Saw Coraline today — what an amazing film! Director Henry Selick and team did an incredible job adapting Gaiman’s book — a glisterbox of awe and wonder, scares and laughs. The jumping mice, the wuss puss cat, the oddball neighbors and especially Coraline herself… they’re all animated with such loving detail. I can’t recommend it enough.
Then I left the theater, looking for a place to deposit my 3D glasses, and the theater attendant says, “just throw them in the trash.” Really? For reals? These thick, easily reusable glasses (that came sealed sealed in a plastic baggy) were intended for one-time use? Suddenly, my perfect matinee movie had a dark tint to it.
As movie studios and theaters scramble for new ways to bring people into the theater to compete with DVDs and dowloads, 3D is in the beginning of a major comeback. Up until now it’s been something of a novelty with only about 1,000 screens using it. That’s going to tick upwards in a big way as Pixar, Dreamworks, James Cameron, Tim Burton and the Jonas Brothers make the jump to 3D. Toy Story‘s being rereleased in 3D, so might be Star Wars. Cool right? Not if each of those tickets equals a pair of disposable glasses!
A Pixar movie is guaranteed to sell upwards of 20 million tickets. Even if just a quarter of those are 3D, that’s millions of pairs of plastic glasses just for the novelty of 3D. Sure, Coraline convinced me that 3D can be used artfully for more than the in-your-face effects of the past efforts I’ve seen, but I cannot in good conscience justify that extra waste for the effect. Maybe the throw-away mandate was just for my theater. Can anyone else testify to having a theater collect used glasses? Is the only way to deal with a hygiene-obsessed culture’s needs to deliver millions of pairs of disposable glasses on what now looks to be a monthly basis? If 3D with disposable glasses is here to stay, I hope people will take it upon themselves to keep the glasses and take them with them to future shows, forgoing that factory-sealed pair. Free or not, we’re all paying for it.
