It Is Now Safe to Put on Your 3-D Glasses

More so than ever Hollywood recognizes they need 3-D to take hold.  I know that the theater business must be tough since megaplexes have got to cost a fortune to both heat and cool.  Plus there is all the competition from DVDs that are released mere months after a movie has debuted, On Demand viewing, and even piracy (Arrrrrr) so theaters have needed something of late to lure people back into the seats and 3-D seems to be the magic pill.  Listen, there were an estimated seventeen 3-D releases in 2009, for 2010 at least forty films are slated to open using 3-D technology.    

 

                Anyone with any entertainment knowledge knows that 3-D has come and gone through the various decades starting with the 1950’s where there is that iconic Life picture of an audience staring up at a movie screen with white 3-D glasses.  In the 70’s there was ‘Jaws 3-D’, which affectively killed the shark franchise – maybe even before Fonzie jumped the shark.  For awhile, pop culture wise, 3-D glasses seemed like a dorkish thing to wear (I blame that Life photo) because it meant that you were one of the nameless member of the wider masses willing to look silly in order to see cheesy things visually thrown at your head.  Plus, most of the films that were made using 3-D technology had little else going for them.  Now audiences gladly don their 3-D glasses, perhaps because they resemble vintage Ray-bans and because they know that the new generation of 3-D movies aren’t your grandparents 3-D movies.

 

                The special effects of these movies are drawing crowds back into the theater who had basically abandoned going to shows because movies in a theater had nothing really special to entice them besides six dollar boxes of popcorn.  For instance, my nearly deaf parents, God love ‘em, found that they couldn’t hear the movies that well, and since there is no caption option to a first run movie unless it is foreign, they opted out as potential theater customers.  That is until they saw ‘A Christmas Carol’ in 3-D and now they can’t wait to see ‘Avatar’ (weather permitting of course, because that is how they roll).  Even though I doubt they will be able to hear a darn word of dialogue, they know that they will be entertained by the amazing 3-D effects.

 

 

Westerfield © 2010