Why 3D Movies Have Ruined Box Office Records

This article began its life as some kind of "Can The Dark Knight Rises Break The Avengers' Opening Weekend Box Office Record?" type article. Part way through my research, I realized that the game I was trying to play had become rigged over the past few years. Since Avatar climbed atop the all-time box office chart back after its 2009 release, 3D movies have dominated the record books. A simple thing like trying to figure out whether or not The Dark Knight Rises can break the box office record winds up revealing how 3D has skewed everything.

Now, before you line up to tell me that box office records are skewed to begin with due to inflation and higher ticket prices or how we should be comparing tickets sold instead money made for records, I want to tell you that, yes, I agree with both of those points. The rise of 3D movies is a different story though.

Let's talk baseball for a second. For over a century, Major League Baseball has kept record books, valuing the ability to compare stats like no other sport. The game slowly evolved for decades, changing some rules, lowering the mound, adding games to the schedule. Then came the 1990s. The Steroid Era. Some players chose to take steroids, giving them a competitive advantage over their fellow baseball players. Not everyone chose to juice up, though, creating an uneven playing field. Players like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds allegedly took steroids and wound up setting home run records in the process. Over the past few years, MLB has adopted stricter drug testing and cleaned itself up. The records that were set by the cheaters still stand though. There's no way to separate them from the stats the players of their time put up or from the stats of the past century before. Bonds' record of 73 home runs in a single season still stands, despite our suspicion and despite the fact that most likely no one will ever hit 73 home runs in a season again.

3D movies are the roided up cheaters of cinema. The cost of a 3D ticket is several dollars more than a regular ticket and not all movies choose to shoot in or convert to 3D, thus creating an uneven playing field. Movies released during the same weekend could sell the exact same number of tickets, but the 3D movie will gross more. We're no longer talking about the gradual evolution of ticket prices that had been accepted as part of the record-comparing game.

Christopher Nolan, like many directors, had no interest in shooting (or, even worse, converting) The Dark Knight Rises in 3D. He was more interested in the integrity of the film he was making. Grabbing a few extra dollars at the box office wasn't part of his cinematic vision.

This brings us back to my original hope of writing a "Can The Dark Knight Rises Break The Avengers' Opening Weekend Box Office Record?" article. Yes, I could talk about how The Dark Knight Rises is tracking or compare it to other threequels, but in the end, we're not comparing the same thing. The Avengers notched its $207.44 million opening weekend record thanks to its 3D screenings. The final installment of Nolan's Batman trilogy could sell exactly the same number of tickets as The Avengers and still come up short. In fact, The Dark Knight Rises could sell more tickets than The Avengers and come up short. We're talking about two movies that will have been released less than three months apart. If I was trying to compare The Dark Knight Rises to 1977's Star Wars, I could understand the discrepancy, but this is just ridiculous.

While Major League Baseball won't purge its record books of the Steroid Era, I propose that we level the playing field and undo the inequality that has been created during the 3D Era. That idea of comparing tickets sold instead of money grossed? Let's do that. Sorry, James Cameron, all of your records are gone now. If you want to make history, write and shoot the best film you can and get as many people as possible to come see it. Get them to see it again and again. Don't just take their $15 and hand them a pair of 3D glasses.

And if we don't want to change the way we keep box office records, can we at least get an asterisk next to the titles of movies that doped up on 3D?