Entertainment Editorial: If I See Anymore 3D Movies, I’m Going to Hang Myself in 4D

Alright so that headline doesn’t exactly make sense, but what does make sense to studio executives is that 3D movie tickets cost more, so they release as many 3D movies as possible. About a decade ago, the closest you got to a 3D movie is the god-awful Spy Kids 3D which asked you to wear those stupid cardboard glasses with red-and-blue 3D lenses like the world’s most glamorous hobo. It was a cheap, cheesy thrill that I thoroughly appreciated as I was 14 at the time.

Today I’m asked to want to watch even serious dramas (like the upcoming The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio) in 3D. Because we all know 14 year old boys are dying to watch The Great Gatsby remake. So far I have seen three 3D movies this year alone with Gnomeo and Juliet, Sanctum, and The Green Hornet. In no case did the 3D make the movie better (in Sanctum’s case the 3D effect made many of the movie’s scenes look ultra fake). For long stretches of The Green Hornet you couldn’t even tell it was in 3D but because it had an explosion or two, some studio executive said “Fuck it, let’s add the three dollars to the ticket price.”

And that’s what all this really boils down to: money. Apparently, there are some people that will still pay 3 dollars extra per ticket to experience a headache, so executives release these movies in 3D. But I wonder if it’s still as big a draw as it once was. As little as a year and a half ago, I went to watch a movie I had no interest in, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, solely because it was in 3D. Then I was actually excited to go see Avatar in 3D. Then I was somewhat excited about seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D. Then I saw almost every other movie this summer in 3D (the lone good time was Toy Story 3, but that was because the movie was excellent). By the Fall, I was bored silly during Jackass 3D, and thought there were no new things left to experience in three dimensions until Piranhas 3D showed me I hadn’t seen a woman’s perky breasts get attacked by a fish in 3D. So that was new. Then Saw VII 3D (what the hell is this, a math equation) showed me more severed nipples in 3D which just made it feel old hat real quick.

Now I’m sitting here wondering what, if anything, could make me want to watch a 3D movie again, and how long it will be before we can expect Natalie Portman in “Diary of Anne Frank in 3D.”