METALLICA PREPARES TERRIBLE 3D MOVIE

Metallica are working on a 3D feature film, and with Charlotte Huggins, a veteran producer of totally unwatchable crap, no less. This should not surprise you, for two reasons:

• Metallica were great once, but now they are terrible. This is why everything they touch turns to shit. The Metallica we all adored as kids are not coming back. It’s over.
• 3D is not the future of filmmaking; it is a trend, and a very stupid trend. Some filmmakers are championing it as a “more immersive” filmgoing experience; this filmmakers are hucksters, and they don’t give a shit about giving you a more immersive experience, they give a shit about separating you from your money by charging you more a ticket than they are already.

Because DVD and Blu-ray sales are going right in the shitter, the same way CD sales are, and they’re trying to figure out a way to make that money back somehow. But no less an authority than the legendary editor Walter Murch — who has been working in film since the 70s and has edited on everything from an upright Moviola to Final Cut Pro — has pointed out that 3D goes against “600 million years of evolution” of the human eye. That’s why it causes so much discomfort for viewers, why it actually makes the experience less immersive, and why it is never going to work. In fact, audiences are already starting to pick up on the fact that 3D is a con: in 2009, 80% of audiences saw Avatar in 3D, but this past summer, less than two years after the blue cat people movie’s release, only 37% of audiences saw Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides in 3D, despite the fact that 66% of all screens exhibiting the film were doing so in the allegedly-advanced format. And those numbers pretty typical for 3D ticket sales of all recent blockbuster films.

And so while no director has been hired yet, and it’s not even clear if the film is going to be a concert film, a documentary, or Metallica’s answer to Spice World, it doesn’t really matter — this movie is going to be unbearably bad. This is not a prediction. It is a fact. There is no way this movie will be good, because the people making it don’t make good product. Period.

In fact, I am honestly, sincerely hoping that Metallica make their version of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. That is the only way I could see this being NOT suicide-inducingly horrific. Otherwise, forget it. You might as well hire Phil Towle, for all the entertainment value this drek will offer.

Fuck this movie.

-AR