(Insert stupid 3-D here)
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
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(Addendum: The 3-D I'm referring to is stereoscopic 3-D, rather than 3-D computer graphics - although this is a CG film.)
About six weeks after its release, I finally managed to get out and see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs this week. Anymore, it's pretty surprising to still find a movie in the theaters after that length of time; more surprising was that the movie was still in a first-run, digital 3-D theater. Having largely avoided 3-D after that whole sordid Chicken Little affair, I decided to give the film a shot in 3-D, rather than boring old, pedestrian 2-D. So, after paying the extra three bucks for the privilege, myself and the seven or so other patrons in the audience donned our goofy-looking specs and buckled-in for the adventure. (That would be figuratively buckled-in, as there were no actual seat-belts in the theater. Probably some sort of fire ordinance... spoil-sports.)
The 3-D itself generally worked pretty well. A few of the movie trailers were in 3-D too, which was nice since it gave you a little time to adjust to the effect. Where it didn't work very well were places where there was motion blur, or cross-dissolves (where one scene fades into another). The motion blur, and indeed any fast moving objects, are harder to see clearly in 3-D than in 2-D. Exactly why this is the case is lost on me, but I suspect it has to do with the frame rate of film (24 frames per second), and how we're used to actually perceiving real-world motion with depth-perception. 24 frames per second is pretty minimal for moving images as it is. The brain is using persistence of vision to assemble the still images into something we recognize as movement. The more frames per second used for film, the smoother and more believable the resulting movement is, since it's closer to what we're used to seeing in real life. When you're asking the brain to reassemble fake movement and fake depth perception using a bare minimum of acceptable information, then it isn't always going to work well. The faster something moves on film, the worse it looks because you have fewer frames (and therefore less visual information) to put the picture back together.
I got the opportunity to see a Showscan demo once. This was a new film format that special effects wizard Doug Trumbull created originally for the movie Brainstorm. It utilized a large format film stock run at 60 frames per second, resulting in the most immersive, realistic film experience I'd ever seen. Far more than even IMAX, which again is hampered by its lower frame rate. Higher frame rates have never been adopted because of the cost involved - both the extra film stock required, but also the need to retrofit or outright replace older projectors. However, film projectors are now being replaced with digital ones, and film is going by the wayside in favor of digital formats, so it's possible that at some point higher frame rates may become adopted by movie studios. I sure hope so.
Oh, and the reason cross-dissolves have problems? Well, if you're dissolving from one scene with a particular depth-of-field to a completely different one, the end result is that everything tends to flatten out. My guess is this is either because your brain can't figure out what to do with four sets of depth information (when both scenes are onscreen), or the 3-D effect itself is lessened as each scene is dissolved because there is less information available for your brain to reconstruct each 3-D picture. Anyway, that's a guess. 
The reason for the 3-D push lately (on the off-chance I haven't already blogged about this) has less to do with giving theater-goers something they can't get at home, and more to do with the studios trying to 1) cut down on piracy and 2) force theaters into installing digital projectors and ditching film. The former since 3-D films are much harder to make copies of, and the latter for a variety of reasons: more durability (no damaged prints or degradation), reduced distribution costs (films are distributed on hard drives which are reusable and cost far less to duplicate and ship), a greater degree of control over the releases (the digital "prints" expire after a time, and can't be played at all without a digital key), and probably a whole host of other reasons. Of course, theaters really don't care about such things since they make most of their profits off of stale popcorn and flat soda anyway, and film has been good enough up until now, so why spend all of that money to make the change? But by studios releasing 3-D films digitally (which is the most practical way to do it), this forces theaters to buy digital projectors if they want to draw in those crowds.
Basically, I think 3-D is mostly a fad that will probably disappear again after a few years when the audiences realize that it doesn't really add all that much to the moviegoing experience, the theaters have all moved to digital projection, and the studios get tired of the extra work and cost involved in making 3-D movies.
So much for my unintentional discourse on 3-D. I don't have anything against it, but i have yet to see it be used successfully for anything other than a gimmick. We'll see how other films fare down the road. Gimmick or not though, I'll still be one of the first ones in line to see Tron: Legacy in 3-D. Because that will be cool. 
Anyway, I guess I better actually say something about Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, since this is supposed to be a movie review of it. 
Overall, it's a pretty good film. The animation is excellent, and on a par with almost anything else out there (including Pixar). Particularly impressive is the physical comedy, and how they were able to animate the wooly mammoths' dialog - when you can't even see their mouths. Where it falls a bit short though is in pretty-much everything else. The characters are mostly one-note personalities, with nothing much in the way of development arcs. Nobody grows or learns much of anything, except in the most superficial and clichéd of ways. The story really doesn't have much depth to it either (no pun intended), with everyone basically ending up right back where they started. The visuals, while very good, are almost exactly what you'd expect: the world looks like a cartoon ice age, and the underground "lost" world they discover looks like a giant cavern with plants and caves and such. There isn't the sense of "Wow - I've never seen that before", or the wonder that some of Pixar's films evoke. Ice Age doesn't look bad - in fact it looks very nice. Well-modeled, nicely textured and rendered, good effects, etc.; it's just that in a medium where your only limit is your imagination, why not take full advantage of it and design something amazing?
That said, it is an enjoyable film to watch. The humor isn't anything particularly clever, but it's good enough, and the slapstick animation (particularly the segments with Scrat) helps to make the film fun. The best character in the film though is the newest one - Buck - who has all of the funniest lines and best gags (including a great pterodactyl chase near the end of the film which evokes Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back).
I was disappointed with the end of the film though when Rudy - the giant killer dinosaur - was revealed to resemble Scrat, but then the filmmakers didn't take advantage of that by making Rudy act like Scrat. I think that could have made for some great comedy with this enormous dinosaur bounding around haplessly after some giant acorn-like-thing, getting crushed and mangled by huge boulders or entire mountainsides.
The 3-D was used to some good effect, except for the issues I mentioned above, although I never really got the feel of being in the vast environments I was watching on screen - everything beyond a certain point just seemed to flatten out. Whether this is a limitation of the media, or the filmmakers' choice, I don't know. I was also disappointed that they didn't use the 3-D more effectively as a tool to help with staging and direction - to focus in more on areas of importance, action or interest, and help draw the audience through the movie.
If it's still around, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is worth a matinee and a big bucket of greasy, stale popcorn. The humor is good enough and mostly suitable for all ages (although you may have to answer some questions about clam shells and milking yaks), the characters are fun to watch, and the whole film is really well animated. I just hope Blue Sky Studios can break away from the Ice Age franchise, and push themselves to new levels.
7/10
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