Batman 3 in 3D? Don't hold your breath

Posted Monday, June 14, 2010 at 3:16 PM Central

by John Couture

If you've read my stuff for any length of time, you know that when it comes to Kevin Smith and Christopher Nolan, me level of geekdom knows no bounds. So, when I heard that Nolan had made some comments about 3D film making to the Hero Complex Film Festival, I had to scour the interwebs until I found them.

Thankfully, the Los Angeles Times, which sponsored the film festival, had a nice writeup today that included Nolan's comments.

"I'm not a huge fan of 3-D. The truth of it is when you watch a film in here, you're looking at 16 foot-lamberts, When you watch through any of the conventional 3-D processes you're giving up three foot-lamberts. A massive difference. You're not that aware of it because once you're 'in that world,' your eye compensates, but having struggled for years to get theaters get up to the proper brightness, we're not sticking polarized filters in everything."

Nolan furthered explained, "It's all based on all the visual-effects technology, you know, that we're currently most engaged in with match moving, so forth, and rendering 2-D imagery into a 3-D space. ... On a technical level, it's fascinating, but on an experiential level, I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating."

I knew there was a reason that I loved Christopher Nolan. I couldn't agree with him more, of course, just from a much less technical standpoint. I don't like watching movies in 3d *gasp* (although again, not a surprise for longtime readers). I just find the whole experience to be off-putting and distracting.

To Nolan's point, I never really thought about it, but I have noticed that 3D movies tend to be dimmer than their counterparts. Of course, since I don't compare the same movies to one another (movies in theaters are expensive enough to see once, let alone twice), I just never noticed it before.

While Nolan is against 3D in general and filming his movies in particular in the latest Hollywood craze, he relented that he would relent to the desires of the audience and studio. "Well, let me put it this way: There is no question if audiences want to watch films in stereoscopic imaging, that's what the studios will be doing, and that's what I'll be doing."

Haven't we censored our creative geniuses enough? I say if Nolan wants to present us his vision of Batman 3 in 2D, who are we to complain? I mean it's not like he's let us down thus far.

What do you all think about 3D films in general and whether Batman 3 should be in 3D or not?