If you’re expecting seatbelts at the 4DX screening of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” you’ll to be disappointed. Unlike 2018’s wildly intense “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” which actually required them, you won’t slam into your neighbor. You won’t nearly fall out of your chair. But you won’t be watching a very good movie either. And the 4DX format’s effects will illustrate exactly why.
The technology is a staple at theme parks, where 4DX “rides” are filmgoing experiences with a physical component — water spraying you when there’s a splash in a pond, or seats swerving left and right to mimic the movements of a racecar. CJ 4DPlex, the company bringing this experience to wide-release, full-length movies in select cinemas around the world, cites 21 “stunningly realistic effects” in its catalog, including lightning, snow and bubbles.
Undoubtedly due to its association with children’s rides, the format is dismissed as a gimmick. But it should really be considered an intellectual exercise. Sure, the wind occasionally makes it hard to hear dialogue, and the flashing lights take you out of the movie when they light up the theater’s walls. But a lot of thought is required to artfully complement a film by adding multisensory elements. Especially when the film itself lacks artfulness. If you really want to understand how a picture works, there is no better way than this.
The most successful 4DX films don’t boil down to how hard they shake your seat. “The Matrix” re-release last year flawlessly incorporated the technology, and it had very little movement for a so-called action movie. But the 4DX approach matched the number of still shots and the serious tone the filmmakers set. Therein lies the intellectual aspect of the format. Seats tilt with the camera, so you physically feel how a feature has been directed. Visual symbols become tactile ones. Think of it as film school via massage chair.
For most of “The Matrix,” even in action sequences, the movement of the seats felt weighted down in the middle. But after Neo realizes that he’s in control of his own fate, the movements became wilder, physically manifesting “The Matrix’s” irony that greater personal freedom comes with greater discomfort and insecurity with the world.
It’s nothing short of magical when 4DX lays out just how well a film has been constructed. You could feel the themes of “The Matrix” just by sitting in the theater. But the format is also an unparalleled way to pinpoint a movie’s flaws.
Maybe producers of “The Nun” would have noticed the film’s palpable lack of terror if they’d sat through a 4DX screening in which literally being punched in the back couldn’t make jump scares effective. And I’m reminded of the time my father and I were piteously rained upon at the climax of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” underscoring just how trite that script was. If academy members had attended a 4DX screening of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” they would not have given it the Oscar for best editing: the atrocious cuts became headache-inducing jolts in 4DX’s interpretation.
The format only feels like a gimmick when nothing is being offered to the audience. The end of “Bohemian Rhapsody” — itself a giant gimmick — had 16 minutes of vibrating “beats” as Rami Malek recreated Freddie Mercury’s Live Aid performance. A step toward immersion, but there’s no way to meaningfully immerse yourself in, essentially, a cool YouTube video.
Certainly the makers of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” should have watched their film in 4DX before signing off on a final cut. It had no apparent themes — no show, all tell. There weren’t visual metaphors to adapt, save for a single roaring ocean at an emotionally tumultuous moment.
The first 10 minutes of effects foreshadowed the thoughtlessness of the hours to follow. The movie opened with seats rumbling to a slow-motion Kylo Ren lightsaber battle, then jerking suddenly to match the hyperspeed swerve of his ship, followed by the unsteady rocking of Finn and Poe Dameron’s spacecraft as it dodged enemy attacks. The complete awkwardness of the transitions screamed “It looks cool!” rather than “It flows.”
The ensuing Finn-Poe scenes demonstrated how 4DX exposes uneven direction. The seats shook furiously when the ship shuddered but froze when the men panicked inside. No, this wasn’t a poor choice about the 4DX effects. Shots were steady onscreen when, logically, they should have looked like an earthquake was taking place. Later in the movie, both interior and exterior shots of intergalactic battles did shake — and the seats rattled accordingly. The inconsistency in the filmmaking was driven home by 4DX.
But poor directing choices don’t just result in irritating seat movements. Sometimes it can verge on the traumatic. In the first 20 minutes of “It Chapter Two,” a 4DX viewer would have experienced both a violent hate crime and an attempted rape scene in roller-coaster form.
Being punched in synchronization with a gay man being beaten to death is not entertainment, nor is it in any way meaningful. Neither is having your seat “thud” when you watch a woman being attacked by her fiancé. The 4DX designers probably should have left those scenes effect-less, but their job is to take their cues from the director. And in this case, it was Andy Muschietti who equated those scenes of grounded terror with the fun, goofy horror throughout the rest of the picture.
If that was a case of too many effects being unnerving, too little can also be frustrating, and 4DX still has a way to go. In “Star Wars,” the multitude of scenes set in sand dunes highlighted the format’s inability to reproduce “grittiness.” Sand whipped punishingly at the characters onscreen, but I felt nothing at all.
In spite of the format’s growing pains, I remain a champion of it. “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” was transcendent, as was “It Chapter Two’s” final battle with Pennywise. The ability to experience fighting Henry Cavill in a helicopter or being chased around by a giant spider-clown makes you appreciate just how difficult it is to masterfully control chaos onscreen.
And there is room for subtlety. In “It Chapter Two,” wind blew through the audience whenever our heroes walked around Derry, mimicking the “Missing” posters that flit through its streets. But once Pennywise was killed, the winds, too, were dead. Derry was still at last.
So that’s why, every time I enter a theater, I check for seatbelts. Even for non-4DX screenings — it’s just become habit. Not because movies are boring without effects. But because we should hope that every film is as attentive in its world-building and skillful at keeping an audience’s attention as “Mission: Impossible” was.
What makes 4DX worth the price of admission is the opportunity to watch a great movie turn otherworldly.
I often ask the people next to me at 4DX screenings why, if it’s their first time, they’ve chosen to go. Their explanation usually comes by way of an apology — they just wanted to see a dumb blockbuster or zone out.
But it’s not dumb. It doesn’t even let you zone out. Sometimes, it’s the saving grace of a trip to the cinema. And sometimes, it’s the time of your life.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
