The 3-D Experience

I enjoy a well-done 3-D movie. The animated movie Up brilliantly uses 3-D to immerse viewers in the world the filmmakers have created. Even though it's animated, it feels much more real than some other movies. There are very few "flying eyeballs" (our affectionate term for when 3-D movies concentrate their 3-D effects on having things come out of the screen at you). After a while, you don't even notice the 3-D, other than just realizing that you feel a part of the world.

How many of these people are really asleep? Thanks to Michal Husak on WikiCommons

Most 3-D experiences are not like this. Sometimes they are tacked on, converted from a traditional print just because the movie companies think that everybody wants 3-D. It looks fake and takes you out of the movie.

So studios think that people want 3-D so much that they are making "regular" movies into 3-D as well? Seriously, does The Great Gatsby need to be in 3-D?

Movie sales would seem to differ.

According to Entertainment Weekly, ticket sales for 3-D movies have been going down recently, as people seem to be avoiding it (or at least not making an effort to go to the 3-D version)

"According to Universal, only 27 percent of Despicable Me 2‘s opening-weekend gross came from 3-D tickets, the lowest 3-D share in modern box office history. Notably, the record low comes just two weeks after Monsters University notched a 31 percent 3-D share on its opening weekend, which at the time was the worst 3-D performance ever."

3-D televisions haven't taken off like everybody (where "everybody" means TV companies) thought they would. They are becoming more and more of a fad than the future of television.

According to Extreme Tech, the difference between last year and this year at tech conventions has been stark.

"At CES 2012, you couldn't move for 3D TVs, ugly polarizing spectacles, and — because the viewer at home can’t take part in the awesomeness that is 3D — those awful, it’s-so-real-it’s-bursting-out-of-the-screen posters (below). At IFA — the big, mid-year consumer electronics event in Berlin — it was clear that 3D TV was on its way out. Today, at CES 2013, 3D TV is dead."

We never bought into the 3-D TV craze, partially because of the expense, though also a big part of it was that it just didn't feel necessary. Expense, I'm sure, played a big part in a lot of people avoiding it, though. For some reason, TV companies didn't seem to realize that most people aren't living by themselves. Why these 3-D televisions only came with one pair of glasses, I will never know. Especially when the glasses could cost upwards of $100.

For me, I don't make a point of seeing a movie in 3-D at all. We look at the movie show times, see which ones work for us (we usually do a double-header, so want to minimize the wait in between movies), and if one of those happens to be 3-D, then so be it.

Also, Cineplex has the new UltraAVX experience, where you get to choose your seats when you buy the tickets, the seats are much more comfortable and the screen is bigger and better. Most of the movies in there are 3-D, so you don't have any choice. We saw Wolverine last week in this theater, so we were stuck with the 3-D version of it.

Frankly, if it wasn't for the AVX experience and great seats, we wouldn't have bothered. I thought the 3-D was really unnecessary and didn't really do much to enhance the movie.

I wonder how many people buy the AVX tickets just for the seats and not for the 3-D?

I don't know what the next advance in movie-making will be, but I think 3-D is quickly hitting a dead-end. If the percentage of 3-D sales to regular sales continues to go down, I can't imagine studios will continue with it. At least not to the extent it is now.

What do you think? Do you like 3-D movies? What are some of your favourites? And which ones have been completely pointless?

Did you buy a 3-D TV?

Let me know in the comments!