I’ve been a big supporter of IMAX 3-D for awhile now. It really is, hands down, the best way to watch a movie. Though to be honest, it’s due in larger part to the unbeatable, premium sound systems found in IMAX theaters than it is to the 3-D element. Big, booming, pitch perfect sound does more to add depth to a great film than any amount of three-dimensional trickery can. The problem isn’t the 3-D technology they use, it’s simply that most of the big-budget Hollywood movies using it add the 3-D element to their films more as an afterthought. None of these movies are really shot with 3-D in mind and usually, only a few minutes of the film are actually in 3-D. What we need is a big budget, Hollywood film specifically designed with 3-D theaters in mind. That’s really the only way the format is going to go anywhere. James Cameron promises that’s what will get with his next movie Avatar, but until then we may have a slightly lower-tech option.
The Hollywood Reporter says that New Line and Walden Media are planning to remake the classic sci-fi adventure film Journey to the Center of the Earth. On its own, that’s not every exciting. It’s been remade before, and there have been lots of other film adaptations of the original Jules Verne novel as well. What makes this one different is that the film is being designed specifically to be shown on Real-D’s digital 3-D screens. They’re calling it Journey 3-D.
The first question I had was: What is Real D? We all know about IMAX 3-D, but Real D hasn’t gotten much publicity. Apparently they’re an IMAX 3-D competitor. It’s a little bit newer technology, one which can project both 2D and 3D using a single digital projector and a special liquid-crystal screen placed in front of the projector to polarize the pictures. The effect is supposed to be fairly similar to the one you get from IMAX 3-D, only a little bit better.
Journey 3-D will use the special cameras James Cameron developed to shoot his 3-D documentaries Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. If you saw either of those in a 3-D theater, then you know what a different experience it is than the three or four minutes of 3-D you get in movies like, say, Superman Returns. It’s really impressive. Imagine how much more impressive it will be on a real feature film, and not just an underwater documentary.
Make no mistake either, this isn’t another boring 3-D nature documentary or 3-D gimmick movie. This is a real movie. Brendan Fraser is starring along with Bridge to Terabithia child star Josh Hutcherson. The movie will stick to the fantastical Jules Verne story used in the previous Journey movies, with a scientist, his nephew, and a mountain guide discovering a lost world inside the Earth.
We have a long wait till James Cameron’s 3-D tech pushing, big budget sci-fi movie Avatar finally comes along. This might be a little taste of what we can expect from it. Journey 3-D should beat it to theaters, right now the film has a summer 2008 release date. It sounds like it will only be released on Real D screens, but since they’re can’t be that many of those, perhaps they’ll also release an inferior 2-D version to other theaters. Real D though, seems like the way to see it.
