The Projector #18: In Glorious 3-D! (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

This week I want to throw out a question and hope everyone will chime in in the comments: I was listening to the podcast Blank Check with Griffin and David this morning and co-host Griffin Newman chimed in with the observation that the movie Crawl should have been in 3-D. My knee-jerk reaction was to reject the idea because I never find myself wishing any movie was in 3-D. But Newman’s comment made more sense the more i thought about it. Which got me thinking: Is it possible for 3-D to make a comment?

A couple of things up front: Yes, 3-D is still around. It remains an option for many blockbuster releases, especially those with a younger audience. This year alone you could see everything from The Lion King to Captain Marvel in 3-D and coming up you’ll have that option for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Spies in Disguise. But will you take it? I now only end up in 3-D movies if the standard option is unavailable, and even then I can’t remember the last time one made an impression on me. I think I saw Men in Black: International in 3-D, but my memory of that is pretty hazy. (To be fair, the movie might be to blame there.)

The reasons for 3-D’s decline have been well documented. Moviegoers grew tired of rushed post-conversion jobs and tired of the higher ticket price as studios tried to cash in on the revived format, which had been put to some genuinely innovative uses in films like Avatar and Coraline. But when it was put to good use it could be quite memorable. The Avatar sequels, which James Cameron has promised will make “sumptuous” use of 3-D might help give the format another jolt, but it feels like there’s an opening for a different sort of film to see what the format can do. In other words, we know Cameron will make good use of the format but it seems unlikely it will depart radically from what he’s done before.

Enter Crawl. Well, not Crawl. That’s already been made. And if you like tight, tense thrillers and/or alligator movies, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s fun. But it feels like there’s room for 3-D on a more intimately scaled film to see if it can, say, be used to create a sense of claustrophobia or enhance a drawing-room drama or do something on a smaller scale with the format. We’ve seen it used for explosions and flight, but can a narrative film use it for other purposes? Both Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders have tried it out for documentaries. Will someone find ways to do the same for storytelling? Or are we done? Do even want that anymore?

Let’s let that question linger. Here are a few recent articles worth your time.

For The Washington Post, Monica Castillo considers the career of the late Walter Mercado.

For Vulture, our own Scott Tobias attempts to rank Noah Baumbach movies.

And if that’s not enough ranking for you, Keith Phipps attempts the same for Martin Scorsese at Uproxx.

At Vulture, Allison Wilmore discusses Shia LaBeouf’s autobiographical/therapeutic Honey Boy.

At MUBI, Adrian Curry picks the best movie posters of the 2010s.

For Musings, Alice Stoehr takes a fresh look at Hitchcock’s Rope.

And at The New Yorker, Michael Chabon pays a dual tribute to his father and to Star Trek.