A big deal was made of the 3D on Resident Evil: Afterlife because it was the first film since Avatar to utilize James Cameron's revolutionary 3D fusion camera system. It's what Cameron used to wow us with Avatar, and it's what more and more films are beginning to use as positive fan reaction begins to trickle back to Hollywood. For example, Tron: Legacy is another upcoming film that used the system, and if anything it's really helping to convince us that, no, not all 3D is going to look bad, and Avatar was not the beginning and the end of the moviegoing experience.
Word out of Resident Evil: Afterlife was that the 3D was spectacular, especially during the Alaskan sequences. The film itself? Well, it's currently running with a 17% rotten rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, so unfortunately the 3D wasn't enough to convince people to actually like everything else about the film, like plot and characters.
But what these new cameras have shown us (and I spoke about this at length last night on the Film School Rejects podcast) is that Resident Evil: Afterlife proves 3D can be really, really cool if it's done right. Sure, perhaps Paul W.S. Anderson isn't the filmmaker who's going to revolutionize 3D, but eventually this camera system is going to find its way into the hands of a much better filmmaker, and the results are going to be outstanding – maybe even better than Avatar.
So if you didn't care much for this latest Resident Evil chapter, look at the bright side: The 3D worked, and it looked great. In this time when everything is online or on demand, it's important to have those amazing moviegoing experiences inside actual movie theaters, and hopefully Tron: Legacy will continue an upward trend for 3D heading into 2011.
What did you think of the 3D on Resident Evil: Afterlife? Did it rival Avatar?
