What a bunch of spoons...

1999 was the year of many fun exciting things most notably the panic about the impending technological apocalypse due to be caused by a certain damp squib also known as the millennium bug. Whilst this was happening in the real world Hollywood decided to distract us with a post apocalyptic world in The Matrix. This film was simply a work of art, breathtaking special effects and a storyline that was guaranteed to leave paranoid people all over the world wondering if there really was a spoon or if we were in fact stuck in a matrix as well. Reviewers everywhere praised the movie for its ingenuity and with global box office takings total of $463 million strongly suggests fans agreed making it a huge success.

So you are the head of a huge Hollywood film studio and your film does incredibly well, you’d be forgiven for being tempted into the world of sequels based on popularity but not these guys… they clearly went ahead and made a trilogy purely on money making ability alone and sadly this meant a dire lack of quality despite the budgets both sequels received. Now I will say this in defence of them – they were watchable and vaguely entertaining… but why bother when they were completely pointless and all about eye candy in the form of special effects. 

In the 7 years since the release of the matrix sequels I haven’t once thought “oh you know what I’d really like to see, another matrix movie” actually if I’m honest I have occasionally thought to myself as I stumbled across one of the movies on tv “thank god this never went any further than a trilogy”. Well an article on the yahoo home page today caught my eye and set in motion a cringe which several hours later I am still feeling the effects of. There are 2 more sequels in the pipeline… why oh why cruel world must we have this inflicted upon us again.

Not content with ruining the legacy of the original perfectly formed stand alone film with 2 and 3 purely with their money making greed and relying on an overdose of special effects to hide their lack of a quality storyline – the new films are apparently intended to make use of 3D film technology.

*insert second cringe here*

I am not a fan of this new wave of 3D technology for use in this way, I personally feel very ill when forced to watch 3D films (particularly fast paced action films) and have left the cinema with a 3D induced migraine roughly 80% of the time. This is not a reaction unique to me and as discussed in an article posted just yesterday by Robert Ebert (link: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html) this is simply because we haven’t evolved to be able to view things this way. I look forward with great delight to the day when this 3D “phase” crashes and burns like the last one, its purely a way to charge even more for ticket prices, different tv systems and other home media products. I would much rather watch an old black and white film with a well written storyline and good acting than pay through the nose for yet more of the same 3D bullets/swords/zombies jumping out the screen at me kinda trash! Sadly this is what the future most likely holds for the new matrix sequels.

Now with all that said, I would like to stand up for 3D technology here but just a little. I recently visited a local science centre visitor attraction that has made use of 3D technology to offer a 4D “ride” experience. In this case it is designed as some sort of futuristic aircraft that you take a ride on and the 3D technology is used to simulate the flight and a holographic HUD (head up display) interface whilst the 4^th dimension is created by adding smells to the room which are appropriate to the images on screen to help to fully immerse you in the illusion. Now the reason I think this works so well is that it was only something like a 5-10 minute duration which means your brain isn’t having to work so hard to process the 3D technology for so long and you are therefore less likely to suffer from any headaches, migraines or eye pain because of it. It was also done in a much more sympathetic way as the main focus is on education and not harsh fast paced action sequences.

 

When are people going to wake up and smell the overpriced migraines and realise that 3D technology may have its place in the world but not in cinemas… and hopefully they’ll realise this before Keanu Reeves tries to hit us in the face with a non-existent spoon!