Post the 3rd

A rather incredible "phenomenon" (if you're feeling dramatic) occured in the first days of the new year. Director James Cameron's remake of Pocahontas (which he calls Avatar) made a LOT of money. Since it's release on December 18th, 2009, Avatar went on to gross over 1 BILLION dollars in just 17 days. (DAAAAAAAYUM.) That feat set it up as the forth highest grossing movie of all time, and solidified James Cameron as the only director to have two films make over a billion dollars.

And all of that despite being a big budget remake of Pocahontas! (WARNING: Mad spoilers abound - don't click if you haven't seen Avatar/Pocahontas. Or FernGully: The Last Rainforest, they're all basically the same movie.)

Of course, it's a lot easier to make money at the box office when your film is released in 3d, and a neato pair of sunglasses has to be packaged with every ticket and you get to charge twice as much as regular tickets.

WHEW! That finally brings me to my point.

"SO! Film industry! You've just stumbled upon a new way to display movies that makes you twice as much money, what are you going to do!?!?!?"

"We're going GREEN!"

Of course you are.

Naturally, cinemas across the country want to appear to be environmentally friendly, so what do they do? Why, put out handy little boxes to recycle your 3d glasses at the exits to the theater, duh.

Instead of encouraging movie goers to hang on to their glasses and use them for future 3d movie going experiences, they ask that you give them back the glasses you just paid for so they can dip them in some anti-bacterial juju, then repackage them in little plastic bags (which are of course thrown away as soon as one takes the glasses out), and resell them with next week's showings of Avatar.



Long rant short: This is exactly the kind of half assed "Green Branding" that is setting the concept back. It's a rather obvious ploy by the powers that be to vastly increase profits and appear to be environmentally conscious without really doing anything eco-friendly. I mean, yes, it is better than just throwing the glasses away, but the fact that the decision is based on profit, not true environmentalism, is bothersome.

Luckily for hipsters, wearing RealD glasses outside of a theater in place of regular glasses is SUPER ironic, so that's a cool way to recycle them.

Sorry. That slipped out.

But if, by chance, you didn't click on the Avatar is the same movie as Pocahontas link, you totally should. It is absolutely uncanny. Hell, here's another shot at it: BOOM. (Again, mad spoilers)