The complaints were more like ones that might be expected from people who took a wild ride on a roller coaster: dizzy and nauseous. But they came from people seated in movie theaters in China watching the latest 3-D version of the film Jason Bourne.
Last week, Chinese social media was full of the complaints from moviegoers about the latest Bourne sequel that was released in China on Aug 23.
"There were a line of people throwing up in the restroom of the cinema I went to yesterday…I'm not exaggerating," one moviegoer wrote under a post about the film on China's social networking site Weibo, according to the website Quartz. In Beijing, residents in the Chaoyang district organized a protest against the 3-D screening, according to the London newspaper The Independent.
"This is just a wild story,'' about the quality of Universal Studio's 3-D version of the film, said Marc Ganis, president of Jiaflix, which helps US studios distribute films in China. "Maybe something was rushed and they had to get it in 3-D, because they're too good of a shop, too good of a company. There has to be some other reason why this happened."
The apparent reason: The film's director Paul Greengrass shot several sequences using a handheld camera and then made rapid cuts to create a fast-paced, hectic edit, combined with 3-D effects. But it was too hectic for many moviegoers.
The movie has mostly screened in 2-D format in releases around the world including in the US, but was screened in 3-D in China, most likely to cash in on demand for the format, where ticket prices for 3-D showings can often bring 30 percent revenue than 2-D ones, benefiting studios and their distributors.
3-D is so popular in China that cinema chain Wanda said it will build 4,000 3-D screens over the next four years.