I certainly not one of those people that says, "back in my day...", but this is something way over overdue. I own an HD set. Huge, even, at 52 inches, and I look upon this mammoth sized shiny piece of hugeness, I still bitch and moan that it's not 120hz. I'm that much of a tech geek, and the thing serves not only as a testament to how manly I am, but also how often I have friends playing offline multiplayer games. And at 1080p, the set is finally good enough to serve as a PC monitor, making the terabytes of porn on my computer absolutely worth it.
It is undeniably awesome, but it is too much?
It really isn't a question about quality, so you can't flame me for complaining about that. A few films these days have a different look about them, and the future is clear. More details, more realistic special effects, and a much cleaner appearance made the manufactured HDTV symbol a shiny, must-have label for millions of Americans these past couple of years. Watching 300 in that the best quality is a terrific experience, and the Blu-Ray translation of Blade Runner is arguably the best thank-you note to sci-fi fans ever. On the next couple of years, film-making will undergo a massive format change on numerous levels. 3-D will have been noted as a great idea done years too soon (again), the web community will make its first real stab into the studios, and the digital shift will be all but through.
3-D is a gimmick, another test run for an idea used to for cheap cash as novelty. It's no secret that this is a format that cannot last, no matter how good it looks now, because it's not good enough to stick around and moviegoers are going to see it for what it is. It's not a bad idea, but it's clearly not "done", and the last time the industry gave something this radical a shot was when Jason was only just failing as a cool movie character. The quality in technology has gone up, so 3-D movies as we know it won't die out immediately, but the overall rise in every film will let everyone know how much more 3-D could be giving them. It will die, but only until the cost of the stereoscopic method has been made to cost $15. You think they won't charge you that much? They will. Even by then, a much cheaper method may be conceived that could surpass that or ditch the glasses altogether, and then the 10 year cycle begins again only in the name of ditching the glasses.
Fans are also getting very creative about content available for cheap, or nothing at all, on the web. IGN put out a fake movie trailer for Zelda. Content like Homestar Runner, Red vs. Blue, Zero Punctuation, The Spoony Experiment, the Nostalgia Critic, Mayne Street, and Hulu exist. Magazined have shifted to reputable websites that emulate their purpose, only much more annotated in the name of convenience. It's all for free. and I've already stumbled across a few websites that I've turned to as weekly rituals, just as Lost is to some people. The eventual replacement is getting closer. Bandwidths are only going to get higher, as well as the ability for the average talented person to try their shot.
The most important factor, however, is the film format as a prop. A tangible object, the film format is only a step away from being outed as the elephant in the room. If the quality in film needs to be higher, then there's only one place left to go in order to make the transition [possible. Someone else will complain about it later, but I will first. I'm siding with celluloid in the coming war.
At least, I am going to ask that it be spared. When the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out in theatres, I became a little confused about how I felt about the special effects used to render the gigantic creatures that needed to be in Tolkien's epic. At first, I was struck with how it managed to work without intruding on immersion. Those were good effects by our standards, and Peter Jackson should be lauded as a director that managed to bring believably to a world of fake. Which brings me to my second point. Everything in that movie was obviously CG, and there was something wrong going on. No matter how good the creations were, they contrasted the real actors and objects because they weren't tangible. Watching the DVD, I wanted to record it onto a tape at medium quality and watch it again just so I could see the movie as an old classic. Why? To make it blend.
So while technology soars forward, should we really be ditching a tangible format that we consider obsolete? No, because it's not. We've all seen what happens when a better "quality" format takes the place of film. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull proves this, as the film "grunge" that made the real trilogy so great just disappeared. There's something about the grainy image we see on screens that turn ideas into art. Would the upgrade have worked for Independence Day? Of course. Now think about Willow, Star Wars, The Princess Bride, and other classics that we saw even before the idea of going digital was first thought up. These films wouldn't look right and an "upgrade" would only serve to disrupt any immersion the audience might have.
It's not random thought, it's the truth. The prop of actual film is dying out, and it's time to start paying attention to what that medium has to offer before it goes away for good.
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