That night in the summer of ’83, they instead went to “Jaws 3-D” at the State.
“It was a terrible strain on your brain,” Hatfield, now 45, recalled recently.
Funny enough, “Jaws 3” in regular 2-D produced the exact same effect.
“Three-D had to be used as a gimmick to distract from the film’s overwhelming lameness,” Hatfield said.
But a lot has changed in the 28 years since Hatfield and his date were handed two pairs of flimsy cardboard glasses containing foil lenses.
In fact, as a video artist and cineaste who now divides his time between Seattle and his hometown of Springfield, Hatfield can attest that the resurgence of 3-D is nothing like the 3-D of old.
“It’s effortless,” he explained. “The glasses are a bit cumbersome, but once the lights go down, you pretty instantly suspend your disbelief and dissolve into the spectacle.”
Whether it’s still just a gimmick — and you’ll find just as many who insist it is — 35 3-D movies are slated for release in 2011 alone, none of which can actually be seen locally in 3-D.
That’s obvious to anyone who wanted to see “Thor” in 3-D recently and were met with a simple, black-and-white 2-D sign taped to the window of the Cinema 10 box office:
“3-D films are not exhibited at this location.”
Nor will they ever be until Chakeres Theatres — the century-old Springfield-based movie theater chain that was established 19 years before the advent of talkies — crosses the industry’s next great technological threshold.
Not a single one of the 17 indoor screens in Clark and Champaign counties will be able to show the new wave of 3-D movies until Chakeres upgrades from film to digital projectors at a cost of about $70,000 per auditorium.
The homegrown company with 50 screens in two states still shows all movies on 35 mm film like it has since its formation in 1908.
Company president Philip Chakeres didn’t return repeated calls for comment.
“They’ve entertained legions of people for decades,” Hatfield said. “The sad thing is, if they don’t make these upgrades, it will be a threat to their business.
“They have to embrace the future.”
Citing the high cost of converting to digital, the venerable Technicolor company last year debuted a system that allows exhibitors to present 3-D movies using their existing 35 mm projectors.
The Technicolor system, in which a lens splits the left and right eye images, is only in use on 500 screens between North America and Europe — compared with 8,600 screens as of March in North America alone that are using the RealD digital 3-D system introduced in 2005.
Local moviegoers still get to see 3-D movies, but only in the kind of flat 2-D that people have witnessed since Gus Sun opened Springfield’s first movie theater in a storeroom replete with old kitchen chairs in 1904.
Since then, it’s safe to say that people have come to expect more from the nation’s movie theaters.
“I don’t have plans to be the biggest,” Philip Chakeres told the News-Sun in 2000. “I just have the desire to be the best.”
In 2009, “Avatar” still played town on its way to becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, but not being able to see it in the 3-D director James Cameron intended is a bit like having to watch “Gone With the Wind” in black and white.
Springfield resident Folker Hemmann, who purposefully shops locally except when it comes to the movies, drove out of town in order to see “Avatar” in 3-D.
“To see it in 3-D, you’re right in the middle of it. You can almost touch it,” Hemmann, 62, said. “It was a totally new experience. It wasn’t just a movie. It was living in this special world. You were really in that world because of 3-D.”
But this really isn’t about 3-D, which, without another “Avatar,” might very well go away again faster than you can say “Bwana Devil” (the 1952 3-D flick about man-eating lions in Africa that promised, “A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!”)
Besides, if moviegoers tire of digital 3-D the way they did the initial 3-D fad of the ’50s, Chakeres could be lauded for taking a wait and see approach.
“For many people, it distracts,” said industry analyst Brandon Gray, creator and president of the website Box Office Mojo. “For some people, particularly children, it’s a cool gimmick. Who knows how long that will last. Most of the movies that use it don’t make good use of it.
“It’s highly overrated by the industry that’s trying to shove it down our throats.”
While many local moviegoers would no doubt love to see “Green Lantern” later this month for themselves in three dimensions, the need to transition from film to digital goes far beyond the argument about whether 3-D still is just a novelty.
“Three-D is an important driver of revenue, but the transition to digital is the difference between remaining in business or closing,” warned Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theatre Owners.
The association has called the switch to digital cinema — in which films would arrive in town via broadband or satellite — “the most significant technological transition in our industry’s history, perhaps with the exception of the advent of sound.”
The future, it seems, is now.
“At some point in the next two years, we expect that the major studios will stop shipping film prints altogether,” Corcoran said.
Right now, only 46 percent of the nation’s more than 30,000 screens are digital, but, costs aside, there would seem to be plenty of good reasons to continue down that path.
“There is the possibility that, due to the lower cost of digital prints, some markets will be able to get a digital movie weeks earlier than they could in a world of film prints,” Corcoran said.
The most-touted benefit of digital is consistent picture quality and clarity — something that can’t be guaranteed the longer a celluloid film print plays.
“Digital seems to be a good thing for the consumer,” said Gray, of Box Office Mojo.
The inconsistent picture quality at the local theaters is one of the reasons Springfield movie buff Elijah Glaser frequently finds himself wanting to drive out of town to theaters like the one owned by Regal Entertainment Group in Beavercreek.
“It’s consistent. I know what I’m paying for. It’s just a great experience. I go to Chakeres and I flip a coin,” said Glaser, a 32-year-old juvenile probation officer. “Why are they still the way they are? They could make so much more.”
The switch to digital would keep Glaser for one in town.
“Don’t tell Chakeres,” he said, “but I’d even be willing to pay more.”
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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