On Avatar, 3D and Living in a 2D World

We finally watched Avatar on Blu-ray last night, and it got me to thinking about the 3D craze.  We're currently living in the third 3D age, after its heyday in the 50s, and a revival in the 80s.  It's supposed to be better now, but I have no real way of knowing.

I was born with a lazy eye, you see.  I wore an eye patch starting at the age of two to try to correct it.  It ended up making the weak eye stronger, and the strong eye weaker. The wonders of 60s medicine.  So when I was five, I had corrective surgery. Nice image, right? Popping your eyeballs out, cutting and stitching, popping them back in. I'd like to see that in 3D!  After that, my eyes pointed in the same direction (most of the time), but I never really acquired true 3D vision.  My brain compensates for it, and I don't often have a problem perceiving the world. I suck at sports though!

I see the world through one eye--usually the left--with the other acting as peripheral vision.  So, I've always had a problem with ViewMasters, binoculars and the like. They force my brain to look through both eyes at once, and it takes a lot of concentration.  Same thing happens when I put on a pair of 3D glasses.  But I keep trying.

The first successful 3D movie experience for me was Captain EO, the Michael Jackson movie at Disneyland.  Occasionally--but not for the entire picture--the 3D would kick in, and wow! Things just zoomed around in open space.  So, I finally could see what all the fuss was about.  More recently, I've gotten a couple of 3D DVDs, namely The Final Destination and Friday the 13th Part 3.  During the latter, the effect would come and go, and in the former, I gave up, and switched to the 2D version.

The thing is, I don't know if modern 3D works for me in a theater, because I haven't tried it yet. In the theater, they give you chunky Morey Amsterdam-style black frames with polarized green/grey lenses in them. They're big, and encircle your field of vision. At home, they're still stuck with the little cardboard jobbies, with red and blue lenses. The eyeholes are too small, and the cardboard is too short to fit over real glasses. They're terrible.  Worst of all, they render everything in unnatural colors, making you feel like you're watching a badly colorized black-and-white movie.

As for Avatar, the disc did not come in 3D. But the movie is so visually dazzling, I think the effort involved in seeing it in 3D might have fried my brain anyway.  They've come a long way with CGI people, but it helps that these people are big, blue aliens.  It's still not 100% natural, so I don't think actors need to worry about being completely replaced just yet.  The storyline of Avatar is spare, but quite enjoyable. There are nods to other James Cameron films, notably the futuristic military apparently working for corporate interests, as in Aliens. There's even a nifty update of the power-loader Ripley drove. . .uh. . .walked in (get away from her, you bitch!).  Oh, and Ripley herself (Sigourney Weaver).

The film is very long, made easier at home by taking an "intermission" about halfway through.  Of course, we had to since our bargain basement Magnavox Blu-ray player froze, necessitating a reboot.  My cheapo player also glitches about every ninety seconds, marring the beautiful Pandora landscape. Magnavox will soon be replaced by Sony or Panasonic, count on it.  Anyway, I liked Avatar quite a bit, though I'll always wonder what it would have looked like in 3D.

Surely there will be a 3D version for the new 3DTVs. But I think early adopters of those sets have got to be in very low numbers, and I think they're nuts to spring for them now.  I doubt 3DTV will catch on in a big way until the images are truly 3D with no glasses required. Picture the 3D chess game in Star Wars, more holography than photography. THAT I'd be able to see!