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“We imitated film,” Lee says of projects
like these. “We used 2-D concepts.” In
order to fully make the leap into the fu-
ture, new techniques—from lighting to
camera angles to makeup applications—
would have to be developed.
For Gemini Man, Lee mobilized
hundreds of visual-effects artists, de-
veloping higher frame rates, clearer
CGI graphics and more precise projec-
tor technologies. The process has been
draining. “Eighty percent of the time,
you’re not dealing with art but ob-
stacles. It’s such a waste of energy,” he
says. But his pursuit is worth it to him
because of 3-D’s inherent neurological
advantages. “In 2-D, a movie is a picture
on a wall: it’s not something that’s ac-
tually real,” he says. “In 3-D, your brain
wants to believe things are actually in
front of you because they have shape
and movement.”
The film is filled with this type of
vivid detail. In a chase scene through
the streets of Cartagena, Colombia,
you see not just a blur of motorcycles
but the brushstrokes of colorful street
art and the individual feathers on pi-
geons taking flight. In a combat scenethat rivals Crouching Tiger in its elabo-
rate choreography, the punches thrown
are not just flurries of fists but weighty
individual blows. “There’s a differ-
ent intensity of somebody invading
you,” Lee says of the viewer experience.
“There’s no safe distance.”
While the action sequences are for-
midable, Lee says the medium’s biggest
advantage is in the study of faces. One
scene of which he’s particularly proud
shows the protagonist’s young clone
(acted by Smith and generated through
digital effects) breaking down emotion-
ally when he discovers a life- changing
secret. His forehead is dewy, and his
bottom lip quivers. “You can feel the
gut feeling of somebody’s tempera-
ture. You can feel them blush,” Lee says.
“You can see thoughts in
their eyes.”
At the moment, 3-D
remains too expensive and
unpopular for studios to
finance pure adult dramas,
which tend to have lower
box-office grosses. In order
to continue exploring the
form, Lee had to smuggle
his emotional scenes into
a blockbuster. “In paint-
ing or writing, you can try out differ-
ent techniques on a small scale. But
the film industry has big commercial
implications,” he says. “To have some-
thing new, you have to come out loud
and bold, with big action and a big
movie star.”
Gemini Man is that loud and bold
compromise. It allowed him to work
with a bankable name (Smith); to create
something never attempted before (a
fully CGI human performance); and
to grapple with both technological
riddles and complex emotional issues,
like aging and insecurity. If audiences
come for Smith, Lee hopes they might
adjust their visual expectations for 3-D
along the way, growing to appreciate
the medium instead of finding it
distracting. “Our eyes can be trained,”
he says.There’s one major problem, how-
ever: most audiences won’t see Gemini
Man in the way Lee intended. While
the film is shot at a hyperrealistic
120 frames per second, most theaters‘With 3-D, it’s
like looking
at a baby vs. a
sophisticated
artist. Let this
baby grow up.’
ANG LEE,
director of
Gemini Manin the U.S. are equipped to show it only
at 60 frames, which is slightly blur-
rier and less detailed. And that’s to say
nothing of the thousands of people who
prefer to wait until the film comes out
on streaming, who might watch it on a
tablet or a phone.
Lee is aware he’s pulling the cart
before the horse, but he sees no other
way forward. He remains adamant that
theatrical releases are a vital form of
communal catharsis, even as filmmak-
ers like Martin Scorsese and Steven
Soderbergh have decamped for Netflix.
“I think sitting in a temple shape with a
ceremony will always be important,” he
says. “There’s some kind of a release of
energy and a purge of soul.” He hopes
that if he offers something never seen
before and impossible to
replicate at home, a chain
reaction will occur: audi-
ences will return to the
theaters, theaters will in-
vest in digital 3-D screen-
ing technology, studios
will finance projects, and
top filmmakers will jump
back into the medium.
Jerry Bruckheimer,
the veteran Hollywood
producer behind Gemini Man, shares
Lee’s optimism, likening this techno-
logical breakthrough to the jump from
black-and-white film to color. “If this
picture works, we’re kind of copycats,”
Bruckheimer says. “I think it’s an enor-
mous leap. Hopefully other filmmakers
will follow.”
Cameron’s Avatar sequels loom
somewhere on the horizon, while Lord
of the Rings director Peter Jackson is
also exploring the form. Lee hopes that
an institute or workshop will be created
to buoy young, curious 3-D filmmakers.
But before the cavalry arrives,
Lee is game to fight this battle alone.
He’s already set his sights on his next
dream project—a 3-D dramatization of
the 1975 Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier
match—and is just waiting on a finan-
cial green light. “For a long time, I al-
ways doubted. Am I crazy? Am I seeing
something that is just me seeing it? But
I don’t think I’m crazy,” Lee says with a
laugh. “With 3-D, it’s like looking at a
baby vs. a sophisticated artist. You have
OPENING PAGE: TRUNK ARCHIVE; GEMINI MAN: PARAMOUNT PICTURES to let this baby grow up.”