Ranty McRanterson

I was just reading something, and I got absolutely set off in a tizzy of nerd rage. What's worse is that it's an insignificant little blurb in an article nobody has read. It's just so sure of itself, yet so unsupportable. I can't seem to shake it. So, if you'll bare with me a moment, I need to get this off my chest by ranting about it here.

What I'm complaining about is Charlie Gates' rant from here, and specifically the part that says this:

Let's face it, 3D is rubbish and pointless. It makes films gloomy, it's distracting, slightly headache-inducing, doesn't add anything to a film, miniaturises everything and takes you out of the film. Like I said, rubbish.

Now, I've already pointed out several ways on this Red/Cyan Movies that the first sentence is wrong, but I'm going to repeat myself anyway. 3D allows the director to forcefully direct the viewer's eye toward objects he deems important (a great way to suggest something is a coverup, or mandate that "can't look away" feeling, which makes it useful for mysteries or love stories). 3D asserts the reality of the scene before you (valuable in something like Life of Pi where identifying what is real is thematically important to the story). 3D provides a frame for the audience to understand their relation to the film, or to become a character in it so to speak (which Batman: Arkham City used to great effect). Emphasized depth can create a sense of vibrancy to a scene (like in Coraline, where it was used to make the other world feel exciting compared to Coraline's boring real home).

Things like these may not be applicable in every situation (I've always said Inception wouldn't have worked in 3D because of the face that 3D asserts reality, which would make the dream world logic feel artificial and wrong), but a generalized statement like "3D is rubbish and pointless" is not a supportable claim when it has worked so tremendously in as many films (and other media) as it has worked. But that only address his claim that 3D is pointless (a claim which he never supports). Let's dissect his support for the claim that 3D is rubbish.

His first complaint is that it "makes films gloomy[.]" First off, he just said 3D was pointless, but gloominess would be a positive in situations like we find in The Corpse Bride, Coraline or James and the Giant Peach... there are a lot of well liked films for which gloominess would be a plus. In that way, he just contradicted himself, because that leads to the conclusion that these films are too muted in gloominess due to their lack of 3D. Of course, I'm nitpicking because I know what he really meant was that there's a color fade and light loss caused by the reflective screens and 3D glasses. Thing is, that's easy to compensate for, and is compensated for in good theaters by the inclusion of brighter projectors and better screens. The argument that 3D films are gloomy is akin to me saying that 2D films click too much because the only 2D films I see are in a second run theater with loud projectors. It's not fair to blame bad exhibition on the film itself!

His next complaint is that 3D is "distracting[.]" I think what he means is that it calls attention to itself, pulling you out of the movie. I want to debunk this two ways. First, by citing Mark Kermode's review of Toy Story 3, where he declared that it did something he didn't think was possible, by making him "forget [he] was watching a 3D movie." This speaks to the idea that it's technique that causes 3D to call attention to itself, not the format itself (which also becomes less naturally novel and self-exerting as audiences get used to it). That said, calling attention to itself is not something bad in all cinematic experiences. Nobody would declare the use of color in The Wizard of Oz to be poor because it calls attention to itself, nor would they do so for the similar use of sound in The Jazz Singer (1927). It's not "distracting," but enhancing in situations where a gimmick intelligently calls attention to itself.

He then complains that 3D movies are "slightly headache inducing[.]" Headaches from 3D film are mitigated entirely in normal people by good stereography. They're not a problem that should delegitimize 3D film any more than motion sickness from shaky cameras should delegitimize film as a whole. There are a portion of people who literally cannot see 3D movies due to stereoscopic vision problems, but killing the 3D film industry for that reason has always seemed similar to nixing film soundtracks on behalf of the deaf, or like closing 5 Guys Burgers to protect people with peanut allergies. It's not necessary to kill an industry just because there's a demographic that can't experience it for medical reasons.

When he says 3D "doesn't add anything to the film," he's just him repeating himself about something I've already addressed, so I'm going to skip to his claim that 3D "miniaturises everything[.]" This one puzzles me the most, especially since the film he's commenting on, Jurassic Park, was a perfect example of how large and threatening big things can be in 3D (especially the first scene with the T-rex). I Googled his claim to see what support I could possibly find for that statement, and instead found that article was the number one result, with a retracted statement by Guillermo Del Toro regarding Pacific Rim as the only statement competing with his own. Aside from the statement being retracted (because it was about why Pacific Rim wouldn't be 3D, when it ultimately was converted to 3D), What Del Toro was talking about wasn't applicable to all situations. His complaint was that when shooting in 3D, your interocular setting is representative of the point of view you're using in the film. But with the size of the monsters in Pacific Rim, you need to switch away from the human view in order for the monsters to have any discernable depth, due to a reduction of parallax on far away objects when using settings that mimic a human point of view. Normal films, not films like Pacific Rim, don't have these stingy viewing requirements (which, again, I point out that Del Toro resolved with the use of 3D conversion as opposed to 3D filming, and hence retracted his statement). 

I'm also going to skip "takes you out of the film" because that seems like it's rehashing what he said about 3D being "distracting[.]" And that pretty much covers this ridiculous statement. All that's left is a smug reaffirmation of that garbage. That smugness is the reason that this post turned as ranty as it did. I would be fine if people would just not like 3D and be done with it. But some cinephiles seem to be on this holy war to destroy stereoscopy, even though nobody's forcing them to attend 3D showings. It's ridiculous that I can't be allowed to enjoy 3D movies just because the mere existence of a format they don't understand and therefore don't like exists! But I digress. I better just stop before this turns into a novel.