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Remember a little while back there was some rumbling about a remake of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver? I wrote that one up. I didn’t like the idea. But here comes a blip from the great director where he says he’d like to give 3D a try. Well then, what better vehicle than Taxi Driver. I of course would take it one step further and go for IMAX as well.

It would seem Scorsese would disagree with me when it comes to a dramatic film using 3D technology.

“We see in depth, for the most part. We go to the theater — it’s in depth. Why couldn’t a film like Precious be in 3-D? It should be,” says Martin Scorsese.

Of course Precious can be in 3D. Any film can be in 3D, but I take issue with Scorsese comparing theater to a dramatic film in 3D to try to make his point.  Of course theater is in depth. It’s real, not enhanced. Maybe we need to make 2D glasses for theater and turn it into a  kind of  live film? On second thought I don’t think so.

I think 3D like any technology has its place, but please, this idea that it’s the wave of the future and all movies should be made in 3D so we can all immerse ourselves in an artificial 3D world disturbs me.

I don’t want dramatic films in 3D. It’s a technology that I believe would be a distraction not an enhancement to a film that’s trying to tell us a human story. Where’s the advantage because I simply don’t see one. I disagree that 3D will follow the same trajectory as the use of color. Some filmmakers point out that color was used in musicals and not in serious dramas. But 3D isn’t the same.

Scorsese says “It just seems natural that we’d be going in that direction,” Scorsese says. “It’s going to be something to look forward to, but to be used interestingly.”

Maybe, but I have to disagree with the great director about this. I think it’s all Avatar mania. Contrary to what some people might believe I don’t agree it’s a seismic shift in film making equal to sound or color.

A great film, a great drama, for example, is great acting, screenplay, direction. To add 3D to the mix seems not only pointless but  a device that will take away from the story. What is the  point? Let’s say you did take Taxi Driver into a 3D world. An audience wearing 3D eye wear gets to see Travis Bickle’s mischief literally explode off the screen? It’s like you’re really in his cab! The excitement is almost too much to bear.

Alfred Hitchcock gave the old 3D a try in Dial M for Murder, but the film wasn’t widely see in that format. He might enjoy the newer technology and then we’d get to see Grace Kelly jump right into our laps scissor in hand.

I agree with Roger Ebert who said of 3D “There seems to be a belief that 3-D films are not getting their money’s worth unless they hurtle objects or body parts at the audience,” Ebert wrote in a 2008 review. “Every time that happens, it creates a fatal break in the illusion of the film. The idea of a movie, even an animated one, is to convince us, halfway at least, that what we’re seeing on the screen is sort of really happening. Images leaping off the screen destroy that illusion.”

I’m hoping that 3D is used sparingly and in films where it can actually add something. Still, you never know. I might change my mind when Gilligan’s Island comes out in 3D.