As Herzog’s beautifully shot film was an art-house documentary, you can’t hold its poor box office performance against it. As of January 11, “Tintin” had done over $330 million world wide, but only around 20 percent of that was earned in the US. It should be noted that “Tintin” was based on an age-old Belgian comic strip that never caught fire in the US. “Hugo,” my favorite movie of 2011, cost roughly $150 million to make and has done only $64 million thus far. About 80 percent of the gross came domestically, but it too is based on story set in Europe. Was it the non-US setting that killed these films or is it the audiences’ escalating apathy? Scott’s movie doesn’t come out until July, but he is already on record as saying he’ll never make another 2-D movie again after seeing the capabilities 3-D offers. Let’s see if Scott feels the same way if “Prometheus” fails to make a healthy profit (its budget has been reported to be as high as $250 million). Like “Avatar,” “Prometheus” is sci-fi action flick (and a prequel of sorts to Scott’s “Alien”) and should delight the highly desired 18-25 year-old space-nerd male demographic, lovingly referred to as “fanboys.” Back to “Hugo.” You might wonder why I would pick it as my favorite movie of the year since I detest 3-D so much. Truth be told, I have few gripes regarding the 3-D technology . . . provided it’s handled with care by people (Cameron, Scorsese, Herzog) who know what they’re doing AND that it’s part of the production process from its inception. My problem is that it’s being applied in post-production without any kind of forethought by people whose principal concern is milking the audience dry rather than delivering a superior film. The studios are force-feeding it to consumers for the sole purpose of artificially inflating ticket prices and
to theater chains that have no choice but to purchase very expensive projection equipment that could be antiquated before it’s even paid for in full. And doing all of this during one of the worst economic stretches most of us have ever experienced only adds insult to injury. Someone else who knows what they’re doing with 3-D is DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. Having headed that studios’ animation wing since its start in 1994, Katzenberg made big news in 2008 by declaring that all future feature-length animated DreamWorks movies would be presented in 3-D. With the lone exception of the (2-D) “Road to Eldorado,” all of DreamWorks 23 animated films have landed in the black with its six 3-D productions generating the highest percentage of profit. So, what does Katzenberg know that other studio chiefs don’t? Not much really. What Katzenberg (and John Lasseter of Pixar) realized early on is that 3-D is a perfect fit for animation. Because the visuals are drawn (either by hand or by computer) the images can be manipulated without limitation and they look perfect all of the time – something live-action movies can never do. That’s why “Avatar” looked so good. Yes, it used human actors that provided the motioncapture blueprints but the bulk of the film’s visuals were created from scratch on equipment Cameron had designed specifically for that film. If Cameron had lavished the same kind of meticulous attention to his derivative, just so-so screenplay, “Avatar” would have been a hands-down classic instead of what it is now: a technical marvel with a weak story. I referred to it in my original review as “Pocahontas” meets “Dances with Wolves” in outer-space.
There are huge issues facing the movie industry right now regarding 3-D, a couple with easy solutions, the others not so much. The first thing the theater chains need to do (with co-op financial support from the studios) is to stop overcharging audiences to see 3-D movies. If the live-action titles were as uniformly excellent as their animated counterparts, paying more for most people wouldn’t be an issue. But they’re not. Most of them are slapped together after the fact, and not only do they look bad, they frequently make viewers ill with motion sickness via skewed and artificially altered depth-perception. Number two: stop manipulating 2-D into 3-D, especially with years-old titles most fans of these films already own on DVD or Blu-ray. Cameron was an early conversion opponent but has since changed his tune. His next release is a 2-D to 3-D version of “ Titanic.” So much for innovation. In addition to “Prometheus,” there will be 31 major studio 3-D releases in 2012 and this is great news . . . for fanboys. “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (probably the worst title in the double trilogy) is the highest profile back-catalogue title. The bulk of the remainder includes mostly action/adventure, horror and animated titles including, and I’m not making this up, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Ahem. For non-fanboys, the pickings are slim (which is probably a good thing in the long run) and they’re all slated for December release. “Life of Pi” is director Ang Lee’s adaptation of the Yann Martel novel and “The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey” is the first installment in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” prequel trilogy. www.ozmagazine.com OZ MAGAZINE
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