THE FATHER LIFE Likes…

Photo by Alan Levine; used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Why, really, did the 3-D movie trend start? Does anybody remember, before the trend began, thinking “You know the problem with movies? They’re too two-dimensional?” We didn’t think so. 3-D is so entrenched in the movie industry now that commercials for the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans actually point out that it is “also in 2-D” — as though that wasn’t the norm.

Now there’s talk of re-releasing classic films, converted to 3-D. You really would think people would learn a lesson from the hue and cry over colorization of old black and white films in the 1980s, but apparently you’d be wrong.

Here, then, are the top 10 movies that, for one reason or another, we at GeekDad fervently hope are never … what would the word be? “3-D-ized?” “Depth-ized?” We need a word that evokes the concept of things that looked fine to begin with getting alterations for superficial, faux-cosmetic reasons in order to earn more money. Perhaps something involving Cher.

10. Alien — The chest-burst scene is quite scary and gory enough, without the baby coming out of the screen towards the audience, thank you very much.

9. The Pirates of the Caribbean films — Orlando Bloom is wooden enough in two dimensions. And besides, with the exception of Jack, virtually all of the characters are one-dimensional, so displaying them in three really seems like overkill.

8. The Evil Dead films — Honestly, we’re just afraid someone might injure himself running away for fear of losing an eye to Bruce Campbell’s chin.

7. The Big Lebowski — While the bowling scenes might look pretty cool in 3-D, consider the scene where the thug pees on The Dude’s rug. Or the scene where Walter bites off a guy’s ear. Some things we’re better off not seeing in 3-D.

6. Die Hard — We’re pretty sure we’re better off not being any closer to the bloodied, sweaty John McClane. We’re afraid that people with overactive imaginations might start to think they can smell him, which is certainly not something to be wished for.

5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home — With all due respect to the late, great James Doohan, nobody wants Scotty’s stomach any closer to them than absolutely necessary. Plus, in 3-D, it would probably be pretty obvious that the closeups of the whales were done with models.

4. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial — If you or someone you love is the sort who gets emotional at movies, consider how much more powerful the emotions would be if E.T. weren’t just reaching out to Elliott, but to you.

3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy –  It would be far too likely that all the careful perspective shots director Peter Jackson used to establish the differences in characters’ size would be lost, or at least badly screwed up, by the 3-D conversion process.

2. The Muppet Movie — This is a near-perfect movie, with, at most a few sour notes in an otherwise symphonic masterpiece. It works, as does anything involving Muppets, because it was meticulously filmed so the Muppets were utterly believable as characters. Converting it to 3-D would be bound to make the Muppets look more like they do in real life — that is to say, less like living beings.

1. The Star Wars saga — As though he hadn’t tinkered with the Star Wars films enough already, George Lucas has publicly stated his intentions to release 3-D versions of them. It wasn’t bad enough that he made Greedo shoot first; now he wants to mess around with the whole look and feel of the movies. If we haven’t made our case yet, we have but three more words for you: 3-D Jar Jar.

There are of course plenty more where those came from — feel free to add your own ideas in the comments. Interestingly, while compiling this list, a few films stuck out as ones that might actually be improved by 3-D conversion — look for a list of those next week.