Granted, it’s not much to go on at this point but considering there is some background to a 3D “Inception,” it’s not entirely unbelievable.
During the press junket for “Battle: Los Angeles” (via Cinematical) during which Jonathan Liebesman revealed that the “Clash of the Titans” sequel would be post-converted into 3D, he also dropped an interesting nugget when describing how Warner Bros. convinced the helmer that the process wouldn’t make the film look, well, terrible.
“I didn’t want to convert, but Warner Brothers showed me how far conversion’s come,” he explained. “You’ve got Chris Nolan doing ‘Inception,’ converting the DVD, you’ve got ‘Harry Potter‘ being converted, ‘Star Wars‘ being converted, so the conversion process has improved dramatically in the past two years.”
Whoa, wait what? “Inception” being converted for DVD (although he probably means BluRay since that’s the only format can handle 3D). Well, it’s not the first time the words 3D and “Inception” have been linked together.
Last summer, during interviews for the film, Christopher Nolan revealed that he actually did test post-converting “Inception” but he wasn’t convinced he would have the time necessary to get the film to a place where he would have been happy with it. “I’m not a huge fan of 3D,” he did go on to reveal, “We did tests on ‘Inception’ to look at the post conversion process, and they worked very well. It’s quite easy to do, in fact. But it takes a little time, and we didn’t have the time to do it to the standard that I would have been happy.”
Nolan has long held firm against 3D saying “on an experiential level, I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating” and that “the truth is, I think it’s a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it’s three dimensional… You know 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a ‘2D movie’ is a little misleading.”
But maybe he’s turned his opinion around on the matter? Certainly the tide of auteurs tackling the format is growing — Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann are among the latest and greatest names to be playing in 3D. Certainly, Warner Bros. are eager to keep the “Inception” money train — a blockbuster without action figures, a video game (yet) or a sequel — rolling any way they can, and re-jiggering the visually stunning film for 3D is one way to do that. Just don’t expect us to buy a 3D TV to watch it again.