The problem with that 3D craze was that it was implemented entirely because James Cameron wanted it. All of the technical innovations and infrastructure costs were implemented for Avatar, and all of the subsequent movies and consumer facing products were just there to try and recoup some value from these (probably bad) investments that were made for just this one film. It lasted only as long as it took people to realise that general enthusiasm for 3D movies wasn’t very strong in the broader market of all people other than James Cameron.
That’s an interesting alternative history but not really connected to our world.
There were 3D movies before Cameron was born. It’s been an ongoing cycle in movies, largely driven by the fact that the experience can be better, but it can also be neutral or worse, and the core of the art form is storytelling.
Cameron showed how to use 3D to support storytelling rather than distract, but these was no conspiracy to “recoup investments” — there were just imitators who didn’t put the work in to get it right, and manufacturers who were selling shovels and expected a gold rush that never appeared.
Our economy, and trends in the movie business are not centrally planned the way you imagine. Nobody says “AMC invested in 3D projection, so MGM should invest in 3D production, so this film that’s in development should be shot in 3D”. It doesn’t work that way.
I’m not suggesting it was centrally planned, but you’re massively underselling James Cameron’s role in this.
For starters the 3D cinematography technology created specifically for Avatar was legitimately innovative and better than anything in the past (though still a terrible experience imo).
When Avatar was in production barely any cinemas had the projectors to screen it, and most of them had a big and expensive rush to upgrade for Avatar
> In the UK alone, only around 320 out of 3,600 cinemas are digitally equipped, while in the US the ratio is even worse (2,500 out of 38,000). "So there is a big problem looming," admits Peter Buckingham, head of distribution and exhibition at the UK Film Council. "You are looking at about a minimum of £80,000 to get yourself into a 3D position. Even with the hike in ticket prices and the potential hike in audiences, that's quite a stretch for the smaller venues. The danger is that, in this digital switchover, a number of cinemas may well be left behind."
I vividly remember this at the time, and the huge amount of FOMO coverage of stories about whether your local cinema would be able to play 3D Avatar. Obviously none of this would have happened without the expectation that a wave of new 3D movies were about to be released.
The direct results of James Cameron wanting to make cool new 3D technology for Avatar was an immediate (and permanent) increase in ticket prices at the cinema, and 10 years of awful 3D movie screenings from cinema desperately trying to claw back the money they wasted on it.
This is obviously an emotional topic for you, and it is distorting your view of how incentives and commerce work. Your view is akin to the archaic supply-side views on drugs or taxes.
Consumers don't buy screening rights from movie distributors, cinemas do, and Avatar generated years worth of demand from Cinemas to get a return on the expenses they incurred from screening it. Consumers never had any substantial level of demand for this product, and it took years for the industry to correct for this mistake. You are the one who is trying to rewrite history by claiming James Cameron and his movie Avatar weren't responsible for all of this.
> all of the subsequent movies and consumer facing products were just there to try and recoup some value from these (probably bad) investments that were made for just this one film.
Interesting. First time I've heard it mentioned that way.
My viewpoint at the time was that the 3d craze in tvs' was more due to manufacturers looking for the next big thing to compete with each other, and Avatar had come out recently and was doing well. Thus "let's add 3d" and every other kitchen sink / feature they could find. Thus smart tv's now, etc.
Television manufacturers are constantly looking for a premium feature, since the profits are so slim on the lower end.
3D was one such feature, but had a benefit for non-3D movies in that it needed significantly more backlighting for active glasses to not give an overly dim experience.
3D was also odd in that normally such features get adopted first by a higher tier "early adopter" market - but because of Avatar and other family friendly 3D content, it was generally purchased by families. Perhaps its biggest early negative was expensive active glasses handed to young children.
HDR was another, but is somewhat spoiled by the lack of any good certifications/branding. Anything which can _process_ a HDR signal will be sold as a HDR television.
Curved was so weird to me, but that is because I always mount my televisions. Curved was a byproduct of the processes allowing for it. Since the curve has a fixed radius, it does lock you into a viewing distance 'range' that isn't always going to work for people.
4K was yet another, and partly what pushed 3D out in the US market. Active 3D also had a hard time with pixel ghosting - each frame was different from the previous.
Smart TVs are a different approach - sell advertisement and premium channels, I suspect in the future even put services like Uber Eats on TVs, all for secondary revenue channels to make up for how tight the primary sales channel is.
I think the whole thing stems from a need to do something with all the expensive 3D camera technology that Cameron had developed, and all of the expensive 3D projectors (and even more expensive 3D imax projectors) that all the cinemas had to buy for Avatar. Whether the TV manufacturers were just jumping on the perceived hype I don’t know. But as may be obvious I have a lot of contempt personally for James Cameron for inflicting this horrible technology on the world for around a decade.
I see you’re making a lot of points on this post, but I did some quick reading and it seems like you might have some facts wrong. Maybe this is because you’re reading a hype article from 2009 published just 1 day before Avatar was released in theaters and also relying on your memory versus reading a 10+ year retrospective article. I’m not saying that Cameron and Avatar did zilch for 3D in the film industry. I’m saying that some of your justifications about the level and ways of impact might not be accurate.
For example, you keep saying that a lot of theaters had to buy expensive projectors for Avatar. However, the article you linked to does not imply this. Sure, I imagine some theaters did buy digital projectors in time for the premiere. But all the article says is that many theaters didn’t have digital projectors even just 1 day before Avatar’s release. So no, most theaters weren’t buying digital projectors and 3D glasses specifically for Avatar. They couldn’t have. They bought them afterwards for all of the _expected _ future 3D movies. The retrospective article I mentioned above explicitly states this.
Also, the statistics used in your article are a bit misleading. Sure lots of cinemas around the world did not have digital projectors at the time, BUT the _big_ ones (that serve millions of consumers versus hundreds or thousands per year) did have digital projectors.
Also, for example, you keep saying that studios “needed to do something” with Cameron’s 3D technology since it was expensive to develop. However, this is not true at all. Only Cameron used his technology. Most of the films released after Avatar weren’t even shot in 3D. They were shot in 2D and then converted to 3D which led to poor viewing experiences.
Avatar’s influence on the 3D industry seems less direct than you’re making it seem.
Here’s the 2022 retrospective article titled “What James Cameron and ‘Avatar’ Did (and Didn’t Do) for 3D filmmaking”:
I'll die on the hill that James Camerson was also just plain wrong. Multiple scenes in Avatar are done in ways which either fail to take advantage of 3D, or are shot in a way which plays right into it's weaknesses.
Cameron shot his movie in 3D. Most other movies tried to jump on the bandwagon of 3D after being produced as a traditional 2D movie. They were instead converted to 3D in post.
