At the end of the day yesterday the big news was the announcement the Star Wars films were officially being converted from their current 2D state into 3D with expectation to begin with the release of The Phantom Menace in 2012. The goal is to release all six films on a yearly basis starting with Phantom Menace in the early months of 2012 with Attack of the Clones following in 2013 around the same time and so on. Of course, the release of one to the next depends on the performance of each film, which makes me wonder… Do you really want to pay an inflated ticket price to watch converted versions of the Star Wars films? Do you want to endure the prequels just to get to the original trilogy?
At this moment I can honestly say I have zero interest in this news and considering the outrage expressed concerning 2D-to-3D converted films such as Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender I find it hard to believe many would be excited over this.
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The USA Today piece announcing the news says when the 2D-to-3D process is rushed it can give people “a bad feeling about this.” John Knoll, visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, is overseeing the project and says, “You’re generating a synthetic second eye. You’re finding out where the boundaries of objects are in the scene and what their distance is to the camera, and you’re using that information to generate (3-D).”
Admittedly, it’s quite obvious they are spending more time and putting far more effort into the conversion and it won’t be representative of the shoddy efforts that went into Clash of the Titans or the downright absent appearance of 3D from Last Airbender. However, it won’t be Avatar either, or the recent release of Legend of the Guardians, which was perhaps the best 3D I’ve ever seen.
When it comes to the Star Wars films I may be inclined to shell out some dough to check out the original trilogy, with Empire Strikes Back being the highlight. It’s the one film George Lucas didn’t mess with too much with his “special” editions and it’s easily the best film of the six. Watching the battle to destroy the Death Star in A New Hope and in Return of the Jedi may be fun as well, but I can honestly say I won’t lose any sleep if I were to miss their 3D presentations.
