3D has been done to death and it’s no longer a novelty. By the time James Cameron is done with it, we’ll probably all be sick of it. So Hollywood is in need of a new gimmick and here it is: simulated motion!
Ten select theaters across America will be equipped with special motion seats during showings of Sherlock Holmes. The seats will simulate the action during the movie, though they’ll remain motionless during dialogue driven moments.
This is a gimmick which has been tried before and, frankly, never really took off. This time they’re using a system called D-Box Motion Code, which embeds cues in the frames of the film to perfectly synchronize whatever it is their seats decide to do with whatever’s happening on screen. They’ve even started embedding these codes in some Blu-Ray discs, just in case you want to be annoyed while you watch a movie in your own home.
Because let’s face it: This is going to suck. This is Sherlock Holmes, not a roller coaster. No matter what sort of hijinks they manage to gimmick into the seats there’s no way they’ll approximate in any way anything that’s happening on screen. Maybe if this were a movie about fighter pilots the seats could sway and jerk around to simulate the motion of a fighter plane but how exactly will a seat simulate the motion of Sherlock Holmes being punched in the face? Because really, that’s about all the action this movie is capable of offering. I’m not complaining mind you, I’m looking forward to it, but unless a boxing glove pops out of the arm and pops me in the nose when Watson smacks Holmes around in that carriage I can’t think of any reason I’d want to endure having my seat wired for excitement.
At best it’s just another fire hazard at worst a great way to ruin a potentially good movie. Doesn’t anybody just want to sit the fuck down and watch a movie anymore? I’ve had it with the 3D glasses and the ever-growing assortment of alcoholic beverages and fully cooked snack items that now seem to crowd their way into every theater. Give me a goddamn bucket of popcorn and leave me alone so I can relax watch Sherlock Holmes without worrying about adjusting something on my nose or wondering when the waiter will deliver the check or spilling coke all over myself because my seat just decided that the best way to simulate Sherlock’s mastery of the martial arts was to leap 5 feet up in the air and skew slightly to the left. No thanks.
As soon as they publish the list of theaters where this bullshit will happen, we’ll publish it, so you can avoid them. Keep checking back to see me bitch about this, yet again. It’ll happen.
