I only ever tried the “d-box” seats on a theater once to see what the deal was. It was a Star Wars movie and sure enough it was nice how the seats moved according to how the spaceships flew across the screen and the like, but I never felt too strongly about trying it again until now. KotM may be the right movie for this feature: Imagine the seats jumping every time a kaiju takes a step, or to be sent in the direction of the wind every time a flying kaiju flaps its wings. There is potential.
Mr. Forrest reviews D-Box seats and Godzilla (US 2014)
okay let's just jump right in, shall we?
If you follow us on instagram, you'll know that part of the WASFS crew went to go see Godzilla the other night (that part of WASFS being Lames, Neokyoto, and myself). We saw it for full weekend IMAX RealD 3D in D-Box motion seats. $20/person. For a movie.
SO FOR THAT MUCH MONEY I SHOULD BE PRETTY DAMN ENTERTAINED, RIGHT?
AND I WAS SO ENTERTAINED YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOLY CRAP.
First, the movie was beyond what I expected. 90% of movies blow the entire plot in the trailer these days, Godzilla did not. Second, I thought Cranston was gonna be the main dude, he was not. Third, for $20 a seat, D-Box damn well better have been worth it, and it was.
I want this review to be more about D-Box than Godzilla, since you can read a better review of Godzilla anywhere on the internet, and you can get non-D-Box seats cheap for a matinee so you can see for yourself. That being said, if you've never been in a D-Box seat before, you will be so happy if your first go with it is at Godzilla. The D-Box seats are hella comfy, and come pretty far up your back. I'm a touch over six feet tall, average leg-to-torso ratio, and the top half of my head was the only thing not covered by the back of the chair when I sat straight up in it. The seats all have a small touchpad to the right of the seat of the chair that displays your seat number (the seats are reserved so the nice backlit screens help find your assigned seat quickly), and then allows you to adjust the motion strength in 4 steps (off, low, medium, high). I cranked mine up as soon as I realized I could. Some of the trailers were D-Box enabled which gives you time to adjust the effect to your liking before the movie starts. Most of the movements for the trailers and the movie were side-to-side and vibratory, though it seemed like other directions were occurring too, though that could have been a psychosomatic effect, I haven't looked into the chairs movement axes.
D-Box can be a really cool technology, however, the motion track for whatever movie would have to be really, really amazing to convince me to drop $20 bucks again. Matinee price, maybe, but other than that it's just not worth the upcharge. Some parts of the movie could have used more motion, and I can't help but think that if D-Box doesn't pick up the pace or lower their prices so they don't have to charge as much per ticket, no studios are gonna put up the money to have someone design a decent motion track, and they'll just get worse with time. HOWEVER that's just me rambling. It's awesome tech, I hope it catches on, I hope it gets cheaper, I hope it gets more immersive. It's totally worth checking out, if it's not your thing, I totally get that. But I thought it was awesome.
So that was the hypest shit imaginable. Gimmicky? God yes, but fun. I wouldn't want to make it a regular occurrence, but I'll probably end up seeing a couple more movies in D-Box in my lifetime. Can't imagine a movie that'd suit it more than Pacific Rim, though. I mean, I thought the fight with Leatherback and Otachi was cool before, but seeing it (or should I say "experiencing it"?) like this was something else. I could feel every footstep, every punch, everything really. And believe me, the conclusion of the battle with Otachi was incredible with my seat moving in unison with it. The Drift scenes were pretty awesome too. I just hope D-Box never reaches the point where it's shoved down our throats as bad as 3D is.
