I attended the Thursday night midnight screening of Star
Wars: The Phantom Menace in 3D and I was greeted with the usual costume fare
(there was a slave Prince Leia, Jedi with light sabers, and a Storm
Trooper). However, the theatre was
nowhere near full to capacity as one would expect for a premiere. When the weekend gross was in, what I
witnessed was reflected in the overall gross of Star Wars’ opening weekend as
the film came in fourth with a, “Weekend [of] $23M.”1 A very sad display for what used to be a huge
cash cow but not only does this reflect George Lucas’ neglect of his fan base
but the fact was that I may as well have been watching a 2D film as there was
hardly any depth added to the film.
Mind, I am in no way commenting on the quality of the
storytelling as we all know what problems are inherent to this film; I am only
commenting on the quality of the 3D.
I left the theatre asking myself, “Why even bother
dimensionalizing the film?” All of the
depth was either at the neutral parallax or so shallow in the positive parallax
that when I lifted my 3D glasses I could’ve basically watched the film without
the glasses. The vanishing points were
crushed into a flat 2D background and there was only minimal dimensionalization
of the foreground objects in the positive parallax. Overall, I felt that the 3D was left severely
wanting. I’m not sure if Lucas was
trying to play it safe since the films were originally shot in 2D and he was
trying to minimize the stereo window violations or for some other logic that
escapes me but in the end I left the theatre dissatisfied with my 3D viewing
experience.
Well, those are my thoughts for the week…if you take my
advice I would save my money for some other 3D film other than Star Wars: The
Phantom Menace in 3D because you could easily get the same experience at home
with your Blu Ray or DVD.
Cheers-
Russell McGee
1 N. Finke, RECORD-BREAKING
WEEKEND! 4 Films Open $20+M: ‘The Vow’ $41M, ‘Safe House’ $39M; ‘Journey 2′
$27M, ‘Star Wars 3D’ $23M, WWW Document, http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/
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