3D



LUV - Admittedly it’s hard to love 3D. It’s hard to love anything that requires you to wear heavy, uncomfortable glasses then flinch every 3.5 seconds for ninety minutes, which is why I don’t go swimming in goggles when they split the pool into lanes on a Monday morning. And it’s hard to love something that’s constantly being promoted as the next stage in entertainment evolution, but has been around for your entire lifespan, which is why no one with an IQ above 6 ever watches Hollyoaks.


But 3D is better than it used to be.  


Time was you’d get treated to a 3D movie at Disneyworld when you were nine and, it didn’t matter how many rides you’d been on, how many Mister Frosties you’d tipped down your throat, or how cool you felt in your cyan and orange cardboard 3D glasses, the resulting effect would always be like squinting at a Mickey Mouse cartoon through a swimmy pint of urine.


But now? 3D is sort of awesome.


First off, the glasses are better. Unlike the polarised 3D glasses of our childhood, they’re not made of cardboard, and they come in two styles: fake Ray-Ban and Wraparound Terminator. Even Stuart Heritage looks good in them:



Plus the 3D effect is far more convincing. New 3D actually gives films the illusion of depth, and objects actually look as though they’re zooming realistically out of the screen towards you. Obviously, with technology like this comes great responsibility. You should use 3D only for movies with dinosaurs, robots, aliens or lots of vigorous sex in, not for quirky French films where people shrug and smoke cigarettes and nothing happens. More importantly, you shouldn’t cast, say, Gerard Depardieu or Christina Hendricks in a 3D movie unless you want your audience to spend the entire film cowering and/or drooling on the floor.


But Thor in 3D? Brilliant. Each time he threw Mjollnir into the air, the audience ducked. When Valhalla loomed gaudily into the clouds, the audience gasped.  


And then there was Avatar - glorious, day-glo Avatar - which strapped you in the driving seat of one of those futuristic James Cameron JCBs and threw you into a completely immersive alien world. It was breathtaking. When Sam Worthington’s dimwit jarhead flew a dragon, you piloted it as it soared and spun among the clouds. When he ran through the forest, you felt the lichen beneath your feet light up. 3D Avatar was stupefyingly good. Which is lucky, because 2D Avatar was basically just about some shit blue Ewoks.


But the best thing about 3D? It keeps audiences quiet. No one has time to text their friends or shout WANKAH at you when a T-Rex is poking out of the screen at them. No one rustles through a supersized bag of Dorito’s for the entire film - no one can - because they’re nauseous with motion sickness. And there are no annoying clutches of teenagers clustered at the exits because they’re all at Boots buying paracetamol for their 3D headaches.


So, 3D. It makes shit films better and makes shit audiences more bearable. So, LUV. Just about.
- Robyn Wilder


HAT - Going to the cinema is a soul-destroying experience at the best of times. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s genuinely up there with contracting polio and informing a child that their pet has died.


Everything about cinemas seems precision-designed to boot the joy out of you. The grubby foyer. The overpriced sweets. The fizzing buckets of liquid diabetes. The grotty arcade that consists of Time Crisis 2, a knackered air hockey table and a sobbing child. The sticky floor. The slashed seats. The other people who sit there shouting and licking each other and slapping at their phones with their big oaf hands at the same time. The 40 minutes of trailers. The fact that, despite all of this, the cinema STILL insists on playing that annoying ‘HEY! Aren’t you glad you’ve paid money to watch this in a CINEMA and not from that brilliant armchair you love so much?’ advert at the exact moment that deep vein thrombosis starts to kick in.


But 3D? That thumps everything into a different league of hateful shittery. That’s unless, you know, you actively enjoy paying a couple of quid extra to sit in a dark room and watch a murky swamp of a film half-heartedly jut out at you for a couple of hours while you’re forced to wear a pair of glasses that cripple your ears and bruise your nose and give you a headache and - since they’ve already been worn by many strangers before you - probably carry everything from psoriasis to the norovirus. And if that’s the case, go crazy. I mean, I fully hate you, but go crazy anyway.


Because in truth, no good has ever come from 3D. Most of the recent crop of 3D movies have been hastily converted from 2D during the editing process as part of the dying cash-grab of the film industry, which is why anyone who saw Clash Of The Titans will have wondered why Liam Neeson’s head kept appearing to be either three feet behind or three feet ahead of his body.


“But what about Avatar?” you’re thinking. “That was in 3D, and that was brilliant”. The simple response to that is “No it wasn’t, you monstrous dolt”. It was a stupid film, and the 3D didn’t add anything to it, and you’re an idiot for liking it, and I’d imagine that everyone in your family is secretly quite disappointed with the way you’ve turned out.


Look, 3D does have a place. It’s just that that place is real life, not a dimly-lit cash-in version of Pirates Of The Caribbean 4. So if you really love 3D that much, let’s make a deal. You come to my house and give me £15, and in return I’ll jab a fork into one of your eyes. There, you can’t get more 3D than that.
- Stuart Heritage