If this were a meme we could start with “it’s 2010, you’re going to see Avatar that promises to be the first movie of a new era of 3D cinema, it’s all right. ”Twelve years later here Avatar 2 – The way of waterall is not well and 3D cinema is dead and gone for the moment or at least he sleeps a very sound sleep.
There are fashions that disappear and return after a few years, in some cases they allow themselves a second tour, but in the case of three-dimensional cinema we are now in the third, like a comet that completes orbits of twenty or thirty years and then passes through ours again. set off.
3D cinema, on the other hand, is an obsession that perhaps even arises with cinema, if not with photography, because it is based on the very human desire to make something as flat as two-dimensional images and two-dimensional films “alive” and immersive. Historically the first three-dimensional film ever screened for a paying audience is The power of Love from 1922 and uses a technology based on two cameras, and therefore two projectors, with slightly different angles, and one three-dimensionality obtained through anaglyphor with two superimposed images of slightly different color that our brain reassembles in 3D using special glasses which you have probably used too if you have seen a 3D projection of the old style ones.
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The chronicles of the time report that The Power of Love it didn’t go very well, despite some good reviews and the very innovative possibility of being able to see the sad or happy ending tapping one eye and seeing the desired conclusion with the other. It was only screened twice for the press and a few onlookers and today there is no viewable copy.
The golden age of three-dimensional films comes thirty years later and has a lot in common with its post-Avatar comeback. Television was starting to erode cinema revenues and one of the ways in which they tried to run for cover was to bring an experience that was only possible in theaters: 3D. Historically the beginning of this new cycle is identified with the film Mr. Devilwhere two man-eating lions jeopardize the construction of a railway in Uganda, a story inspired by a real event in 1989 also told in the film Spirits in the darkness from 1996.
The success of Mr. Devil prompted many production companies to launch 3D films of all kinds on the market and became a pivotal event in the popular culture of those years. If you have ever seen one famous black and white photo with a lot of people wearing 3D glasses at the cinema probably is that of the premiere of Bwana Devilwhich also became one cover by Life and the American edition of The society of the show from Guy Debord.
For a few years the fashion lasted and then quickly vanished due to the technical limitations of these projections: a small error in the alignment of the two projectors was enough to make the film unwatchable and annoying, and many mistakes happened, moreover if you didn’t fit perfectly in the center the 3D effect faded.
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Between the 1960s and the 1970s, 3D films livened up as isolated experiments or projections dedicated to fairs or events, only to return to the fore again in the 80s with less complicated technology, the birth of the Imax rooms and, perhaps, thanks also to the fact that there had been a great generational change of people who had no recollection of the previous flop. Again perhaps there is a bit of fear that young people will stop going to the cinema, perhaps to go to the arcades and watch VHS at home. Exactly as before, after a few years the public gets bored, the 3D productions collapse and slowly everyone moves away, except perhaps some amusement park.
And finally here we are Avatar and even better technology, which this time promises sparks, a relaxed vision and an increasingly precise control of the viewer’s distance from the screen, therefore a precise three-dimensional vision. It seemed that from that moment on, we would only see cinema in this way, that that innovation would combine color and sound.
He always carries one of the first experiences of this type James Cameronaided by his obsession with underwater expeditions, with a documentary on abyssal creaturesslowly the cinemas realize that the overpriced tickets for the 3D projections are not so bad in a sector that feels the creeping approach of the umpteenth crisis, this time brought by the video on demand services, Netflix in the lead, ready to prey on a new generation of young people.
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The global success of Avatardriven more by his incredible visual abilities than by a story that after all he knows he has already seen, he carries within himself the same factors that have decreed the temporary success of 3D cinema and its rapid end: an instant boom of special projections, with so many films that are adapted to the new technology in order to achieve success, without offering anything so interesting, on the contrary, making the public feel cheated.
And this also applies to films designed in 3D, which beyond some particular depth of field are not so spectacular, do not enrich the cinematographic language too much with their additions, not to mention all the problems for those who have glasses. or some visual defect. Also, making 3D films is particularly expensive, so if the film doesn’t make good money, the risk of failure increases.
This time, in order not to miss anything, 3D TVs and laptops and non-3D screen computers are also launched. In retrospect one wonders how we could have thought of wanting to sit on the sofa in the evening wearing uncomfortable glasses, which obviously had to be bought for the whole family.
Once again after a few years the magic has vanished, reminding us for the umpteenth time that an innovation does not automatically signal progress or something that we would actually like to use. Sometimes it’s the fault of immature technology, other times, we just don’t care that much. Today no one thinks that we might be interested in a 3D TV, let alone a cinema, we are all turned towards 4K and in theaters at most the Imax, with its huge screens, can ask us a few more euros.
So here we are, ready to go and see the next one Avatar, because in the meantime Cameron, exalted by the success of the first, has put another three in the pipeline. And since he was a Renaissance genius, it was not enough to continue working on what was created, it was necessary push yourself further with the shooting techniques and, while we’re at it, go back underwater.
In the meantime, however, the world has changed completely, without counting two years of pandemic and their impact on cinema and theaters, 3D as a technology is back to sleep again and will no longer be a commercial driving force and also our sense of wonder towards digital has raised the bar. If ten years ago the full body motion capture was something innovative that injected the souls of the actors into digital bodies, a bit like Sully’s consciousness in his Avatar today that kind of technology is part of many video games and even more modest films. The public itself has changed and today it goes to the cinema especially for cinecomics, with the great names of the past that no longer attract an audience that, physiologically, knows them less and less.
We will know the answer only this winter when Avatar 2 will arrive in theaters, an answer that will not be able to count on the 3D surcharge. Until the next flashback between cinema and three-dimensionality, of course.
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