By Ray Zone
Reviewing the film in the (June 10) LA Times, critic Carina Chocano characterizes viewing "Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D" with the red and blue anaglyph glasses as "protracted retinal strain."
Considered "horrendous" by James Cameron (ShoWest, March 17) and responsible for what he calls "the Ghetto-ization" of 3-D movies, anaglyph also seems to have very few defenders within the 3-D hobbyist community as well. "The damage to the reputation of anaglyph movies caused by this movie might be fatal," reads a June 13 online post to a 3-D list by a hobbyist who goes by the moniker of "The Puppet Kite Kid."
Anaglyph 3-D movies, using red and blue glasses for left and right eye image selection, have never had much of a reputation.. Like the red/blue 3-D comic books and magazines, anaglyphic motion pictures have always been considered by critics and "experts" (looking down their highly extended noses) as an inferior form of stereographic image.
Nevertheless, the anaglyph still continues to fascinate and to be produced 150 years after its invention. Periodically, the anaglyph is rediscovered once again by a whole new generation of eyes and minds eager for visual adventure.
Every time an anaglyph movie is released the chorus of complaints is reprised: "It hurt's my eyes." "Can't they get rid of the glasses?" "Why does the color look so weird?" And the red/blue glasses are perennially castigated as "cheap," "stupid," "cheesy," and "clunky."
Anaglyphic motion pictures have a varied and intermittent history that goes back to the Nickelodeon era of cinema when filmmakers and audiences were first discovering the story telling capabilities of the new technological art.
Good thing the six-year-old kid sitting behind me watching "Shark Boy and Lava Girl" was unaware of all this. He was laughing with delight throughout the anaglyph sequences as objects hurtled off the screen into the audience space or zoomed back into the depths of the motion picture frame. As director Robert Rodriguez deftly worked a wide array of visual 3-D puns (the 'Stream of Consciousness' or the 'Passage of Time'), the theater was filled with the sound of children laughing. But then the kids' young eye muscles are probably supple and, more importantly, their minds are very likely open to the experience of watching the film with red/blue glasses.
"Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D" is, in fact, a whimsical story that makes excellent use of color anaglyph. Unlike the polychromatic anaglyph in "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over," director Rodriguez used a modified "Half-Color" or "Tru-Color" anaglyph for the characters and their skin tones in "Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D." This is a technique that substitutes a monochromatic channel for one of the three in RGB (usually Red). The result is something like a black and white image with color added. It follows, then, that the skin tones in the anaglyph sequences might be characterized as "bad color" or unnatural to the unaided eye. But they looked just fine in stereo space seen through the custom "anaglyphoscopes" and were presented in gray scale values that were nicely equivalent.
Any individual with normal eyesight open to the experience of viewing color anaglyph motion pictures should find "Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D" an entertaining stereoscopic experience.
Many people decline the visual challenge of the anaglyph. They will decry the difficulty of viewing the world through a retinal rivalry in which each eye sees opposite sides of the wheel of color. Well, a lot of people are also troubled by looking at the cubist extractions of Picasso. But to decry the experience of anaglyph viewing itself is like saying "Yes, the automobile works. But can't they get rid of the wheels?"
