I took my son to see Ep1 in 3D and quite frankly it was a dissappointment.
First off let me set the scene....
I purchased 2 VIP seats, my son and I plonked our behinds on the plush, wide seats, me with a tub of delicious cheesecake ice cream, my son with a large cup of blue slush, the lights go dim when suddenly a mob of popcorn eating, crisp packet rustling kids with their blubbabut mums park themselves directly behind us in the steerage seats... Not only did I have chomping and rustling in glorious surround, but one of the kids must have had a bad case of ADHD coupled with an inability to blow his nose, so the sound of a constant shuffling coupled with a mucous sniff reverberated around my head every 10 or so seconds like a Chinese water torture.....
Now on to the film....
The trouble as I see it with the latest 3d is that you need to wear a pair of sunglasses to see it... this has the effect of dulling down the image. The other issue seems to be that after a while your eyes get used to the 3d effect so that you don't really notice any difference, it just looks like you are watching an inferior quality, dull image. During the movie I took off my glasses and found that some scenes shots were not in 3d at all, and I much preferred the brighter clearer image to the 3d one.
My conclusion.
Cinemas are a germ filled, fast food joints and 3d movies are actually below the standard of traditional 2d fare. 3d Cinema offers a poorer picture than those found on a standard large screen HD TV or projector in the home when coupled to a Bluray player. The fairy story about the Emperors Clothes springs to mind as someone is trying to fool us into believing that dull 3d is somehow superior to a bright crisp HD image.
Sadly Lucas had missed a trick here. He should have added deleted scenes, more special effects and given us a new visual experience. All that he's done is shown that the Star Wars project is done and dusted with nothing new to add. He's simply let others mess with the picture, making it darker and fuzzy in places.
I will always be a Star Wars fan but I won't be excited about any of the future 3d releases. In my opinion the best thing that's happened to Star Wars in recent years is Adywans re edit....
