The Decline of the 3-D Movie Experience

Joan and I have decided to avoid 3-D movies for a while. The visual quality of what we see in the theater has fallen very far downhill, and we'd rather see a crisp regular version of a movie than a sloppy 3-D one.

We remember being impressed with the clarity and sharpness of the 3-D images in earlier movies, such as Up!, How to Train Your Dragon, or even Rango or Puss-n-Boots. Lately, first with Pirates: Band of Misfits and then with Brave, the competence of the projection been disappointing, in two different multiplexes.

When we saw Pirates, the bottom third of the screen was much dimmer than the upper two-thirds. This was primarily through one of the two eyes -- I alternated looking through just the right eye, and then just the left eye. I'll try to recreate this for you; first, here's an arbitrary photo.

If this was projected in the same way we saw Pirates, it would look something like this.

When we saw Brave, during the movie previews two images were being shown, but the 3-D glasses weren't merging them into a three dimensional image, rather, there remained two separate flat images. A couple of us had to leave that theater and tromp down two halls to find someone to complain to. After a couple of minutes, something was visibly flipped, and the 3-D now worked. But not well.

The problem was that the left and right images didn't line up correctly, and it remained that way through the entire movie. The top third of the screen was all right, the middle third of the screen was fuzzy, and the bottom third of the screen was very fuzzy. Looking at text, such as logos and credits, or sharp edges in the image, such as tables or fingers, it was apparent that the two projections weren't aligned properly with respect to each other. The letter E,  for example, should have three horizontal lines, not six. The effect,  using the same photo, was something like this -- click to enlarge for the full effect:

We postulate that the theaters were very careful with their 3-D equipment when 3-D movies were new, and wanted to impress their audiences with the images that brought in several dollars more per person. As 3-D movies continued to be issued, and the installations aged, the theaters stopped being diligent about adjusting their equipment. (They've also been accused of waiting too long to replace bulbs, or deliberately running them below the specified illumination, to save money.) I, for one, wrote an email about the Pirates experience, but never received a response.

A 3-D movie system, regardless of which technology is used, inherently requires more careful maintenance and inspection than a flat movie system. Bump a 2D movie projector, and the screen shifts an inch or two. Big deal. If, by whatever faults a particular 3-D projection system is subject to, one of the two images gets shifted, things don't  line up any more. And who knows how they managed to partially darken Pirates; maybe somebody left a pizza box in front of one lens.

It appears that many theater owners are not investing the time or effort to calibrate their 3-D systems properly, and until they do, we're steering away. If the story is good, 3-D projection is just a frill.

But then we have to worry about some theaters showing dim 2-D movies because they don't want to remove the 3-D polarizers from their Sony projectors when they switch movies. Caveat Emptor.