Have you been annoyed that it isn't expensive enough to go to the movies? Are you upset that Hollywood spends so much money on great screenplays and not enough on flashy effects? Well, good news! Four major studios are subsidizing a program to install 3-D projectors in 10,000 movie theaters, helping along the further degradation of Hollywood storytelling in favor of bigger and better explosions.

Sure, this sounds perhaps overly technophobic, and we're never ones to deny the pleasures of a big, fat cinema spectacle. But, as many have pointed out, there's little difference between the current vogue for 3-D among studios and theater owners and the various audience-baiting technological advancements introduced into theaters in the fifties, as movies were panicking about competition from newly emergent television.

Does this mean that the movies Hollywood makes over the next few years will be empty spectacles on par with early 3-D and Cinemascope features? Maybe not — maybe they'll just be the same movies they were going to make anyway, only they'll cost $15 million more to make than expected, thanks to 3-D expenses. But, on the other hand, maybe so. After all, the shining star of the new 3-D revolution is not an action movie or a fantasy film or even, you know, porn; it's Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert. Are you ready to pay $17 to see more of that?

Studios Announce a Deal to Help Cinemas Go 3-D [NYT]