While I agree it’ll be matched and eventually exceeded, 10-20 years actually is not that much age for a film that was truly groundbreaking. I guarantee in 10 years “Avatar” will still look awesome. Yes, the story was dull, but it was a visually spectacular movie and a magnificent achievement.
Did “Jurassic Park” look quaint in 2003? Shit, no… in fact, today, 18 years after release, it looks terrific. That was the cutting edge of its day and it holds up great after almost 20 years. “The Empire Strikes Back” still looked fine 10 years after it came out and to be honest it still looks decent today. Movies that are way ahead of the curve CAN hold up.
Indeed, “Titanic” was 13 years ago and it’s still a visually spectacular film.
Seriously? Tron was the only 3D film I’ve seen for which I felt the urge to keep taking off my glasses to see if it was really 3D or not. Now granted, this was partially due to the announcement that not the entire movie was in 3D. But I assumed, and according to others was correct in that assumption, that this was a “Wizard of Oz” scenario, with real life bookend scenes in 2D and bulk middle server scenes in 3D. But I had to check several times to see if my assumption was correct because it did not seem to be obviously so.
Whereas with Avatar, the 3D was convincing enough that I actually felt vertigo in certain scenes involving great heights.
The film with the best serviced 3D I’ve seen was Monsters vs Aliens.
I saw Avatar for the 3-D experience. It was nice, but the plot was childish and boring-you knew what was going to happen , after 15 minutes. It was a remake of “Dances With Wolves”-with bits of Laurel and Hardy, and the 3 Stooges (that falling and bouncing off the giant leaves scene) mixed in.
You know what was behind this big 3D push? So theaters could charge $14 for a ticket instead of $9. It was an attempt to create a two-tier price structure, charging more for big-budget blockbusters and less for rom-coms and comedies and indie films.
But the fact is, most people don’t find 3D to be that much better than 2D to justify the 50% price increase. And so 3D is going to remain a niche. It’s never going to spread beyond a few chosen blockbusters. And since the big revenue nowadays is from home viewing, it’s even more of a niche.
A skilled director will account for this. He’ll make sure to have something in the foreground of the shot and use 3D to make your eyes think it’s close. Then he’ll have minimal 3D in the background. Then because your eyes see the foreground as being “close” your brain will interpret the background as being “distant” because of the relative lack of parallax.
Nuh uh. They dropped the **Dances with Wolves ** “gone native” subplot into the “greedy businesses bad! Colorful native people good!” plot of Ferngully, which itself had a “now enlightened guy sides with the noble savages” plot itself anyway. And sacred trees, and big machines tearing them up!
This may how you personally feel, but it is flat out contradicted by the fact that in virtually every 3D release, the 3D screens outperform the 2D screens, even though there have often been more 2D theaters showing the films.
The fact is that most people like 3D and are willing to pay more for it. The studios aren’t forcing anyone to watch 3D.
Although this Wikipedia listof 3D releases is not complete, it clearly indicates that the number of 3D releases is increasing nearly exponentially. There will probably be 40 3D features in 2011, up from one in 2005.
Although I agree that there will probably never be a day when *all *films are 3D, they are far from a niche.
As for the OP’s question, there have been much better uses of 3D than Avatar, but most of them were shot in IMAX, not converted to IMAX after the fact like Avatar. Real original IMAX 3D films have a much more impressive effect than Hollywood films because the screens were so much bigger (before IMAX started shrinking them a few years ago). Unfortunately, compared to the average Hollywood feature, few people have seen them.
*Avatar *was only average in its use of 3D, IMHO, but it got all the attention because it was the first 3D film most people saw. I thought Coraline used 3D much better than Avatar, and so have many CGI features. Tron: Legacy was pretty bad 3D.