When James Cameron released the first Avatar movie well over a decade ago, he did so with a major focus on the fact that the film would be made in 3D. The technology, which had been around for decades and progressed greatly since the days of paper red and blue glasses, had evolved into a format that the futurist director believed would change cinema forever.
Technology has frequently pushed cinema. Theaters are always looking for new ways to entice audiences. We’ve seen IMAX become successful with its massive screens, and 4DX theaters offer guests an immersive experience. Other screen formats have been tried. While 3D hasn’t taken over cinema, it is still around.
3D received a major push for many years. Those days seem to be over. Today, while there’s usually at least one movie available in 3D in your local cinema at any given moment, I’d wager the last time anybody saw a 3D movie in theaters was the last Avatar film, and the next time will be the next one.
James Cameron Blamed Projectors For The Lack Of 3D Success In Theaters
While 3D isn’t entirely uncommon, shooting a film in 3D natively is. Most 3D films are done in a post-production conversion, which Cameron doesn’t like, a process generally agreed to be not only not as good, but also more expensive. When James Cameron was recently asked why nobody is making movies the way he does, he essentially blamed theaters.
Cameron suggested that projection issues, specifically brightness, could lead to substandard 3D experiences for the viewers, and that this may be a big part of the reason that audiences don’t care about 3D as they should. If they haven’t been wowed by 3D in the past, why should they spend the money now? And I have to say, I completely understand where the director is coming from after watching his latest movie.
My Avatar: Fire And Ash Screening Was A 3D Mess
As a professional writer of words about movies, I get to attend early screenings of many major films. I recently attended a screening for Avatar: Fire and Ash, and while my thoughts on the film itself will have to wait (it’s good, don’t worry), I want to talk about the viewing experience, because it wasn’t great.
My screening was supposed to be in 3D, but the first 20 minutes of it were not. From the first frame, while the visual image was quite impressive, brightness was not an issue. It was clearly not in three dimensions. I waited a couple of minutes, wondering if the early sequence wasn’t meant to be in 3D for some reason, but it quickly became clear that the 3D simply wasn’t working.
The people managing the screening scrambled to figure out what to do, but when nothing changed in the short term, I just assumed this screening was no longer 3D. That wasn’t that big a problem until the screen started to get an annoying flicker, which I think was the 3D projector trying to display the second image in order to create the 3D effect, but for whatever reason, failing to produce it.
After about 20 minutes, the decision was made to simply stop the film to attempt to fix the 3D problem. It took multiple attempts, but ultimately the 3D was fixed. The rest of the film played without incident.
To be clear, the 3D on Avatar: Fire and Ash is impressive, and I recommend anybody planning to see the film in theaters to see it that way. However, I was also left completely frustrated by the fact that 3D didn’t work for so long.
This isn’t a studio problem, or a 3D problem, and I’m not even looking to throw the theater in question where this happened under the bus, but if 3D is ever going to gain mass adoption from audiences or studios, issues like this need to be addressed. The theatrical experience is only as good as each link in the chain, and if one of them fails, the whole experience suffers.