Just a year ago, 3D was being trumpeted loud and proud on movie posters. But now? Hollywood appears to be less convinced that 3D is the selling point it once was. As these posters show…
3D has, since Avatar put it at the top of movie studios' agenda a little over a year ago, gone on something of a dramatic journey. We've seen studios stumble over themselves to slap 3D on their movies, even if they weren't shot with that in mind. And we've seen sloppily executed 3D, if not murdering the potential golden goose, then at least chopping one of its legs off.
And as such, there's still an ongoing 3D backlash. Cinemagoers have rightly questioned why they have to pay a premium for their ticket for little obvious benefit (latest case in point: The Green Hornet ), while sales of 3D televisions have demonstrated little enthusiasm from consumers to bring the technology into their homes (and buy their films again in another format for the umpteenth time).
Hollywood desperately needs James Cameron to get Avatar 2 to cinema screens a lot faster than he is doing (2014 is the earliest we'll see it), to give the chances of 3D a shot in the arm, and pacify the worries of many cinemas that have invested in upgrading their screens to support the technology.
In the meantime, Hollywood has come to slowly appreciate that 3D isn't the selling point it was a year ago. And nowhere is that better manifested than in the changing faces of posters. A year ago, 3D was deemed as a massive selling point. But progressively, it's becoming more and more downplayed.
Let's, first of all, go back to 2009, in the months building up to Avatar . Here, you can see we have DreamWorks pushing the 3D of Monsters Vs Aliens back in early 2009. It might be at the bottom of the poster, but it's bold and obvious. (Fox took a similar approach with the same year's Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs .)
Pixar's Up wasn't far behind, and by the time the UK poster rolled around, 3D, which was tucked away in the bottom right hand corner on earlier posters, was now worthy of a poster of its own. (DreamWorks had done a similar thing with the aforementioned Monsters Vs Aliens , incidentally.)
In general, it was animated movies leading the 3D charge here (Disney's Bolt is another example, as is Coraline ), along with a couple of purpose-built horror films ( The Final Destination , for example).
Thus, as we headed towards the end of 2009, with cinemas upgrading their screens as fast they could to capitalise, Fox rolled out its promotion for Avatar .
And here's the thing. Considering that Avatar has been the commercial poster child for 3D, there's barely a mention of it on the film's posters. Don't believe us? Check out a selection of the posters that were issued for the film. Only when the special edition rolled out in cinemas in the summer of 2010 did 3D make it to any kind of prominence. But here are three different posters for the theatrical release, and 3D gets blink-and-you-miss-it prominence.
Once Avatar started making substantial cash, though, particularly with a high proportion of its revenue coming from 3D screens, other studios weren't shy about capitalising. The film that ousted Avatar from 3D screens was Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland , and as the promotion for that film progressed, so did the focus on 3D. It peaked with the banner you see below.
However, with Alice , the first solid murmurings of 3D dissent were coming. Fitted with a post-production 3D bolt-on, Alice 's extra dimension was pretty much non-existent to most, leaving them wondering why they'd spent an extra few quid to wear some silly glasses.
Yet, if there were murmurings with Alice , it got worse with Clash Of The Titans . Identified as a turning point in how many saw big screen 3D, Warner Bros infamously delayed the release of the film by a week or two, and ordered a post-production 3D job to be done in a matter of weeks. The 3D was, inevitably, terrible, and the reaction to it is likely to have been instrumental in Warner Bros' decision not to press ahead with a late 3D add-on for Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 .
Before Clash Of The Titans was released, though, the 3D was still being seen as a massive, massive selling point. Just check out the prominence here.
And here.
As you can see, none of the film's stars can get their name on the poster, let alone above it. 3D? It's being sold as the star of the show.
Paramount's Razzie-magnet The Last Airbender was next to pick up the mantle, ultimately making similar mistakes in the way the film's 3D had been handled. But again, the promotion was pushing it as a major selling point. In this case, it's even presented to appear as part of the film's title:
It's around about there, understandably, that the tide started to really turn. And when you factor in, too, that the summer's biggest films either failed to make convincing use of 3D ( Toy Story 3 ) or avoided it altogether ( Inception ), the penny had started to drop with audiences. And to some, rather than 3D being a selling point on a poster, they were seeing it as a warning.
This presented a conundrum for Sony. It had Resident Evil: Afterlife coming out, which had been shot from start to finish in 3D, using Avatar 's technology. The studio decided to push ahead and sell the film's 3D element hard.
Nobody, outside Lionsgate with Saw 3D , has really tried in quite the same way since. Why? Well, while Afterlife and Saw 3D did solid business, the argument is that both were running as much off the fumes of their respective franchises, rather than bringing in fresh faces due to the 3D itself. That's not to say that 3D didn't give them a revenue boost. Rather that fewer and fewer people are specifically hunting down 3D screenings of films they want to see.
The trend now, as a consequence of the rise and fall of 3D in moviegoers' eyes, is that films that were once trumpeting it as a feature in earlier posters, are now relegating the fact. Appreciating that there are international variations that sell things in slightly different ways, nonetheless, have a look at these earlier posters for Drive Angry and The Green Hornet (the latter being an international poster).
Now take a look at the latest posters, which take into account that the 3D in films such as Chronicles Of Narnia: Voyage Of The Dawn Treader , Legends Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'Hoole , Gulliver's Travels and My Soul To Take have all failed to beat a path to box office glory.
What's particularly interesting is that Drive Angry was actually shot in 3D, and thus, you'd think has the right to call it a proper selling point. Yet, market forces make promoting it that way more of a risk than it was when the film was commissioned. The Green Hornet 's 3D, meanwhile, was constantly underplayed in the US and UK.
Just going back for a second to Voyage Of The Dawn Treader , the posters there prove that six months is a long time in movie marketing. The first poster here was released as a teaser in the spring of 2010, while the latter one, which only mentioned 3D if you bother to squint and spot it, was released around six months later.
So, what should we conclude?
Basically, it seems that, while 3D isn't off the radar altogether, those at the promotions and marketing end of the movie business have got the message: 3D just isn't a selling point any more, courtesy both of market saturation and Hollywood's insistence on deploying the technology willy-nilly.
3D is far from dead, and it'd be wrong to write it off. Used effectively, in the likes of Avatar , Tron: Legacy , Coraline , A Christmas Carol and How To Train Your Dragon , it can genuinely work. Slapped on as an afterthought, though, to a production that wasn't designed and shot with 3D in mind, and yet more parts of the golden goose will be carved up.
The year ahead sees no shortage of 3D movies, mind. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 , The Green Lantern , Cars 2 , Thor , Captain America , Spy Kids 4, The Smurfs , Final Destination 5, Piranha 3DD , The Three Musketeers , Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chiprecked , Scorsese's Hugo Cabret And The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn are all leading the charge. But few are screaming about their 3D in the early promotions for them.
Yet the long term future of 3D might just be in their hands. For Hollywood needs 3D to work, to open up a fresh revenue streams and new ways to reissue and sell us the old films.
If it had its way, Avatar 2 would be fast-tracked to give the 3D fad a massive shot in the arm. But that's not going to happen. Instead, 3D's short to medium term future rests of a collection of films, the majority of which have taken the post-production 3D route, rather than committing to it from the start.
It's hard to see, with that in mind, whether the seventy percent-plus of us who sought out Avatar in 3D just over a year ago will be bothering again any time soon, let along buying a 3D telly and 3D Blu-rays when we get home. And it's going to take something really quite compelling to turn the tide back in 3D's direction.
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