Stereoscopic 3D is...dying?

Wait, I'm confused.

According to this article on Gizmodo, 3D venues have seen a steady decline in opening weekend grosses since the release of the, apparently, "tentpole" of Stereoscopic 3D features...Avatar.

Let's look at this a little closer. What do four of these six movies have in common? They're CGI kiddie flicks. It's ridiculously easy to make a 3D CGI movie these days. All you have to do is make the CGI film and then render it to two outputs that are slightly off. No actual humans were involved in adding the third dimension.

Avatar was shot in stereoscopic 3D and then incorporated CGI (see above).

In contrast the other Avatar (The Last Airbender) was shot in 2D and then hastily converted to 3D in an effort to combat the evident dismal film. This requires some editor/artist spending many hours in a dark room pushing and pulling the z-axis of the shots and CG in order to get it right. Most conjecture comes to the conclusion that M Night Shamamalama's film was so atrocious that they needed another gimmick to drive attendance up. They decided to do some absolutely-last-minute conversion to 3D to jack up the cost of tickets for an inflated box office gross. So to hold up Airbender as an epitome of 3D films seems ridiculous. Especially since the film itself is terrible. That's like walking up to an outhouse and saying: "Wow, this stinks." No shit, it's an outhouse.

I think the biggest hurdle 3D needs to overcome is finding a universal mount that is as comfortable and slight to be easily used by filmmakers. For epic long shots, yeah, stereoscopic 3D is king. I would love to see Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance in 3D. But if you want a close-up shot of anything, it takes all kinds of mathamagical calculations to get the two "eyes" to cross effectively. From a production point of view I can see the downside of this technology.

But there have been a few setbacks for the assimilation for stereoscopic 3D into mainstream American cinema. Because of the previously mentioned hassle of 3D rigs Marvel has passed on shooting the forth-coming Thor and Captain America films in 3D, instead opting for the post-production option of conversion. Although this might result in lack-luster effects as seen in this year's Clash of the Titans, it is a step in the right direction and a stark contrast to DC/Warner Brothers' anti-3D stance as decreed by their de-facto patriarch, Christopher Nolan. I personally think that The Dark Knight actually could have pulled off some decent 3D shots if they had applied themselves. But this, of course, is blasphemous.

At any rate, I think the first time we will really see the emergence of decent 3D films is when low-budget stereoscopic equipment becomes available to the plebeian auteurs. Hopefully Red will break through and save it before it falls back to the interest level of anaglyphic 3D.

And a special FU to the 3D faithful with that picture of anaglyphic glasses in their article. Props Gizzy.