With all the fuss over 3D of late, it’s almost surprising that we haven’t seen a full-blown 3D superhero movie yet. Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” had a few key action sequences in 3D in its IMAX release, and the likes of “Green Lantern” and “(500) Days of Spider-Man” will get three-dimensional releases, but none of the big Marvel properties in the pipeline immediately seemed to be taking the bait.
Over the weekend, Collider noticed a post by someone called ‘Spiderbyte’ on the Superhero Hype message boards, which suggested that the camera seen in a photo on a recent LA Times story on Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” might be a 3D rig, named by comicbookmovie.com as the 3D-BS Pro Rig. The key word here being BS. For one thing, Branagh’s set-up bears no resemblance to the image of the camera that the original poster dug up — it’s a rig designed for the Red camera, and Branagh’s clearly shooting on a film camera.
We suppose it’s possible that Branagh’s using a different set-up to shoot 3D, but we’d be very, very surprised; just because he’s shooting two cameras side-by-side, it doesn’t mean it’s for a 3D effect, and the cameras are too far apart for that to be the case. We also imagine that, with “Thor” going into production just as “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland” started clearing up at the box office, that, were the project getting an extra dimension, that Marvel would have been crowing about it long before now. It’s not impossible that the Norse god will get a “Clash of the Titans” style conversion in post-production, but we’d be stunned, based on this evidence, if it were being shot in the format. – Oli Lyttelton