its bantam resolution of 625 scanning lines, could not soon hope to offer.
It is the same today. Television sets have evolved into “home theaters.” Cable programming has departed from the sitcom aesthetic of television studios, towards programming that emphasizes seriality, production value, filmic cinematography, and star power (that is, “movie stars”). Not only that, but other forms of streaming and home video such as OnDemand, Hulu, and YouTube (not to mention P2P and digital piracy) seem to have revived a war of spectatorship—and a need to justify higher ticket prices, for that matter.
Perhaps even more so than in 1952, a perfect storm for 3D.
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By 1954, the costs of 3D had begun to weigh on filmmakers and exhibitors. It was as expensive as it was risky to shoot, develop, and project two film strips simultaneously; prints frequently fell out of sync during projection, and the picture appeared darker to those seated on the sidelines. So the industry turned to CinemaScope instead, which offered the spectacle of size in place of plasticity.
CinemaScope was later replaced by seven-story IMAX screens, completely impractical for the average multiplex, before exhibitors returned to 3D. This regression, fueled by cheaper, more efficient (read: digital) equipment, has demonstrated box-office success time and time again, for now. Such are the incredible returns of the Pixar model. 3D is, as far as Hollywood is concerned, worth the trouble.
This summer, I came across two articles in the LA Times, published 6 weeks apart. The first (July 8) argued that 3D was becoming progressively less profitable: In theaters with both 2D and 3D projections of My Bloody Valentine 3D, the latter earned over six times more in ticket sales. For Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the 3D exhibition earned only 1.4 times as much. The article offers no concrete measure of the films’ grosses, though it was published only a week after the wide release of Ice Age. Even then, for one LA Times writer, the point flew as far overhead as did Scrat, the sabretooth squirrel, who faces bone- and heartbreak in his quest for an acorn.
Valentine is like the narrativeless “shockfilms” of pre-1950 3D cinema. Like any stock horror movie, the plot unravels (like a series of short films in which pitchers pitch and swordsmen joust) in true episodic fashion, from one spectacular murder to the next (that is, a series of shorts in which blood squirts and heads roll). You didn’t plan to see a breakout performance or a carefully constructed story; you went to see a set of walking breasts get pickaxed—in 3D. Frankly, a conventional slasher film whose title includes “3D” offers little incentive to see the movie in any other format. As with the novelty shots of yesteryear: what’s the point of seeing it in 2D? A cheap thrill, even cheaper sans gimmick.
Ice Age, on the other hand, is perhaps more watchable in 2D (though its plot may be similarly flat), if only for its exploitation of the family-friendly animated vehicle. What’s more, whereas My Bloody Valentine 3D was released on approximately 1000 3D screens and 1600 2D, Ice Age figures broke 1600 and 2480 screens respectively. As more theaters equip themselves with 3D projection, and as more 3D features saturate the market, it makes sense that the 3D-to-2D sales ratio would fall; audiences no longer funnel to just a few venues that play 3D movies.*
On August 18, a second LA Times article reported that Ice Age had earned more than $600 million internationally (that figure has since passed the $800-million mark), making it one of the highest-grossing American films of all time (it is currently #22, behind Independence Day, Spider Man, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). About 40% of these revenues come from the 3D exhibition of the film.
It would seem that Hollywood has found a patch for its leak.
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END PART I
* It is worth noting that the number of digital 3D screens at the end of 2006 was less than 260 worldwide. During the first half of 2007, that number nearly tripled. Projections for the end of 2009 range between five and six thousand.
