Today's The Day 3D Films Caught Fire With Audiences

While Disney is busy inundating us with a lot of Tinker Bell and Disney 3-D films, we’ve been sitting back thinking about how this whole 3-D movement started. OK, not really. But today is the anniversary of the first major showing of a 3-D film, Man in the Dark. The idea of 3D has been around for a lot longer, but this was a major studio release. Therefore the film’s release was slightly more important – according to those who write the history on such subjects – in the grand scheme of things.

Since we are indeed getting more Disney 3-D, and I felt interested in looking things up I came across an article over at Wired that details the rise of 3-D technology in the film industry. Man in the Dark wasn’t all that impressive as a movie, or a tech demo for that matter. But it did start a long running relationship between Hollywood and 3-D.

It’s amazing to look at what was considered cutting edge technology in this field back in 1953, and then compare to something like U2 3D. The latter is nothing short of a technical marvel, and helps prove the format can be viable. That hasn’t quite translated to feature films, although Disney has seen moderate success with the release of A Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney 3-D twice now.

By the way…why so many frickin’ Tinker Bell movies? What’s up with that, Disney?