"Resurrection 'F'" in 3D (a decade-late analysis)

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LostTimeLord
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"Resurrection 'F'" in 3D (a decade-late analysis)

Post by LostTimeLord » Sun Mar 02, 2025 3:38 pm

(Yeah, I know 3DTVs are dead, but this is such an odd duck that I hope you'll find it interesting even if you never liked 3D in the first place.)

Resurrection 'F' was released in 2015, firmly within the "release every blockbuster and animated movie in 3D" era of cinema, and as such it's no surprise that a 3D conversion was released in cinemas in Japan and internationally. I don't know about the rest of the world, but for English speakers the 3D version did not leave much of an impression - what little discussion you can find describes it as weak and at times imperceptibly subtle. I never caught the 3D version at the time, but it received 3D Blu-ray releases in Europe, and over the 10ish years since the mild curiosity has gotten the better of me. It turns out that the 3D isn't just subtle, but for most of the movie it's a complete placebo.

My copy is the Italian Blu-ray, which it turns out is not the best release of the film. It's compatible with non-3D players, but doesn't have a dedicated 2D encode so there's very noticeable aliasing on some of the 3D-converted shots. It also has some strange encoding artefacts on the deep red parts of the image like Sorbet's cape and the opening pan into hell; having the movie on a single-layer disc isn't ideal, but for a 90 minute film I don't think that excuses this kind of serious artifacting.
FWIW: It's locked to region B, has Italian and Japanese audio, and the movie can be played in Japanese without subtitles; the opening credit is in Italian, the title is in English, the closing credits are in Japanese, and Pledge of Z is in Japanese on both tracks. It syncs with the Manga UK audio/subtitles with a 4776ms delay.
When I say the 3D's a placebo, what I mean is that they've simply taken the 2D image and placed it "behind" the screen. It's not at a consistent depth either, so you can't just adjust the "strength" setting on your display and restore the standard 2D picture, the depth of these 2D sections changes every time it cuts to an actual 3D shot. Was this to make the depth more consistent between 2D and 3D shots? Were they worried that people would think the 3D effect wasn't working without a double image? Was this an actual attempt at tricking people? Who knows, but the result is that you get the uncomfortable effects of 3D without any of the benefits for a lot of the movie. At best, you sit there wondering why the 3D's so horribly inconsistent.
Here are two similar shots, the first being "placebo" 3D and the second with actual depth.
Now, given that it's only a partial conversion, you would expect that the sequences would be carefully chosen, and that might be true, but I cannot work out what the thought process could have been for these shot choices. Early in the movie, a conversation between Bulma and Jaco is in 3D... followed by a 2D sequence where Goku trains with Whis and he stops to appreciate the cherry blossom leaves floating in front of him. As soon as the sparring stops, we return to 3D footage. There's another sequence where we cut between 2D footage of Goku and Freeza having a beam struggle, and 3D footage of Beerus eating ice cream. To be clear, some of the fight scenes are in 3D, but the conversion bizarrely favours dialogue scenes.
But, to make thing even more frustrating, the 3D moments only tend to last a handful of shots at a time. It's less that some sequences are in 3D and more that every seventh shot or so is in 3D for no discernable reason; it's extremely distracting because by the time you've registered that you're watching something in 3D, it switches to 2D again. In many scenes, like Kuririn's police chase, the establishing shots will be in 3D and then the action itself is a 2D placebo. The only time this really works is when Goku transforms into Super Saiyan Blue, because it feels motivated. It's similar to variable aspect ratios for Imax movies, it can be a really effective if used as a storytelling tool but will absolutely take the viewer out of the story if used haphazardly. An honestly-presented partial conversion could have been really fun, but the presentation here is just distracting and spoils the handful of decent 3D moments.

As for the conversion itself, the level of detail is inconsistent between shots, so sometimes you get cutouts and at other times the characters have a reasonably well defined 3D geometry. Even as 2D cutouts, the floating rocks and debris knocked up during transformations are probably the most impactful 3D shots. Certain elements in the more detailed conversions still appear to be 2D because they don't have any texture to warp in the first place; for example, a character's sleeves will have depth thanks to the line art on them, but their hands will still look flat because they're just a solid colour. In Dragon Ball Z's defence, I think this is a wider issue with hand-drawn animation, and without adding texture or shading for the 3D version it's probably an unsolvable problem.
For some shots, like the establishing shot of Freeza's tree in Hell, they've obviously cut corners. The flowers in the immediate foreground are cut out, but the rest of the flowerbed is treated as one texture, with the petals and stalks all on the same flat plane. The swarm of soldiers coming from Freeza's ship are similarly treated as one layer instead of having their own places. The most technically sound shot is probably Sorbet’s ship leaving Earth, as it's an actual 3D animation with proper stereo detail.
The conversion's also seriously lacking in pop-out effects. There are a handful of elements that come ever so slightly out of the screen, like the movie's logo, but given how often characters fly around and shoot beams into the 'camera', this leaves a lot to be desired. Contemporary 3D conversions usually place the subject at screen level and have objects in the extreme foreground pop way out of the screen, but Resurrection 'F' avoids this too - even objects that 'block' the audience’s view are placed behind the screen. Even the 20th Century Fox logo has been moved back, compared to other 3D films. And that's the 3D version of Resurrection 'F'. A deeply underwhelming presentation that becomes more frustrating by occasionally threatening to be pretty good.
Here's some side-by-side screenshots, if you happen to have the means to view 3D images. VLC Media Player can convert them to anaglyph, if you have red-blue glasses. Or you can cross your eyes Magic Eye-style if you enjoy migraines.

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PowerPhantom245
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Re: "Resurrection 'F'" in 3D (a decade-late analysis)

Post by PowerPhantom245 » Sun Mar 02, 2025 4:01 pm

Ahh yes 3D Blu-ray.
Boy, that was a thing.
Didn't know the movie had 3D release.

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Re: "Resurrection 'F'" in 3D (a decade-late analysis)

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Sun Mar 02, 2025 5:26 pm

Yeah, it was a bit of a novelty but evidently it didn't catch on and no one wanted any of the movies since on the format.
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