THE THIRD DIMENSION

Meanwhile, in an effort to while away the boredom for a couple of hours over the weekend, there was a plan to go to the cinema to see the next “big summer blockbuster” and it was left to me to have the dubious duty of sorting out the times that it would be best to go.

This was when I discovered that the only showings that suited our vaguely planned schedule at the cinema we’d vaguely planned to go to, were ones that were in 3-D and, to be brutally honest, I’ve been resisting that whole rigmarole for quite some considerable time now on the not unlikely assumption that it would probably cause me to have a massive headache…

Oh, I know that I should learn to embrace the future, and that it’s the way of things and so on and so on, but I really just don’t fancy having to make a spectacle of myself and wear spectacles over my spectacles and then, quite possibly, have an “experience” which is less wonderful than I find a standard issue 2-D Cinema Screen Experience to be.

Just like in the 1950s, cinema sees itself as being under threat from all the shiny new “home viewing” opportunities in an age when people constantly go on about the advantages of the “high-definition” viewing opportunities available to them in their own homes. Potential customers have come to the conclusion that they don’t “need” to pay to see movies on the “big screen” any more, and then, rather perversely, decide, in a lot of cases, to actually watch the film on a screen the size of their own hand.

Now I’m fully aware that my age group isn’t the one that film-makers want to target, and that they need to keep that youthful demographic pouring through their doors because that is the group who watch the most films and bring in the most money. There is an argument to be made about actually making movies which appeal to a wider demographic, of course, but that, I think I decided long ago, is unlikely to happen.

So, the big new gimmick designed to grab them back seems to be the return of the same old gimmick that was supposed to make things “different”, “exciting” and “new” in the 1950s, so-called “3-D” cinema, which seemed to presume that by making the audience wear stupid glasses and by throwing a few spears in their general direction in order to try and convince them that they were really flying towards them, that the audiences of the time might not notice how fundamentally awful some of the acting and writing was.

Now, until they are literally showing me 3-D landscapes that can totally surround me and that I can actually touch, or transporting me onto the film set (and what a green screen disappointment that’s likely to be), I don’t think cinema is ever going to be truly 3-D in the real-world sense that I mean by it. Equally, from the point of view of a narrative, I don’t really think true 3-D movies would ever really work as everyone’s experience of it would differ, which isn’t really what telling a story is all about.

“Did you see the bit where…?”

“No, I was back around the corner at that moment…”

Ah well… It’s another phase to be endured, I suppose. Going to the cinema is bad enough nowadays with all of the chatter, and the phone calls being taken, and the popcorn-munching and all of the rest. Adding stupid glasses to the mix is more likely to be the final nail in the coffin for it to me. In most cases there’s nothing “unmissable” enough for me any more these days anyway. I’ll just try and avoid all the spoilers and wait to rent whatever it is at home in glorious 2-D.

After all, for me it’s always been about a good script anyway, and no amount of gimmicks and impressive CGI was ever likely to change that. Meanwhile, by shutting you inside your own little world and adding another “barrier” between the observer and the screen, I kind of anticipate that the 3-D glasses would remove a certain special “something” from the experience of being in the cinema itself. That moment of exchanging a glance with your friends and partners, perhaps, or maybe something more fundamental, like the fact that you can move your head around and focus entirely on the bottom left hand corner of the screen if you choose to. I’m not quite sure I can successfully fully explain what I mean by that, but perhaps it’s just that I’m not over keen on my “point of view” being so rigorously enforced, and I also genuinely believe that no amount of chucking spears at me (or whatever) is going to make a badly written movie a better one just because it’s been made in a facsimile of the third dimension.

However, if I do ever go to a 3-D movie, I’ll report back to you on what I thought of it. You never know, I might yet be amazed by it all, although I wouldn’t hold your breath...

(First published in “The Lesser Blogfordshire Alternative” July 10th 2012)