What Killed 3D Movies?

Ever since the dawn of motion pictures, filmmakers have been thinking of new gimmicks and tricks to get audiences to go see movies. 3-D movies are far from the first gimmick audiences got tired of quickly. Though movies like James Cameron's Avatar show signs that 3-D can work in cinema, most movies that utilize 3-D to tell stories don't work quite as well. But how did 3-D become so popular, only to fade as quickly as it did?

#3d #movies #nerdstalgic

SOURCES:

[ajram]

So we're just going to skip over the masterpiece that was Spy Kids 3D?

[reinotsurugi]

Comforting to know the "hated by critics" "loved by audiences" phenomenon goes way back.

[Luciphell]

Very pleasantly surprised by the content of this video. Clicked thinking it was simply a reflection of why the 3d craze of the 2010's failed and got a full lesson in the history of 3d throughout the medium.

[davadh]

I blame most of it on bad projection. Most theaters don't calibrate their 3D showings, so what you're seeing is about 30% darker than what the image should be

[danielcraddock]

Tron: Legacy was the only movie I'd seen that used 3D as part of the narrative, shifting from 2D to 3D when they move to the digital world. It felt similar to the use of colour in the original Wizard of Oz.

[DanDog]

Another factor is that a significant portion of people cannot watch 3D/VR because it gives them vertigo and headaches. Meta found this out the hard way when even their employees refused to wear the headsets.

[JRCSalter]

I absolutely agree. 3-D is great when done well to enhance the story. Gimmicks are cool for a time, but wear off quickly. I really dislike that studios jumped on 3-D as much as they did. It lessened the experience, and made most people hate the format because it was often done badly.

3-D needs to be built into the film from the ground up rather than as an afterthought. I can think of only 3 films that I remember seeing that really benefitted from 3-D: Avatar, The Desolation of Smaug, and Dredd.

It should be just another tool a filmmaker uses to tell the story, like colour or sound before it.

[STOCathain]

"The Life of Pi" was the 3D movie in the mid 2010s that wowed me the most with how beautiful the cinematography was.

[BintonGaming]

as someone who wears glasses, 3D has always been a rough gimmick for me. I've almost never had 3D glasses accessible to me that would fit around my glasses comfortably.

[sadasela]

Coraline in 3D is just stunning and was actually shot in 3D, so it works. You can genuinely feel immersed inside a model with the characters

[imilegofreak]

I loved The Adventures of Tintin in 3D. It just made so much sense, and had that Spielberg charm.

[FatNorthernBigot]

I recently purchased a projector which has 3D as an afterthought. It works very well and has none of the issues 3D had ten years ago. It's a great shame 3D is dead as the technology is now ready.

[Locadel]

I remember back in 2008-2013 they were everywhere. Almost every movie was in 3D and some of them were actually made in that way

[KevinTRod]

HUGE fan of 3D! My favorite use of 3D is:

Hugo
Avatar
Gravity
How to Train Your Dragon

These movies are so good in 3D, that I would actually argue that if you haven't seen them in 3D, then you haven't actually seen the real movies.

[zymn]

James Cameron did it so well that nobody else has any better ideas to make it worth it.

[cha]

I have a 3-D Blu-Ray player and my 3-D films of Hugo and Coraline are still some of my favorite films.

[Numba]

I didn't realize 3D cinema was so old. I do remember it being all the rage when I was growing up in the early 2000s though. Sharkboy & Lavagirl comes to mind lol. Thank you for another informative episode.
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)

[LiquidSolidus]

Probably the most memorable 3D shot I've seen was in the Amazing Spider-Man, during the very first scene of Spider-Man swinging. You see a first-person view of him landing on the side of a reflective building, and the 3D literally made it seem as if the theater screen was a window to New York City. It's stuck with me after all this time.

[kaister]

For Avatar I have to say the immersiveness of the movie sets it apart from others. The colour format and the sharpness of the CGI, when sitting near to the screen wearing 3D glasses, you feel like you are part of that world for those 3 hours. So, that's another selling point of Avatar that makes people go back to watch it multiple times. It's not just watching a movie but experiencing it.

[bazzvid]

It’s crazy how cyclical the world is. Back in the day people were worried theaters were gonna die to television, now it’s streaming. I truly do not think theaters will ever die