Telling it like it is

So in an effort to give 3D a fair shake of the stick, I went to see Avatar again today, this time in RealD instead of Dolby3D. Well what can I say? Firstly, Dolby3D sucks donkey balls so badly they should just give up. Compared to the dull, dim, dreary, nausea-inducing vomit-fest that I tried to watch on Sunday, Avatar in RealD is stunning. It's bright, over-colourful, punchy and the 3D effect is a good 100 times better than the Dolby attempt. What a difference. I couldn't believe it. I was able to make out detail like the rainbow heat sheen on the spaceship exhausts, and the veins in the feathers in the Navi headdresses. On Sunday I could barely tell they were wearing anything it was so bad. The cinema experience? So-so. There can't have been more than 20 people in the cinema, and there were no kids which was excellent. The projection system - not so much. This one took a dump twice. Actually 5 times if you include the 3 short blackouts. But the two long ones totally prob...

So after talking to a bunch of colleagues this morning, it turns out there's a reason Avatar looked so appalling last night. The cinema we went to uses Dolby 3D, not Real-D. Dolby's version is the cheapskate "retrofit your old projector" version of 3D that uses wavelength interference (read: colour reduction) instead of circular polarisation. In short - we got royally screwed. Larry Miller cheaped out and is probably using 4 year old projectors with 4 year old bulbs. It explains the crushing eye strain, the differences in reflections on metal surfaces between the left and right eyes, and the abysmal lack of colour in the film. It explains why people describe Pandora as vibrant and colourful, and why we saw a dull, lifeless, almost grey world. It explains why the picture we saw was not bright - the Dolby 3D glasses cut down so much light that it's like wearing sunglasses indoors. The Real-D versions are almost transparent in comparison. That's pissed me off.

For 6 years now we've not been to the cinema, mostly because I'd prefer to have my gonads sawed off with a blunt, rusty knife than put up with the abomination that is the "cinema experience" now. But the clamour over Avatar has been huge. Every one of our friends - even the non science-fiction types - has been to see it and kept going on at us about how it was the best thing ever. My wife wanted to see it in 3D too, so I finally caved and picked up a pair of tickets to go and see it last night at the Megaplex 12 at the Gateway. Where to start? Well the 3D I suppose. The end result was that I felt like I'd been punched in the eyes by Mike Tyson - although I seem to be a lone voice in the wilderness on this one. It was dark and murky and drained of colour - like the projectors had 40W bulbs in them - probably because we were looking through mirrored, polarised sunglasses to watch the film. You could see what a lush, bright, colourful world Pandora was supposed to b...