Some Fucked-Up Shit: 3D IMAX Porn?

Some people like their porn big. There’s a lot of different ways to take that statement: big body parts, big people, big production values, big budget, big names. With porn as mainstream as it is today, it’s hard to see why the adult film industry wouldn’t keep growing and growing and growing some more. But I think that we’ve reached the Outer Limits of how far porn can go, at least in this country, as Gizmodo reported the production on the world’s first adult movie shot in 3D IMAX.

Director Stephen Shiu is working on the film, titled 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, which is being shot in Hong Kong on IMAX cameras. The story, as if anyone cared, is adapted from the Chinese erotic tale called “The Carnal Prayer Mat” about “a man who meets a duke who introduces him into a world of luxurious orgies.” Again, porn plots mean less than preseason football games, but this one at least has some promise. It’s not just “Oh, I don’t have any pizza money again…”

The film is reportedly costing $3,000,000 USD to produce – a great leap beyond the last top spender Pirates XXX – and will bring the audience as close as ever to the actors’s… emotions. “The sex scenes are explicit and sometimes violent, but the main theme of the story is love. There will be many close-ups. It will look as if the actors are only a few centimeters from the audience” says Shiu. Not only that, but the film will be screened in 3D. Glasses will be provided, but when they say “dispose after show,” they mean it this time.

And not to be outdone, Hustler entertainment is reportedly working on its own 3D adult movie, this one a spoof of Avatar, which I have to assume is the closest thing I will ever see to Smurfs fucking. It would seem that the race is on to hit the screen first, and possibly be the first to usher in a new evolution in adult entertainment.

All right, now that the honest reporting is done, let’s get down to the business of making fun of this idea. Here’s my biggest problem: the whole point of the Internet revolution was to abolish the awkwardness of sitting in a seedy theater and watching a dirty movie with a guy wearing a trenchcoat about three times larger than it should be. That is what allowed pornography to be as accepted as it is now. When watching porn no longer meant serious embarrassment, health risks and possible dismemberment, people got it into their head that porn could be a safe and fun way to explore your sexuality.

And with that acceptance came easy access to adult materials. If you’re 13 and have access to the Internet, you can have two Asian lesbians scissoring each other while wearing masks of ex-Presidents on your screen in less than five minutes. And it’s all free. The low/no cost and the easy access are the staples of modern pornography viewing. It doesn’t matter that the picture is the size of a Post-It note, the audio is sometimes out of sync, and the actors can be downright fugly. It’s porn, it’s free, and I can have it at almost any time I want. The future is now, and it is sexy!

These factors are what is causing producers of adult films to start innovating before the bottom falls out of the industry. The biggest motivating factor for new talent entering porn nowadays is the promise of making a lot of money very quickly. With the rise of the Internet, the smarter porn stars are becoming entrepreneurs, starting their own websites and publishing their own content that users have to pay to see. If you’ve got a big name or are unusually attractive (or kinky), you can do just fine. Most people that I know, however, due to either bad financial situations or just plain laziness are happy with surfing RedTube at two minutes a clip and no charge to them.

So, like the music industry turning CDs into little gift baskets for anyone willing to buy them, adult films will try to incentivize you to spend money on bigger productions with elements that are out of the budget of the Bang Bus. 3D is a neat little gimmick and when done right, can add a sense of depth and realism to the film. It’s been dubiously successful for Hollywood, where getting the audience closer to the action is a laudable goal. Can’t really say the same for the porno industry. 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy might pretty up their sex scenes and make them feel like the highest form of art ever conceived by man, but I’d be willing to bet that some people will feel too close to the actors, like they are being made to stand in the room and watch these people fuck as a weird sort of punishment. And consider the screening in IMAX? A vagina so big that it could swallow me whole should only exist in the deepest recesses of my nightmares, not on a 60’ screen in front of me and the other creeps that turned up. Not to mention the male sentiment of watching sex on a screen that big; I already feel inadequate because of porn actors on the Internet, so my idea of fun is not going to be spending $20 to watch Cockzilla.

To be fair, this was inevitable. As porn grows in popularity and acceptedness, the natural reaction is to go farther, to find the edge of where porn is accepted and where it is rejected. 3D porn is here, but I don’t believe it’s here to stay. The price and awkward presentation will keep the mainstream market away. I believe that devices like the RealTouch, where a sex toy manipulates you in sync with the actions on screen, is the future for porn. Once the price goes down, you’ll spend big money to feel like you’re a part of the action, not just a third wheel forced to whack it while the beautiful people have fun.

If that is the future, remember that your loved ones will also want to be romantic with you as well. Furthering the species is nice.