‘Kung Fu Panda’ Director Criticizes How 3D Has Been Used in Recent Movies

LAS VEGAS -- One of the directors of the hit animated movie Kung Fu Panda questioned the need for 3D in most of the recent films that have used the technology, telling Consumer Electronics Daily at the Design Innovate Communicate Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit Thursday that he believed most of the 3D movies he’s seen have used the technology badly. The filmmaker, John Stevenson, also predicted that many consumers won’t use 3D in their homes until special glasses are no longer required.

"Right now I just don’t know how much content is worthy of being seen in 3D,” Stevenson said. “Last year, the only film … that used 3D properly” after Avatar in 2009 was How To Train Your Dragon, he said. “Every other 3D film I saw was underwhelming and mediocre,” some of them just “slapped together” with the technology, he said. Despicable Me didn’t use the technology as well as Dragon, but he conceded that was good in 3D also, “much better than Toy Story 3,” which he said “was a great movie but the 3D adds nothing” to it. “There was nothing” about the 3D in Toy Story 3 that “enhances the storytelling,” he said. And the “reduction in light” that comes from using 3D in movies tends to outweigh any benefit from the technology, he said.

"I don’t have 3D in my home yet, and I don’t think I'm going to be getting 3D in my home until I don’t have to wear glasses,” Stevenson said. “When they figure that out then I personally” will be open to it in the home, he said. “I bet a lot of people” feel the same way, he said. The coming Nintendo 3DS handheld system sounds like a good idea because it doesn’t require special glasses to view content in 3D, he said.

"I'm all for” 3D if it works properly, said Stevenson. “I'm not for it if it’s mediocre and just a way” to hit consumers up for more money, and “I think a lot of films that don’t need” to be in 3D have been turned into 3D movies, he said.

Earlier Thursday at the Summit, NPD analyst Anita Frazier predicted that the arrival of autostereoscopic 3D in the 3DS will help the game industry grow this year despite the challenges facing the industry. Also helping to spur growth will be the improved economy, the strong growth in sales of smartphones and other mobile devices, continued growth of digital distribution, increased broadband penetration, adoption of the new Kinect for Xbox 360 and PlayStation Move motion control systems, and the growth in revenue from non-consumer channels including advergaming.

DICE Summit Notebook

Handheld and home videogame console systems are “not on our road map,” Jonathan Knight, senior vice president of games at social entertainment company RockYou, told us. “We don’t have any plans to” make games for any of the dedicated videogame systems, he said. But he said the company plans to make versions of its online social games for smartphones and tablets. The company, meanwhile, continued to grow its staff, adding two new members to its executive team: Katrina Osio, ex-Fastpoint Games, as senior vice president of marketing and John Yoo, ex-Zynga, as creative director on a game that has yet to be announced from RockYou’s Redwood City, Calif., studio. The company’s titles now have more than 200 million unique monthly visitors and 15 billion monthly global impressions, it said. RockYou’s most popular social game is Zoo World, which has been installed on consumers’ devices 50 million times, it said. The company started out making a wide range of social applications for Facebook, MySpace and other sites after being started in 2005, but an increasing amount of its business is now focused on social games, Knight said. RockYou also bought TirNua, maker of an engine for Facebook games, in November, he said. Last month, RockYou said it signed a deal with Loot Drop, the social game company started by Doom developer John Romero. RockYou is going to fund and publish a Loot Drop game, Knight said. The privately-held RockYou is funded by Sequoia Capital, Partech International, LightSpeed Venture Partners, DCM, SK Telecom Ventures and Softbank, RockYou said.