While Disney is best known for dying princesses, flying carpets and homoerotic pirates, they may have changed the face of filmmaking forever with a 3-D chicken. On November 4th, 2005, 100 specially selected theaters in the US premiered the newly spruced up 3-D version of Disney’s Chicken Little, igniting an industry wide stampede towards the adoption of 3-D as the NEXT BIG THING in filmmaking. Queue Wild Oprah-like applause.

In agreement between Disney and Dolby Digital, movie theaters began installing Dolby’s 3-D systems and provided us with the joy of watching our favorite newly released Disney movies…well…closer.

At first, this seemed like a decent idea to promote movies and maybe give those bored weekend children something to look at while Winnie tries (and fails) to get his honey, but like all corporate ideas, at some point it just crosses the line. On November 20th, 2005, Disney re-released it’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, 12 years after it’s initial release. Hollywood was blown away. They started seeing the dollar signs.

After that, movies were never the same. Disney followed this up with Meet The Robinsons, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert, Bolt, Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Experience, Up, G-Force and currently Toy Story and Toy Story 2 (cause let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to see it with the weak sequel)?

As a former die hard Disney fan, it pains me to see them using such ridiculous marketing techniques to squeeze a few extra bucks out of classics that I spent my childhood idolizing. Releasing upcoming movies in 3-D is one thing, but do we really need to pay extra to watch a movie we probably owned on VHS pop out at us? Oh, but just imagine that scene where Mufasa is about to be mauled by the killer wildebeests, but instead of them charging at just him, they’re going for your eyeballs.

Now, I know people are saying that it’s a new experience and it’s just Hollywood evolving. Maybe so.

To all those who are still in awe of this technology, let me explain how it works. You see, The human eyes works like a binocular. Each eye reflects the same image but from different angles and our brain then meshes them together into one angle. If you don’t believe me, close one eye and look at that image, then do it with the other (I cant believe you just did that). If you watch 3-D movies without glasses, they look like a really funky 70’s acid trip through the eyes of Mr. Magoo: two images surrounded by two separate colors (usually red and blue but sometimes green). What the glasses do is filter the colored images, allowing each of your eyes to focus on them, creating a popping out effect that you will ultimately get bored with halfway through Miley’s first set.

Hollywood is currently taking the next step with 3-D imagery and now applying it to more adult themed classics such as Titanic. Despite the curiosity over Kate Winslet’s breasts in your face, this just seems like another way for studios to get some extra cash. What possible reason would any sane person need to watch Titanic again and see that the guy falling from the ship INTO YOUR FACE?

Just like we don’t need to have every Michael Jackson album rereleased, we certainly don’t need our classics to be pimped out to us at a higher price for a little tweak (and some funky glasses).

November 4th, 2005. Movies were never the same again.