We saw this in the IMAX 3D theatre, and my thoughts are:

  1. IMAX 3D is very cool. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a real movie there (as opposed to bullshit shark documentaries or whatever), and it’s swizz. It sounds all gimmicky, and it sort of is, but then, it’s sort of not, you know? I could almost believe that this is the Next Big Thing as theatres strive to do things that you can’t do at home, now that big screen high-def[1a] surround-sound stuff is pretty mainstream.

1a. Seriously, do you remember when there was all that big fuss about digital projection with Star Wars ‘n’ shit? That was 1080P! The same thing I can get at home today! They were basically doing the equivalent of dropping the HD-DVD of Star Wars Episode I in and projecting it in a theater! Theaters are so fucked.

  1. This being a 3D rendered movie makes it work really well with the 3D thing, because they just (I assume) re-render it from two slightly different viewpoints and get 3D for free without the hassle of filming with two cameras (like real IMAX 3D documentaries) or doing arbitrary post-processing “layering” bullshit (like in Superman Returns 3D). HOWEVER, every now and then it exposes animators’ tricks, like when they use a single flat polygon with a skull texture instead of a real polygon skull model. With one eye (aka, as regular theater-goers would see it), it looks fine, but with the 3D effect, it’s clear that it’s just flat. Also, the walls (which must use some kind of fancy texture bump-mapping thing) in the castles look a lot less fakey with one eye than they do with two.

  2. Oh, the actual movie? It was okay. Decent enough, but fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon doom doom doom story, which meh. Well done for what it is, though, I’d say.