JulesVerne Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you paid good money to see Jaws 3-D, Friday the 13th Part 3 (in 3-D) and The Man Who Wasn't There (the Steve Guttenberg 1983 version in 3-D) during their original theatrical runs, as I did, then you might understand why I've been so reluctant to board the new 3-D bandwagon.Those were awful movies and terrible 3-D experiences: ghost images everywhere, red/blue mix-ups, and constantly shifting focus. The stupid little 3-D paper "viewers" never fit correctly over my own prescription eyeglasses. Instead of inducing a sense of wonder, those movies made my stomach queasy.

But everyone says the new technology is markedly better, and I'm even more optimistic after reading Christopher Campbell's recent column on the wonders of Journey to the Center of the Earth in digital 3-D. I plan to see for myself this weekend, and in anticipation, I started dreaming about other movies that might really benefit from 3-D done right. To keep the list from becoming endless, the seven below could all be considered future cousins of Journey, adventures involving travel through time, place and/or space. All are proposed sequels or remakes or adaptations of published works, and, alas, all must be considered dream projects, at least as far as 3-D is concerned.

Put on your 3-D glasses before jumping onward to my choices, and please share your dreams in the comments.

I honestly didn't even know we were still making movies in 3-D. I mean, I enjoy putting on the glasses and watching old westerns in 3-D as much as the next Film Forum lover, but that's enjoyable because it's a weird novelty, not because I actually think movies are improved by the illusion of things flying out at me. This is an honest question -- do audiences really want to see stuff in 3-D? Beyond the novelty factor, what's appealing about it? Help me out here.

While I'm wasting time asking stupid questions, the ubiquitous Walden Media and their friends at New Line are busy updating and 3-D-ing the crap out of Journey to the Center of the Earth -- only, in an effort to appeal the very busy, non-reading kids of today, they're calling it Journey 3-D. (I'm not actually sure this really counts as a remake -- it's more of an additional adaptation than it is a riff on a specific film.) The screenplay was written by D.V. DeVincentis (he wrote both High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank, which makes this sound like it could be a lot smarter than you'd expect), and Link Brendan Fraser will produce and star as "a geologist who, with his teenage son, discovers a message hidden in an ancient artifact, leading them into a previously unseen world." Did you catch that? A teenage son?! Brendan Fraser, screen dad of the characters he used to play. Holy crap do I feel old.