For 3D haters out there, here’s more fuel for your fire. We recently reported that Guillermo Del Toro had to make a 3D conversion for his next movie, Pacific Rim.
Initially he was against it, and didn’t feel the format was right for the film, but 3D is a crucial element for movies today, or you can’t get play dates in China.
Apparently, JJ Abrams was faced with the same conundrum with Star Trek Into Darkness. Like Del Toro, Abrams wasn’t nuts about making the movie in 3D either, but he recently told Collider that Paramount wouldn’t make the movie unless it was in 3D.
As Abrams recalled, “The studio said, ‘You have to make it in 3D if you’re going to make it, for economic reasons. But my feeling was I didn’t like 3D. So the idea of doing Star Trek in 3D as ridiculous.”
At the same time, working in a format he wasn’t nuts about, much like Abrams wasn’t a Trekkie when he came aboard the series, helped the film.
Where Abrams originally “approached it very cynically,” he added, “The fact is that we’ve been using techniques that haven’t been used before in 3D.” The team working on the new Trek “figured out things. They’ve made enough movies now with this new process that they can understand ways to eliminate some of these problems.”
The problems Abrams is referring to are the main reasons he didn’t want to work in 3D in the first place. “I have trouble with 3D sometimes. I can’t see it right; I get a headache; it annoys me; I hate the glasses; I hate the fact that things get so dim.” But making the film in 3D made Abrams “a believer, whereas before I was really against it.”
Thankfully you can see Star Trek Into Darkness in any format you want when it’s ready on May 17, whether it be 2D, 3D, or Imax 3D. (No 48 frames per second, thank God).
Collider also tells us that Abrams shot the movie he wanted to make in 2D, and the 3D won’t take away from the story. If it can be even cooler icing on the cake, especially when giving more depth to space and the vastness of the Enterprise, even better.
