I just got out of a special opening day ceremonies presentation here at Showest where Jeffery Katzenberg introduced a scene from 2009's Monsters vs. Aliens. The film will be presented in what Dreamworks is calling Ultimate 3-D, and all of their future animated films will be presented in this 3-D format.
The scene shown to us was a spaceship that had landed on Earth. It's shaped like a bullet and has one large eye in the center of it, and the eye was moving around checking out all of the military and news vehicles that were on the ground.
A helicopter lands and a bunch of secret service men march out escorting the President of the United States (played by Steven Colbert). The President says he must make contact alone and begins to walk up an enormous staircase that stops just in front of the ship's giant eye. Halfway to the top he starts panting and someone from the side hands him a cup of water like he's in a marathon. Once he gets to the top of the stairs, he begins to play the tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind on a small Casio keyboard.
He then plays from what i remember, is the theme from Beverly Hills Cop with funky background music. He starts to moonwalk, then do the splits while the secret service men bob their heads. After a second, the door showing the giant eyeball slams shut and the robot begins to sprout giant arms and lift itself off the ground right after it smashes the piano. The President and secret service men run for the helicopter and the President orders the military to fire on the now walking spacecraft. We then see shots of military men, tanks and jet fighters all firing on the space invader. Even the President gets a few shots in with a Desert Eagle handgun before taking off.
The 3-D presented was amazing looking. The film has a fifties feel to it but with modern day planes and technology. One scene showing a far away point of view of planes and tanks firing on the ship looked amazing. The humor wasn't that great, but I've yet to be impressed with the jokes in Dreamworks cartoons. For some reason, they're very sitcom-ish, but the movie doesn't come out for another year, so perhaps it'll be really funny. But it has a great look to it and the 3-D was fantastic. Looks like Dreamworks may have another hit on their hands!
