LONDON -- The film industry shouldn't view 3D through rose-tinted glasses, cautions Avatar director James Cameron.
"I think we need to keep 3D in balance," he says. "I think 3D is enhanced cinema. But it's still fundamentally cinema."
The message?
While Cameron is a tireless promoter of the next-gen format -- he developed a new 3D camera system while shooting his underwater documentaries Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep -- he's also shrewd enough to know technology can't supplant storytelling.
"I don't think you start rewriting the aesthetic rules of how you make a movie because it's a 3D movie. Maybe this is one thing Avatar can achieve -- an example of a mature use of stereoscopic 3D.
"It's moved out of its adolescence to just be now a part of the cinematic art, used by serious filmmakers ... I'm going to make all my movies in 3D, no matter what their subject.
"We'll see if other filmmakers rise to that challenge."
They may have no choice.
The box office is surging -- on pace for a record-bursting $10-billion haul in 2009. And a sizeable chunk of that is from 3D productions, which have raked in $1.3-billion worldwide -- more than triple the amount grossed by 3D films in 2008.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs alone gobbled up more than $800-million worldwide, Pixar's Up more than $600 million.
And this was before the release of Avatar, which should play robustly for months to come.
However, if the film -- about a disabled marine who becomes embroiled in an interplanetary war between monstrous humans and noble aliens -- is new, the concept of 3D-as-savior isn't.
In the 1950s, terrified by the threat of television, the studios dreamed up the format as a cure-all for movie theatres.
Instead 3D collapsed under the weight of dorky cardboard glasses and nausea-inducing effects.
Now half-a-century later, the industry's motivation may be similar -- attracting audiences away from video games and social-networking sites -- but the result promises to be dramatically different. (Ironically, this happens just as manufacturers are set to introduce the first wave of 3D-capable TVs.)
Gone are the headaches, the grab-at-you gags and, yes, the flimsy glasses.
Rather, Cameron's incandescent fantasy submerges them into a computer-generated spectacle that if not quite photo-real -- feels hyper-real.
"I think up until now, every filmmaker who has made a 3D film has felt it incumbent upon them to constantly remind you you're watching a 3D movie by having things come out on to the viewer's face," he says.
"We approached it as if it were a window or a portal into a reality. And that window sits at some comfortable distance from you ... We didn't look for opportunities to constantly exercise our 3D muscle."
In fact, he stresses the quality of the 2D print, realizing that to recoup its enormous cost, Avatar must entertain audiences on 2D, RealD 3D and 3D IMAX screens.
"We're very proud of the 2D version we put out. We make it a film first and the 3D is added value.
"And we make sure the 3D compositions don't compromise the viewing of the film in 2D.
"In some 3D movies, you watch them in 2D and there's a shot of a spear sticking out that they hold on for 10 seconds.
"It's all kinds of fun in 3D, but in 2D it looks like the stupidest edit in the world."
