Man of Steel 3D Movie Review

I have a hard time thinking of things to post to this blog. It was originally conceived as a way to collect ideas about 3D film in general that I'd previously been posting to Facebook, which one of my Facebook friends suggested this might be better as a blog. There's only so much I can say about 3D generally though, and that's been starting to show with my utter lack of updates (and when I do update, although honest and not paid posts, sound like they are ads). Recently, though, I had the idea of posting reviews of 3D movies I've watched, but that seemed unnecessary as most of the 3D movies I've seen have been out a while already, and most people should know by now what they think of them. I recently managed to find time to see Man of Steel, however, and that's new enough that I figured I'd try and review how good it was as a 3D movie.

The movie itself doesn't depart dramatically from the normal Superman mythos. The narrative structure actually reminds me a lot of Batman Begins, in that the film constantly jumps back and forth between Superman's youth to provide context for how his origin as an Kryptonian alien shapes the hero he is in this grand battle in which he partakes. Exploring Superman in this light, as a Kryptonian sent to Earth, is an aspect of Superman's character that I've never really seen before. It's an impressive look that I suspect some people will find fascinating, especially those interested in the super hero myths as just that: myths.

They really sell Superman as a mythological, even god-like hero. From his origins on Krypton, where Jor-El is given a visual aesthetic that calls to mind the Roman culture (and the casting Russel Crowe as Jor-El brought to mind images of Maximus from Gladiator as well). Jor-El's confrontation with General Zod feels heavily Roman in style as well, lending a rugged and even god-like military masculinity to all of the Kryptonian interactions (in case the close up on Henry Cavill's abs during heavy lifting didn't do that well enough). Even the cinematography, which abandons panic-driven shaky cameras popular in most modern action scenes in favor of jerky, sweeping movements with each hit, causes this movie to bleed masculinity in ways that impressed me. Still, I never really connected that style with versions of the Superman character in previous iterations I've seen of the character, who always seemed more about a cool head giving him control rather than his raw power.

If I had a really major criticism of the film (other than that I didn't believe Lois Lane and Superman's chemistry for a second), it's that Superman is too out of control of the situations he's in. The film treats Superman's birth as the solution to Kryptonian society's obsessive desire to control the destinies of all Kryptonians. Yet Superman's actions always seem directed by his Kryptonian genesis. He even interprets the "S" on his chest under its Kryptonian meaning rather than the earthly interpretation for which it's colloquially known, and which someone raised on earth would be expected to use. My sister, who watched the film with me, also picked up on the inconsistency, and mockingly mimicked Jor-El saying, "You have the right to be who you want to be, now go do what I tell you!"

But of course, this review wouldn't be on this blog if Man of Steel weren't released in 3D, so with that frame in mind, the question is, "How does the 3D lend itself to this movie?" Unfortunately, it doesn't. While I have no technical qualms with the 3D conversion quality, and some of the individual scenes looked magnificent, the film was obviously shot with the intent that it be viewed in its 2D version, and those decisions made some of the stereo work unsalvageable. Handheld cameras used to make the scenes in Kansas, and other smaller towns in which Clark Kent finds himself, are difficult on the eyes, making this movie somewhat likely than others to induce headaches and nausea. Not only that, but there were constant over-the-shoulder shots that lacked any floating windows to ease the eyestrain caused by window violations. These and other extreme closeups resulted in numerous scenes that lacked any notable depth as well, nor did they exploit convergence tricks to do anything special with the stereo conversion for these extreme closeups directly.

I'm going to be honest here, I didn't like this movie. Most of the movie was admittedly very well done, but not to my tastes at all (I prefer my super heroes to be more human, and this one lays the Kryptonian heritage on too strong for me). It also doesn't help me like it that the 3D in this movie was something I can really point to as an example of what 3D looks like when it actually is a superfluous marketing gimmick. It added less to the film than it detracted from it, so I really suggest, unlike what I did, seeing the 2D version of this movie. It's a good movie, if somewhat niche, but only in 2D.

Is The 3D Price Hike Justifiable?

Before I go into this question, I have to get some things out of the way. I am not an economist. All I really know about economics is the basic supply vs demand rule. Hence, you will need to take what I'm saying here with a grain of salt. I'm just reacting to what I hear the market saying, and wondering out loud if there's a way to appease these oftentimes inconsistent potential consumers of 3D content. This isn't a researched marketing advice column.

That said, the loudest and most valid complaint I hear about 3D content is that it's too expensive, and that potential consumers can't justify the extra price for a 3D version of a show. Admittedly, if I wasn't trying to understand every failure and success that the 3D film medium has to offer by consuming every iota of it that I can, I would take the same approach. Most 3D films (e.g. Wreck-It-Ralph, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Hotel Transylvania) are not actually made to be viewed as 3D content. When a filmmaker makes their film with the 3D version intended as the foremost (e.g. Avatar, Hugo, Life of Pi, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), they can accomplish wonderful things with the format. But if 3D is an afterthought, as it so often is, there is no advantage whatsoever to seeing the film that way, and you're usually wasting your money spending extra on the surcharge.

Maybe there's some chicken and the egg business going on here. The 2D version gets the most attention because that's how the grand majority of the audience is going to see the movie, and the audience goes to see the 2D version because that's obviously the one getting the most attention. But we're getting into my "why 3D content should be shown exclusively in 3D" argument, which I'm not on topic, so back we go to the original topic.

But while the surcharge pushes audiences away, I also understand how cinemas and executives justify the price hike. If you're not going the conversion route that most filmmakers are using these days, you're looking at buying twice as many cameras as an equivalently scoped 2D movie, buying rigs in which to store both of these cameras together, hiring a team of stereographers to keep the 3D from going wrong, and will require twice as much rendering time when you go to put the movie in post-production. Even if you're post-converting to 3D (which is relatively less expensive), you're still looking at delayed rendering, and hiring a (usually outside) company of hundreds of VFX artists rotoscoping objects and filling in black holes created by having to create stereo parallax where it doesn't actually exist. More effort to make the movie means more people to pay, and a greater risk in making the movie. If 3D won't pull extra people into the theaters, you're going to need to surcharge in order to make that money back.

I think that's the problem with their reasoning, though, and the lesson executives didn't learn from Avatar even though it was plainly obvious. Everyone was talking about the 3D film experience when Avatar came out. It was something unique that you had to experience. And 3D was the primary draw of the film, despite the surcharge. Yet Hollywood seems to believe that it's the Ferngully meets Pocahontas plot and characters that drove that movie to success, and that the 3D was just there to draw a few more dollars out of a standard audience.

My position is that 3D can carry itself, and that therefore they shouldn't charge more for it. It helped draw people in to see Life of Pi and Avatar, two films interesting for how they utilized their 3D techniques. That should be enough to justify the increased cost to production. 3D shouldn't be added to a movie if it's not going to help it tell the story it's trying to tell, but more movies can and should use it in their storytelling. This will draw in audiences, increasing income without increasing the ticket price of a 3D film. 3D ticket prices should be the same as their 2D equivalent to draw more people in.

Again, I'm not an economist, and given the 15-20% increase in 3D movie production costs, and the need for theaters to create 3D compatible screens, train employees in 3D exhibition (though that doesn't always work), and buy extra digital storage, I can really see why they feel they need a 30% increase in price vs. a 2D ticket. But the first theater to do away with the 3D surcharge I think will make that money back by seeing an increase in movie attendance, which is what Hollywood really needs right now. Despite a 30% increase in average movie ticket prices overall over the last decade, they've only seen a 17% increase in income (and that's with the boost 3D gave, according to MPAA statistics). This means Hollywood is making less money because of lesser attendance. They need a way to draw people back into theaters, and they're killing their first good answer to this problem by pricing people out of it!

It might actually be too late. So many people have derided 3D for the marketing gimmick Hollywood wanted it to be that audiences may be unable to accept that 3D can be used for non-manipulative purposes. Hollywood may have killed their chance. But there's so much untapped potential to 3D, I seriously hope not.

ESPN 3D Dying Doesn't Mean 3D is Dead

Check out these headlines:

Was 3-D TV a failure? ESPN to end broadcasts
Is 3D TV dead? ESPN 3D to shut down by end of 2013
3DTV Is Officially Never Going To Happen

I keep a newsfeed about 3D film and 3D movies on Google News, and this story has been popping up repeatedly this morning. ESPN 3D has decided they can't continue broadcasting because there's not enough demand for their channel. To be honest, from what I've seen of ESPN 3D in Best Buy 3D TV demos, it doesn't surprise me at all. Their broadcasts consist largely of sports commentary, and one to five grown men talking to you while sitting in an otherwise empty room hardly makes for compelling stereography. Not to mention, many their advertisers really cheaped out on their ads' 3D conversions, resulting in ad time that's a physically painful experience. Some of the sports footage looked kind of neat in 3D, but on active sets you're also halving the frame-rate of broadcasted content, which is going to be very obvious in the fast paced action of sports. The unpredictability of sports also means you're going to be running into uncorrectable problems with the focus/convergence issue. Basically, anybody with any sense in stereographic broadcasting could have told you long before ESPN 3D went live that live sports with 3D ads was going to be a colossal failure.

The problem is that, apart from a promotional channel that Comcast runs to promote their 3D package, ESPN 3D was the only 3D television channel that exists in the United States. Because that effectively killed 3D broadcast stateside, news commentators have jumped to the conclusion that 3D content is unmarketable, and so 3D TV is going to die on the vine in favor of 4K content. Here's why the doomsayers are wrong about 3D TV dying.

I readily admit ESPN was a terrible fit for 3D, but TV is in a situation where they more or less need 3D to work. TV viewership is down generally, especially among younger generations, which projects poorly for the future of broadcast television vs their primary competitor, Internet content (Netflix, YouTube, etc.). One need only look at things like Google Fiber vs Comcast net speeds to see that ISPs can match broadcasters tit for tat in anything that's simply about the amount of information sent (like the resolution increment to 4K). Instead of pushing through a different quantity of data, making 3D content available changes the type of data they're pushing through to something competitors will require time adjusting to. It's like how Apple made a huge dent into the computer market with the iPhone. There was no way into the traditional computing market, so Apple created their own markets in the mobile space and dominated them. 3D is an unclaimed market, while 4K is just an iteration on the same market cable is losing to the Internet.

Some will argue with that by saying that there's no point in creating a market if there's no demand for that market once created. But we don't have enough evidence to say 3D is a low-demand market. For one, 3D TVs haven't fully matured yet. Glasses free lenticular 3D TVs are set to premiere in the near future, which is a technical achievement that will rejuvenate the 3D market if it debuts at a reasonable price. Another point is that 3D content has been proven to have a sizable market interested in the 3D aspect, as evidenced by Avatar, The Avengers, and Life of Pi (all of which did tremendously well in their 3D exhibitions). The problem is not a lack of demand, rather the immaturity of the market.

Perhaps someone will argue that we've spent too long in the infancy of 3D, that the market has been ruined, and will never come back. These people haven't seen Nintendo's market take technology out of infancy to great market appeal. They'll know about the Wii, but they won't connect that it's an iteration on the technology of the Power Glove. The Power Glove was a failure critically and commercially. The Wii wowed the world at its release. Yet both were motion based controls for video games using infrared sensors to detect the controller in space. The Wii just had improved technology. 3D currently suffers from a lot of incompetency in its production, as Clash of the Titans or ESPN 3D's ads could easily prove. What we're seeing is too often like somebody pretending student films represent a permissible standard for film or television in general. It's simply put an immature market full of people learning the ropes of 3D video.

Will 3D TV make a comeback? Only time will tell for certain. But it's certainly foolhardy to declare it dead just because a single channel couldn't forge a new market with a bad entry to it.