While writing “Out and About” pieces during the summer, I stopped in to see the 3-D version of “Green Lantern,” the summer blockbuster featuring Ryan Reynolds. While the film itself was good, I’ve never quite understood the hoopla about 3-D movies.
Don’t get me wrong; seeing planets, stars, and space debris flying all around you is a pretty cool, but it didn’t really enhance the film for me. Ryan Reynolds is still going to be a decent-at-best actor who, in my opinion, only gets over with audiences because of his looks.
“Beauty and the Beast” is one of Disney’s best movies. Does the addition of 3-D make the movie that much better? Will a giant 3-D chandelier in the ballroom scene really thrill someone? I don’t think so.
If one of these movies could be decent in 3-D, Star Wars might be it. The movie has enough action and background jumping out at you to make you feel the film.
If 3-D is going to be done right, the best way is to shoot films with things coming out at you. This is what made 3-D successful in the first place.
The best example I can give is with the most recent “Transformers” movie. While the film has certainly had its plot issues, 3-D definitely enhanced this film. Why? Because Michael Bay puts enough explosions in the film to make sure that the audience has ample stuff flying at it. The “Transformers” film puts audiences right in the heart of the action, much like the recreation of “The Phantom Menace” can do.
Regardless of your opinion on the third dimension of movie watching, a bad plot cannot be totally masked. Just because you shined up your nice shoes doesn’t mean it’s going to mask the hole in the side.
The purest side of filmmaking is always in the story and how it is conveyed. Friday Night Lights will always be one of my favorite movies. Not because it is based on football, but because the film uses the imagery of west Texas and has an unconventional plot (spoiler alert: the team loses at the end).
This film didn’t need to be in 3-D to be good; it just needed to tell a story. Taking a film class in college, I watched some of the greatest films of all time: “Citizen Kane,” “On the Waterfront,” and “Hoosiers,” just to name a few. Two of these movies didn’t even need color to convey their message – let alone a third dimension. They all told a story. Somewhere along the line we lost the idea that films need a good story.
Despite huge marketing campaigns that entice me to watch a “recreated” film that I first saw when I was four, I’ll go watch a promising story in the new film “Redtails.” All two dimensions of it.
—Anthony J. Machcinski
