Movies: Yet another D

Where are we going with movies, one has to ask. Reading 4-D Coming Soon to a Theater Near You forces you to question what movies are supposed to be. I am all in favor of the sensory overload theme park attraction. I like the smells and the motion and the splashing and whatnot, but these are in aid of a very specific experience, to wit, creating a “real life” version of something. A ride like Star Tours gives you the experience of flying through the Star Wars universe. Spiderman allows you to get thrown off a building. MuppetVision tosses you into the middle of the mayhem of the Muppet universe. I love all of these. But I love them for what they are, theme park attractions. The question is, at what point do I want my movies not to spawn theme park attractions but to actually become theme park attractions?

So, then, what are movies supposed to be? After all, the genesis of the medium is definitely in the area of attraction, when movies were short and shown at nickleodeons, when projected movies were still a novelty. But over time, the novelty wore off. Just the sight of people moving around on-screen wasn’t enough. As more and more talented people got into creating movies, films took on a certain form, and audiences developed certain expectations. Allowing for experimental variations, what we ended up with was a narrative form that had the ability to transcend its medium. That is, like any artistic experience, movies had the ability to go beyond being a movie into something that could change your way of seeing the world, your understanding of yourself and others, and the very way your lived. That is what the best art does.

Of course, movies (and a lot of other art) is also commerce, and the vast majority of films set out mostly to entertain and therefore make a buck. There's nothing wrong with that. Book publishing has a similar history. For every author who wants to change the world (say, James Joyce), there are many more authors who simply want to tell good stories. In book publishing, the tradition was that the latter, with their commercial success, enabled the former, although that is becoming less true in the e-book publishing world of the present. Movies, of course, cost a lot more to produce than a book, and take a lot more people. So the idea that a movie can be art becomes a difficult but not impossible one. That there are movies that can be defined as art proves the point. That a movie that can be defined as art can also be commercially successful is a happy albeit rare coincidence.

What happens when we watch a movie? We transcend the experience of being in a theater and looking at a screen, and the film takes on an inner reality in our minds. And the thing is, this is true for movies beginning in the mid 1920s, when they were still silent and black-and-white. It’s just like being engrossed in a book. You are taken away. You are transported. You are there in this other reality. And there is a chance, however slim, that this other reality might leave you changed in some way.

Movies have never stopped becoming technically improved. Film stock got better and color became possible, sound was enabled—those were big. Smaller innovations like Steadicams, computer aided effects and the like enabled more possibilities. For what it’s worth, digital recording seems to be the coming thing (although there are plenty of people who prefer the warmth of film). There are a lot of ways the process of filmmaking has developed over the years. But the point remained the same, to create that experience where the viewer was brought into a new world, for whatever that world might yield.

And here’s the problem, as far as 3D (or heaven forbid, 4D) is concerned. At what point are we looking at the effects for the effects’ sake, rather than for the enabling of the artistic or even just the narrative experience? If silent black-and-white movies made in the 20s (watch The Big Parade or The Goldrush or The Thief of Bagdad) already were capable of enabling this experience, everything that follows simply adjusts for technical evolution. But if we put the technical evolution processes ahead of the innate film experience, we’re getting it all backwards. We won’t be evaluating movies by how they touched our souls, but how they shook our booty!

And I’m sorry, but that is not how I want to evaluate movies. Yes, I want to see them in movie theaters, and yes, I want to see them as their creators made them. But if the film requires total sensory commitment using mechanical devices, rather than enabling total sensory commitment without the need of mechanical devices, then I’m sorry, but it’s nothing but an overlong thrill ride. And while I have nothing against thrill rides, as I said, at the point where they replace movies, then they’re a problem. All this nonsense about 3D and 4D and the like, with its potential commercial possibilities, also has the potential of driving out regular movies that don’t rely on cheap tricks to do the job. And if you ask me, that’s what all of this stuff is: cheap tricks.

How many times to I have to go smash with the Hulk, in 4D with my chair shaking and my brain tearing loose from my skull because of the noise ripping through it, before I start to think, oh, gee, here we go again smashing with the Hulk? We will enter a world where every movie is a sequel.

Who needs that?

Then again, I could be totally wrong, and maybe the future of movies is, indeed, total sensory control. Maybe it's just where the movies have been going all along.

In that case, get off my lawn.
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