That's bullshit.

I swear had LOTR been filmed in 3D you would have claimed Gandalf's fireworks or the arrows in Moria flying towards the camera were in there just to show off 3D.

You sound like the people claiming CGI would ruin films coz now effects will overshadow story.

Stop being paranoid.

I know that's your view, how couldn't i know, you keep reminding us ad nauseam.

Ok I'll shut it. Atleast until everyone needs reminding again

Drink the 3D kool-aid, embrace the future!

"Popularity of CGI is affecting how screenplays are written"

Great article Magnus! Have bookmarked it.



Maybe we call a truce for The Hobbit films and LOTR re-releases in 3D!

*sigh* Like i said, when CGI was about to become prevalent, the fearmongers back then were telling us the same stories...

Yes, some things change when one has new toys to play with, but not necessarily to the worse.

Well said.

*lol* Look at you two...

Wrong, CGI affected scripts, much more so than 3D, scenes play out differently due to the new possibilities CGI provides, scenes and whole movies would not have existed had it not been for CGI. And yes, some get a little carried away and put too much emphasise on spectacle to the detriment of substance. Every cool new tech brings with it the danger of abuse. Here's where the wheat gets separated from the chaff, good filmmakers will know how to apply all the wizardry to further pull people in, bad filmmakers, well, their movies would have probably sucked anyway.

You might be right, but there's one major difference that you can't deny. Glasses. They annoy me.

Aren't we a sensitive bunch...

You better get used to them. Or you're screwed.

Personally, i forget i'm wearing them.

3D is here to stay. It's come and gone in the past, yes, but back then you didn't have Bwana Devil breaking Gone with the Wind's all time box office record, or have studios use it for projects they actually cared about (Jaws 3D was pretty much a cash-in job for the franchise name). People aren't going to see these movies just because in 3D - they're going to see them because they're movies that they would want to see anyway, and I think that does a LOT in integrating the idea of 3D as more than just a gimmick, but as an honest-to-god movie technique.

Now, of course the majority of these films aren't going to do much of anything substantial with the extra dimension, and it will continue to be viewed by the studios as little more than a potential route for extra dough. The thing is, not too many movies did much initially with sound or color, other than BLAST THE AUDIENCES WITH MUSIC AND GUNFIRE, or SUPER-DUPER SATURATE THE SCREEN WITH COLOR. However, smarter filmmakers did some interesting stuff with it, and eventually people became use to it.

Now, for the most part I've never been that big on 3D, but an article I read a few months ago about 3D brought up an interesting point: Ever since the cinema was first created over a hundred years ago, the creators didn't envision it forever being a silent, flat, B&W format - they envisioned eventually creating something EXACTLY LIKE the real world. Since then they've been experimenting with various technologies to push it that way, and once it was perfected well enough they began applying it to mainstream cinema. With digital cinema, 3D is closer than ever to being truly flawless, and at this point I'm willing to roll with it.

Well said.

YOU'RE NOT HELPING THINGS THOUGH.

Sorry, it's just reading the same complaints over and over again gets increasingly tedious.

Great article and I agree with most of what Ebert says. Yes 3D is nice but it should still be a limited aspect and not attached to a new film every month (or week as we're getting close to).

I do like his suggestion of MaxiVision48 being used which actually sounds like something revolutionary for cinema in itself.

It was last year's Up that broke the 3D spell for me. I went to see it in 3D first and later in 2D. When I was at the 2D version, I popped over to the 3D screening next door with my saved glasses in my pocket. I was shocked with how dim the 3D version was compared to the 2D! The 3D sucked the brightness right out of Pixar's trademark brilliant colors. Not only that, but Pixar already does spectacular three dimensional CGI in 2D - - it definitely subtracted from the viewing experience of Up.

Except for notable exceptions like Coraline and Avatar, 3D is simply a marketing gimmick. I now make every effort to see the 2D version of any film I plan on seeing (though distributors are making that increasingly difficult).

Agree 100% with Ebert. Fantastic article. Hopefully he isnt the lone voice crying in the wilderness.

Judge Dredd reboot or relaunch in 3D.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=65859

Rio will be in 3D! A new animated movie from Blue Sky studios.

The non-3D CGI movie is dead. But it's also been dead for over a year now, so that's nothing new. The only three major CGI releases last year in 2D- 9, Astro Boy, and Planet 51- all were bombs.

Wow, an extra 15 min drive, that's horribly inconvenient...

15 minutes extra is horribly inconvenient. I shouldn't have to go out of my way to see a movie in standard format. If anything, to see a film in a special format like 3D, IMAX, or IMAX 3D, that's when I would normally expect to drive a little further.

15 minutes extra is not out of anyone's way. Peanuts. It's not like you do that every week...

Nazgul, that's bullshit because we all know this is the beginning. Most 3D movies around here are only playing in 3D now. For instance Alice in Wonderland wasn't anywhere to be found in 2D in either Bonn or Cologne (which is already a 30 minutes drive). So the next possible 2D showing would have been at least an hour away. And it IS getting worse.