If you don’t get it by now, you really should: The movies are poised to undergo their greatest conceptual mutation since the advent of sound. With the unparalleled commercial success of “Avatar,’’ the 3-D revolution just isn’t upon us, it’s over — and the invaders won. Last year was the watershed, with 10 major studio releases offered in the newly digitized technology and almost all of them posting healthy grosses thanks to premium ticket prices. Since the James Cameron film opened — followed by several other high-profile entries — 3-D has accounted for 33 percent of all film grosses. Quoth Variety in a recent article: “It’s found money.’’
Hollywood and the multiplex chains are happy to bend over and pick up that money, especially given waning profits from a DVD industry sapped by cable on-demand and a growing market for online movie streaming. The chains even recently raised ticket prices for 3-D screens by as much as 26 percent, meaning you’re paying close to $20 per seat in cities like Boston and New York. Call it gouging, but also call it psychology: Do you want to be the one to tell your kid you’re too cheap to see the upcoming pop-up version of “Shrek Forever After’’? Or risk your middle schooler’s social ostracism by settling for the 2-D version of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I’’?
Some of us have been predicting this for years. Based on the slow creep of technology, the runaway success of immersive 2-D video games, and early 3-D releases like “Spy Kids 3-D’’ (2003) and “The Polar Express’’ (2004), I’d been telling anyone who would listen that all major studio blockbusters would be going three-dimensional by 2015. (It looks like I was off by only three or four years.) At least 18 more 3-D movies are set to hit screens by the end of 2010, with another 21 set for 2011. The reality is that there probably will be more than that, since industry panic is setting in as the cultural tide shifts and theatrical chains add 3-D projectors as fast as they can. No one wants to be the old fogey studio that puts out a boring flat print of the new superhero action extravaganza.
In the race to stay competitive, though, the film industry is ignoring a number of questions it needs to ask of itself, just as audiences need to ponder what, exactly, they want from a 3-D movie and from a 3-D revolution. Allow me to ask those annoying questions and pose a few of the answers.
IS THIS REALLY THE BIGGEST CHANGE IN MOVIES SINCE THE ADVENT OF SOUND?
Something between the talkie revolution and the adoption of color in the 1950s is more like it. What does look familiar if you know your film-industry history is the paradigm shift that has audiences rejecting old tech in favor of the new with frightening suddenness. After 1927’s “The Jazz Singer’’ proved the viability of talking pictures (after years of attempts), studios released a number of part-talkies, music-and-effect soundies, and all-talkies, all of them dreadful beyond measure and almost all of them popular and profitable anyway. In fact, the new sound films were often the only pictures making any money at all, because moviegoers were initially drawn by the technology more than the story lines. “[The talkies] have ‘gotten me’ to the extent that a silent picture actually bores me nowadays,’’ a fan wrote to her favorite magazine in 1929, Substitute “3-D’’ and “2-D’’ in that sentence, and she could be speaking for a lot of modern moviegoers.
Because of that attitude, a movie like “Alice in Wonderland’’ — not Tim Burton’s best work by a long shot — racks up more than $300 million at the box office: $70 million from 3-D screens directly, and an incalculable amount of the 2-D grosses from the pop-event halo that 3-D creates. Or “Clash of the Titans,’’ with its measurably terrible 3-D: Half the film’s record-breaking $60 million Easter opening weekend came from the three-dimensional version — which played on only one-quarter of the available screens. Post-“Avatar’’ audiences have drunk the Kool-Aid and believe that if you’re seeing a 3-D movie in 2-D, you’re not seeing it at all.
IS THAT TRUE? ARE ALL 3-D MOVIES ALIKE?
Not even close. A film like “Avatar,’’ imagined in 3-D from the start and shot using technology developed by Cameron over years of experimentation, shows what can be achieved by thinking in three-dimensions (visually if not narratively). But audiences need to start making a distinction between films created for the process (like the recent “How to Train Your Dragon’’) and the growing number of movies hastily computer-converted from 2-D to 3-D in post-production. (The process adds another $10 million to the budget, but that’s still cheaper than the $20 million base price genuine 3-D costs.) At best, as with “Alice,’’ 3-D conversions provide a no-frills sense of space and depth. At worst, as with “Clash,’’ they turn perfectly acceptable multiplex products into cruddy pop-up books. Some major directors are already taking a stand against post-production 3-D: Cameron blasted cheapies like “Clash,’’ and Michael Bay has gone on record as refusing to up-convert his next “Transformers’’ movie, saying, “ ‘Avatar’ took four years. You can’t just [expletive] out a 3-D movie.’’
Why should you care? Simple: If you don’t, the studios will be very happy to sell you more of the cheap stuff. In fact, they’re already looking at the archives to decide which classics to “dimensionalize’’ a la the recent “Toy Story’’ re-release, a development that may yet turn into the colorization controversy of the new century. Are you ready for Bogie comin’ at ya in a 3-D “Casablanca’’?
Conversely, if moviegoers shun conversions, Hollywood might stop making them. But don’t hold your breath.
WHAT SHOULD A TICKET TO A 3-D MOVIE BE WORTH, ANYWAY?
Depends on whom you’re asking. Theater owners, who traditionally make their profits from concessions rather than tickets, are delighted to jack up prices for 3-D screenings — they’ve finally got a revenue stream the studios can’t get at and the new money helps offset the high cost of conversion (a digital projector can cost as much as $75,000, plus another $25,000 for a 3-D-ready screen). That this revolution is happening in the midst of an economic downturn is proof either that the technology is an idea whose time has finally come (after a half-century of trying) or that we’re all suckers.
Eventually, though, one of two things will happen. Either audiences will grow bored, the 3-D bubble will burst (as has happened at least twice before, in the 1950s and the 1970s), and ticket prices will return to normal; or, everything will be in 3-D and ticket prices will even out, probably at a level higher than we’d all like. Something for the exhibitors to think about, though: At what point do customers stop thinking of movies as a cheap night’s entertainment and start looking elsewhere?
WILL 3-D EVER MAKE A MOVIE BETTER INSTEAD OF JUST MORE?
Historically, the record isn’t great. The technology has been used for gimmickry for years — the paddleball man in 1953’s “House of Wax’’ is my favorite example, and let’s not forget 1969’s softcore-porn opus “The Stewardesses’’ — and in most cases it still is. (Submitted as evidence: the whizzing teacups in “Alice in Wonderland.’’ Yawn.) “Up’’ and “Avatar’’ proved 3-D can be used to create a physical illusion of space that complements and illuminates the dramatic, and when the hero in “How to Train Your Dragon’’ takes flight on his new pet, the movie becomes nearly as thrilling to the soul as it is to the eye.
It is possible for the technology to transcend novelty, though, and when the marketplace becomes flooded with 3-D movies good and bad, as it soon will be, the shakeout should begin. What’s crucial is that filmmakers who favor story and characters over effects and action start dipping their toes into the technology. Maybe Steven Soderbergh’s 3-D Cleopatra rock musical (starring Catherine Zeta-Jones!) won’t ever happen — it was announced in 2008; since then, crickets — but can you imagine what a strong directorial personality like Spike Lee or David Lynch or, God help us, Oliver Stone could do? Or, better yet, think of Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg,’’ “The Squid and the Whale’’) investing his misfit characters with a new, subtle sense of invasive personal space. As camera technology gets cheaper and less cumbersome, it’s possible that a thousand indie projects may bloom, turning small-scale dramas into the equivalent of 3-D chess.
IS THIS THE END OF HUMAN-SIZE DRAMA AND INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING? Not for a while. What will happen if the 3-D revolution truly becomes Hollywood’s new way of doing business is that the gulf between the multiplex and the independent art house will widen into an abyss, with the masses charging forward with glasses on and the cognoscenti settling happily for small, sophisticated flat fare. For one thing, the cost of retrofitting an indie theater for 3-D projection is exorbitant; for another, until auteurists figure out what to do with the technology (see above), there’s no upside. The art houses will become more than ever the equivalent of tiny jazz clubs while the big chains will serve as rock arenas for the new cinematic bombast. Plus, there’s a wild card in the form of Internet, wireless/mobile, and cable distribution of offbeat fare by foreign directors and US filmmakers empowered by cheap tech and low cost of entry. Some of the best movies of the future may come from places we least expect.
WHERE’S IT GOING TO STOP? Sorry, it’s not. Warner Brothers head Alan Horn recently announced that all the studio’s “tentpole movies, superhero films, and big special-effects releases’’ will be in 3-D. Coming down the pike are “Tron Legacy,’’ the next “Shrek,’’ “Harry Potter’’ and “Toy Story’’ films, and such surefire critics’ favorites as “Jackass 3-D,’’ “Piranha 3-D,’’ and “Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore’’ — and that’s just this year.
Meanwhile, the theater chains and studios scramble to convert projection booths, since all those releases can’t fit onto America’s existing 4,100 3-D-ready screens. (There was some ugly recent squabbling over “Avatar,’’ “Alice,’’ “Dragon,’’ and “Clash’’ and who got how many theaters; 2,500 more screens should be ready by the end of 2010.)
The plastic glasses needed for today’s digital 3-D are much less geeky than the old red-and-green/blue paper jobs and there’s already talk of manufacturing custom specs in different styles. And don’t think you can hide at home, since
Put it this way: When they’re talking about making the next “Harold and Kumar’’ stoner comedy in 3-D (wait, dude, weren’t the first two in 3-D?), the world is officially no longer flat. The question is whether we’ll be able to recognize ourselves in our brave new three-dimensional landscape.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. 
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