Chris Nolan on why Dark Knight is 2D: "I never meet anybody who actually likes 3D" - Page 11

I liked Tintin in theaters, but I was mainly talking about live-action 3D. Just my opinion, but animation doesn't hold the same "3D magic" as live-action or live-action with CGI mixed in. The suspension of disbelief doesn't work as well for me if the majority of 3D objects look like cartoons. I still appreciate them--just in a different way.

Prometheus was awesome, but I didn't think the 3D was quite as good as Avatar and Hugo. It didn't push the 3D volume to realistic levels as much. Maybe it will change my opinion on BD3D though. It's still best live-action 3D of 2012 until it's holiday competition is released. Spider-Man had some good 3D moments too but overall not as consistent.

My "guilty pleasure" 3D list would include:
1. Journey to the Center of the Earth
2. Step Up 3D
3. Sanctum
4. The Final Destination (actually this one was kind of disgusting)
5. Drive Angry
6. My Bloody Valentine

Unlike Hugo, Avatar, and Prometheus, all of the above, except Sanctum, are a bit gimmicky, but that's okay with me. Yogi Bear (live/CGI mix) also has great gimmicky 3D and a terrible story. I'll check out Final Destination 5 when it goes on sale.

And agreed. It would be nice if ESPN 3D or someone else committed to filming more games and a wider variety of sports in 3D. I've heard in Europe that they have bars with passive 3DTVs that host 3D football/soccer nights for big matches.

Like Inception, the Batman movies will not get converted without Nolan's blessing. If eventually he does give permission, I would hope that he would also give his creative input toward the 3D like Cameron and Titanic. Like you said, he composed The Dark Knight Rises for IMAX 2D, so that's absolutely the best way to see it.

And some people did have problems with Transformers' converted scenes and The Avengers. In my opinion, both looked decent but couldn't elevate the movies toward "3D experience" status like Avatar, Hugo, etc.

Funny, I think the 3D was far more natural in Prometheus than Avatar. Just the fact that it wasn't in your face throughout the film allowed me to concentrate more on the story and other special effects. In fact there were times that I actually forgot I was wearing the glasses (and that's difficult to do because I wear eyeglasses too). I can't say the same thing about Avatar. I was very aware of the 3D throughout the film.

I think that is the thing that bugs me the most about 3D in general - having to wear a second pair of glasses over my regular ones. That makes the weight on the bridge of my nose extra annoying and two sets of earpieces aggravate my ears. I think I would enjoy 3D a lot more if they made a clip-on product for my regular eyeglasses.

3D Clip-ons are sold here (linked earlier by Lee Stewart):

http://www.tr3ndy3d.com/products

I found a cheaper set at Amazon. Just might get them for my next 3D film experience



I might even get a pair of these for my old 3D tapes:

Here is a site that lists which movies are shot in 3d and which ones are 'fake' post production 3d. The latter is what ruins the medium and promotes the hatred for it. The movies shot in 3d are pretty much all good as far as the 3d experience. Some...Hugo, Avatar, and a few others are exceptional. Like I said before, Nolan just doesn't have it in him to try mastering this new technique in film making. That fact is not the problem, his reasoning is. I would think within 10 years most movies will be shot in 3d. By then the technology will be commonplace and 'perfected' and we'll see much more quality movies that use it.

http://realorfake3d.com/

I'm on the same page as some of you. Avatar and Hugo to me are still the benchmarks for live action movies.

I saw Prometheus in Digital IMAX, and the 3D was good and added a bit to the experience, but to me the fact that the amount of depth was so minimal made the 3D feel less than natural.

I suspect that the real difference between Avatar and Hugo compared to everything else has less to do with native 3D versus converted 3D and more to do with:

1) How the scenes were designed and composed.
2) The TLC involved in dialing in the 3D convergence and depth just right for every single shot.

Since most conversions don't meet #1 and less than 100% of #2, I wonder if that's the real reason that conversions are so often lackluster. Something like Transformers 3 fared better, since the converted shots were still designed for 3D, so could still qualify for both #1 and #2. I don't know what percentage of Transformers 3 was native, but the fact that you can't tell the difference is a good sign. I believe that some percentage of even Avatar was converted.

The idea of converting the Nolan Batman movies doesn't sit well with me. You can spend a lot of time on #2, but you can't change #1 after the fact.

Our AVS list is bigger

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1237092/the-official-avs-3d-film-first-run-in-theaters-topic

Bigger but more difficult to read. The two column system real or fake use is easier imho.

I want to say they are, but sometimes I'll throw a 3D movie on the screen and place in a brand new bulb, make sure everything is clean and right amps and still the picture seems dim. Most of the time our pictures look bright enough, but regardless with that filtering I can always tell a difference. I know 3D depends on the light so I have my team perform more maintenance on those projectors than the others.

I like 3D but find that watching a 3D tv to be fatiguing. Don't know if it's due to the size or the differences between a plasma tv and a dlp projector, but 3D looks better and is less fatiguing on a dlp projector. The imax documentary stuff can be quite mindblowing in 3D. I felt like I could reach out and touch the fish in ocean wonderland. A few movies have impressed me (avatar, transformers, avengers) but there are many more that have been unimpressive.

I don't really care that Dark Knight is not in 3D.....I care more about the stupid amount of plot holes riddling the movie. Maybe I expected too much, but I was pretty sorely disappointed after liking the second movie so much.

I love 3D. It immerses you in the movie. You can never immerse in a 2D that way. However I do agree that it probably shouldn't be used in movies that involve too much action motion with unsteady camera. When there's a lot going on, the picture turns into a blurry nauseating mess with zero detail (like when that black beast chases Avatar guy in the forest, tearing trees and all).

I use the above mentioned clipon glasses for my glasses I wear for reading.

My wife has vision that requires her to see our HT screen in focus. This is an active shutter screen system. I worked with people at Lens Crafters to have a custom pair of lenses made that mount inside a regular pair of shutter glasses. I mounted them in place with some dabs of silicone glue. Need to get non glare light weight lenses for best results. We found some Lens Crafters frames that were very close to the frame of the active shutter glasses so the technician could cut them to a pattern that was in her system.

My wife loves them and finds eye fatigue completely gone now she only has to wear one pair of glasses. When we go to the theater she takes a pair of the polar clip-ons but as I don't need glasses for distance, I just use regular theater glasses.

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Given a choice, I prefer the normal movie theater screen size to IMAX. If IMAX, I'd want a seat in the far back of the theater and then the sound surround isn't as good. There is something about viewing a movie with a person's head in a close up shot where his nostrils opening are big enough for me to crawl into that is just not pleasing to me! If a documentary of a subject like the Universe where the size of the stage is normally big, then I'm fine with IMAX. When I view a movie, I prefer the subjects to appear no bigger than normal. In a normal movie theater, I usually sit about 2/3 the way to the back. BTW- It's been years since I last went to the movies for a 2D movie. I go about once a month now to see a 3D. 3D has enticed me back into the theater.

Nolan's movies don't need it as while he makes visually impressive features, it's always more about the plot with him (so much so he occasionally forgets characters), and the last I checked the story stays the same in 2D or 3D. I will say IMAX gives movies a certain epic feel, something I haven't really seen with 3D.

Certain movies made for the sake of spectacle, such as Avatar, benefit from 3D. Hugo had good 3D but I never felt it added anything, and while Prometheus had some cool shots, it also gained very little from being in 3D aside from helping distract from Lindelof's terrible script. Amazing Spider-man had mostly terrible 3D.

...and as somebody that actually likes 3D, I can definitely see why others wouldn't.

Wow.

Avatar wasn't epic? 3D added nothing to Hugo? How does one define the difference between spectacle and epic as it pertains to movie viewing? If IMAX is so great, why not film in IMAX 3D? Christopher Nolan did not offer a good argument against 3D, and I feel the argument you present is equally weak. Certainly in the case of Hugo, the 3D is just about universally accepted as THE point of the movie - which is really a movie about movies and special effects - and it's director (Martin Scorsese) is definitely the superior director as compared to Christopher Nolan. I think there's more to it, perhaps 3D is too technically challenging or perhaps filming enough IMAX 3D to create 72 minutes of 3D IMAX footage was simply cost-prohibitive, even for this juggernaut of a franchise movie.

Edited by imagic - 8/4/12 at 8:48am

Yeah, It makes you wonder if we live in the same world as others sometimes doesn't it?

Nope. Viewed without the 3D effects, it was a highly simplistic morality play akin to hugging trees and kissing whales. Viewed in 3D, it was an eye popping technical demonstration of much that is wrong with Stereoscopic film making: out of center = out of focus, many scenes resembled cel animation, ie. layers rather than true depth.

The only things epical about Avatar were the the epically bad plot and dialog.

Regarding the 3D, I would agree that perhaps there was something wrong with the theater. I don't think the problem is my vision. I was very impressed with the natural look of Prometheus in 3D, although in my opinion, it too was disappointing as a story, especially since I expected so much more from Ridley Scott.
Edited by cctvtech - 8/5/12 at 8:09am

It certainly sounds like something was wrong with the theatre you visited. Avatar was spectacular in the theatre when I saw it and very very good at home too.

I cannot agree with your "hugging trees and kissing whales" point of view either. It really is about time people recognised that our futures, both physical and financial are intrinsically linked to the well being of the environment and we ignore that at our peril. If movies help us to do that then I see nothing wrong with that.