Movies in 3D: a Hollywood gimmick that will fizzle out, or a revolutionary change that will have a lasting impact on the way movies are produced and viewed?
The answer depends largely on how movies in this eye-popping format are received by audiences around the world in the next few years.
Most Aussies who've watched Beowulf in digital 3D would probably say the movie was enhanced enormously by seemingly putting the viewer in the middle of the action.
Being assaulted with arrows, spears, blood splatter and flying bodies, chased by a fire-breathing dragon, seduced by a pneumatic Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother…all that made Beowulf a truly immersive experience, at least for this writer.
(We could quibble with Ray Winstone's incongruous east London accent as the ancient Viking warrior; anachronistic dialogue like "bollocks"; and the narrative's lack of emotional pull, but none of that is the fault of technology).
Most Hollywood studios are shooting or developing movies in the new format, and it's estimated that by 2010 at least 10 big-budget 3D movies will be in wide release.
James Cameron, Tim Burton and Robert Zemeckis are working on lavish 3D projects, and all future DreamWorks Animation movies will be produced in that medium, starting in 2009.
"3D is not a gimmick or a trick; this is not your father's 3D; digital 3D can create a sense of depth that pulls audiences into the story. It makes the whole experience more visceral, it heightens the feeling of the movie," DreamWorks
Animation's Jeffrey Katzenberg told a convention of US cinema owners last year.
Katzenberg estimated 3D will add approximately $US15 million to the budget of each movie, but he's clearly convinced it's a smart investment.
Some see the new technology as giving cinemas fresh armour to fight off competition from movies being consumed via downloading, or displayed on plasma or LCD screens.
"It's another way to distinguish the theatre experience from the home theatre experience," says Paul Dergarabedian, whose company Media By Numbers tracks the US box-office and industry trends. "If you can't replicate it at home, you are going to have to go out and see it in a theatre."
And there's another benefit to the industry as a whole: combating piracy. As Katzenberg notes, "90% of all piracy comes from a camcorder aimed at the screen. You can't ‘camcorder' 3D movies."
Of course the concept isn't new: back in the 1950s, a number of films billed as being in 3D screened in US cinemas. However the technology was rudimentary, and viewers complained of eye strain and headaches. Those red and blue lensed cardboard glasses were hardly conducive to watching a movie in optimum conditions.
"Most of these films were terrible, an effort to just poke things at the camera. The novelty wore off really fast," says Imageworks senior producer Buzz Hays, who worked on Beowulf. "Now it's more subtle about how it's used – to really tell a story in a way that you couldn't tell in two dimensions."
In the past few years, a handful of movies including The Polar Express, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons and the reissue of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas was released on 3D in the US (and to a limited extent here), often proving to be disproportionately more popular than conventional cinemas.
That encouraged cinema owners to install digital video projectors and it gave the studios the confidence to green-light more 3D movies.
Beowulf was the first adult-oriented film to be distributed widely in 3D in the US, playing at about 750 locations. In Australia it was released on 19 3D screens plus the IMAX theatres in Sydney and Melbourne.
Interestingly, the fantasy-adventure directed by Robert Zemeckis is in contention for an Oscar as best animated film, which in a way is ironic given the "performance capture" technology, which strives to make the characters look as human as possible.
A near naked Angelina Jolie as the villainess sure looked like her. Even she was surprised how realistic her character looked, and said in an interview that she had to call Brad Pitt to warn him.
It was a giant step from Zemeckis' Polar Express, where the characters seemed stiff and unreal.
James Cameron has single-handedly been a driving force for the new medium, and he helped develop a new generation of 3D cameras. He's currently shooting Avatar, a sci-fi thriller starring Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, Sam Worthington and Michele Rodriguez, for release in 2009.
Following that massive project, Cameron says he plans to make a lower budget love story in 3D, involving deep sea divers; he figures the images under water will be greatly enhanced in 3D.
From DreamWorks we can expect Monsters vs. Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon in 2009 and Shrek Goes Forth in 2010—all in 3D.
Contrasting what's available today with the primitive 3D films of old, Cameron says, "The digital technology is much more sophisticated at the stage of display. The projectors are so much better, so much clearer, sharper, brighter, and the camera systems allow you to really be in complete control of the 3D process."
Tim Burton is pairing up with Disney to direct Alice in Wonderland and Frankenweenie. Scripted by Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) and based on the Lewis Carroll classic, Alice in Wonderland will combine performance capture imagery with live action footage.
He'll follow that with Frankenweenie, based on his 1984 short film about a pet dog brought back to life by his loyal owner; it will be shot in stop-motion animation and shown in digital 3D.
George Lucas is retooling the Star Wars movies in 3D and producing an animated 3D Clone Wars TV series. Hardware manufacturers like Philips are working on a next generation of 3D HD monitors that might not even require viewers to wear glasses.
Among the films headed our way in 2008 are the concert documentary U2 3D, and Journey 3D, an update of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser as a geologist who, with his teenage son, discovers a message hidden in an ancient artifact, which leads them to a previously unseen world. It will feature a blend of live action and otherworldly landscapes and creatures created by high-definition, photo-real 3D technology.
Zemeckis will no doubt aim to take the performance capture technique to another level with A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge.
Still, no matter how far this technology advances, in essence it's a device that can make a good story even more dazzling-- but it can't magically make a boring or dull story good.
