Iron Man in Apparent 3D!

Yes, that’s right, I said “apparent 3D”. I hear you asking yourself: “Did he watch this movie in 3D?” And the answer is no. A resounding, childishly enthusiastic NO! Well, sort of…

I have seen exactly one “3D” movie in my entire life. It was one of the Transformers movies (I forget which one), and I found watching the movie in question in 3D to be a decidedly underwhelming experience. Part of the reason for this was probably that it was not the first of the Transformers movies, and it was, thus, a second-rate film. There was, however, another contributing factor to the low level of enjoyment I experienced while watching this movie: I got ripped off!

Like McCoy, I don’t like to pay to watch movies. Well, that’s not entirely true, I don’t mind paying to watch a movie, as long as I do not have to pay the full price—what am I, made of money!? Considering that I had paid full price and then some (an extra R20 or R30) to watch this movie “in 3D”, I was expecting great things. As I walked into the cinema I thought: “This is going to be great! This new technology is bound to greatly enhance my movie-going experience! People have told me that it seems like the animals/monsters/cars are really coming right at you and you’ll be ducking and diving for cover! By golly, I’m excited!”

I was expecting a fundamentally different movie experience, and I was thoroughly disappointed. What I had failed to grasp before watching that movie “in 3D” (i.e. three dimensions) was that every non-animated movie that I had ever watched prior to that was shot in three dimensions, and I therefore perceived the characters to be moving in a three-dimensional space. Thanks to the miracle of film (and the phenomena known as the depth of field and prespective) and my complex human brain, I had in fact watched these movies “in 3D”. Sure, the film executives probably didn’t see it that way, but I would argue strongly against them. Not once, in all my years of watching films, have I watched as a tiny out-of-focus car (in the background) approaches a large in-focus person (in the foreground) in the two dimensions of the screen and thought, “Oh no! That car is about to crash into that person!”

And therein lies the crux of my argument. I don’t need a silly pair of glasses and a film shot and projected “in 3D” in order to see that chain of events occurring in three dimensions. And I am therefore not willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get these things. In my opinion, the “3D” movie is a Hollywood gimic which has been devised to increase profits, without actually providing an enhanced experience for the movie-goer.

The only thing that is worse than paying a large amount of money to go and see a movie in 3D, is paying that amount of money to go and see a movie that you’ve already seen, in 3D! It annoys me that Hollywood directors are recycling plots left, right and centre, and expecting us to pay to see depictions of the same stories over again. What really grinds my gears is that they are now not even bothering to make new movies (and by this I mean at least doing an original take on what might be an old story), but simply digitally “enhancing” these movies and then re-releasing them “in 3D” and expecting us, the moviegoers, to pay more to see them than we did the first time! It’s ridiculous!

And that is why I did not see Iron Man 3 “in 3D”. To this day, I am happy that I made that decision, because I am of the opinion that my movie-going experience would not have been enhanced in any meaningful way had I gone for the “3D” option.

Also, I agree with McCoy—Iron Man 3 was most enjoyable. I got the sense that those who made the movie knew exactly what they were going for. They didn’t try too hard, and they put together an action-adventure film with some great characters, some great one-liners and plenty of big explosions.