Tag Archives: Alice in Wonderland

The 3D Tax

We went to see Alice in Wonderland last night, which isn’t bad. Apart from one thing.

The only option available to us was the ‘3D’ version, even at the Arts Picturehouse who perhaps should have known better. However, this isn’t really a 3D film – it was shot in 2D and then molested. Although its not immediately obvious exactly what is up, you soon realise that the 3D effects aren’t as pervasive as they were in Avatar or Up, in fact the whole thing looks a lot more like a pop-up book. In the sections with real actors (as opposed to the CGI parts which have been done properly) each person has been ‘cut out’ of the 2D picture that they were originally filmed in and moved forwards or backward in 3D space as required. While this means that people in the background do look farther away, their features are flat like a cardboard cut-out, someone’s nose is no farther forward than their ears. What you see as a viewer is a series of flat people floating about in space, which is disconcerting and in my opinion detracts from an otherwise pretty film. In fact, as they had to cut the people out afterwards, you also see bits of the background floating around too, for example when cutting around the details of someone’s beard was too complicated then a vaguely circular piece has been selected as the “head” and it all gets moved forwards.

The most annoying thing about all this, is that Real3D, the people behind the technology which has sprung up everywhere charge a £1.50 tax on every ticket going into a 3D film, even if that ticket is a one of the free Orange Wednesdays ones. The cheek!

In conlcusion, if you have a choice avoid the 3D at all costs – the effects in the CGI parts don’t make up for the dodgy live-action bits.