It’s a little sad, but also strangely fitting, to hear that Michael Jackson’s Thriller is finally getting a 3D transformation.
Yes, the 14-minute video for the title track of the late superstar’s biggest album has entered the third dimension, 34 years after it debuted as a global TV phenomenon.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller 3D will premiere later this month at the Venice Film Festival, along with the companion doc Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. (Don’t be surprised if both films also show up at TIFF next month, although there’s been no announcement to that effect.)
Talk about being late to the party! Announcing that you’re making a 3D version of a 2D film in 2017 is about as cutting edge as a butter knife. You could hear the yawns from here to Venice.
This is a sad thing to say, because the video used to be the coolest of the cool. Michael Jackson’s Thriller bowed to raves in 1983, with critics applauding not just Jackson’s singing and dancing — backed by a horde of choreographed zombies — but also director John Landis’ treatment of it as a tiny perfect film, rather than another disposable pop video.
I remember attending a friend’s party the night the video premiered on TV. At the appointed hour, we all stopped to watch the video’s premiere and then to rewatch it again and again — my friend had taped it on VHS.
The video went on to win a Grammy award and other kudos. It looked like the future of videos and film. Now it just looks like the past for 3D.
The plain fact is that the 3D fad is over, done, dead, even if Hollywood hasn’t fully admitted it yet — although moviegoers have. New figures by the Motion Picture Association of America show an 8 per cent drop in tickets sold to 3D films in the past year, despite the fact a record 68 movies in 3D were released. Moviegoers are voting with their wallets.
One of the summer’s biggest films, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, is viewable only in 2D format. It will be the same “flat” reality for Blade Runner 2049, the Denis Villeneuve film that is one of the fall’s most-anticipated blockbusters. And Imax Entertainment recently announced that it will be cutting back on screenings of 3D films, after disappointing box office for such non-attractions as The Mummy and Transformers: The Last Knight.
Expect other industry players to soon follow suit. And ask yourself this: When was the last time you willingly ponied up several extra dollars for the pleasure of wearing a pair of plastic goggles to watch a movie made darker and less distinct by 3D?
For many people, it would be about seven or eight years ago, when Avatar and Alice in Wonderland were heralding a new era of 3D, reviving a format that had been tried and rejected decades earlier, during the supposed “golden era” of 3D in the 1950s.
The revival never really caught on, in large part because many theatres wouldn’t commit to using the brighter (and more expensive) bulbs needed to properly project 3D. And forget about 3D TV, which even fewer people went in for. Who wants to wear plastic goggles in their living room?
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve thought 3D added anything of value to a film viewing.
It’s time for 3D to just go away again, as quietly as it did before, while we figure out if virtual reality and holograms really are the Next Big Thing.
But here’s the strangely fitting thing about Michael Jackson’s Thriller 3D. It’s a video about zombies dancing in a graveyard along with Jackson, a.k.a. the King of Pop.
They’re the walking and dancing undead, although they don’t really know it. Which is exactly where 3D is right now.
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2017/08/10/the-thrill-is-gone-for-3d-movies-howell.html