“With a blockbuster-filled holiday weekend skewing heavily toward 2-D, and 3-D ticket sales dramatically underperforming relative to screen allocation, major studios will hopefully begin to rethink their 3-D rollout plans for the rest of the year and 2012”

3D How to Train You Dragon was right up there with Avatar, if not better.

Basically, *true* 3-D is where the movie screen is like a portal, like you're right outside the edge of a holodeck looking in to another world, from the vantage point of the camera. It would be amazing. What we have is nothing like that.

Your brain already does that on a 2D movie. It treats the screen as a glass pane, and assigns depth to the elements behind it. The only way to make 3D have value is to ensure it moves in front of that glass pane, where it's truly noticeable, because your brain won't do that to a 2D image. If the audience is ducking or feels like they can reach out to touch certain elements, then the 3D is impressive. Without that, it is barely noticeable.

It certainly does not. If our brains already gave depth to items without visual cues, we would have no need for techniques like depth of field. The whole reason things like drop shadows exist on graphics or windows is because our eyes have a hard time separating things without them. It adds the depth that the screen doesn't have, and our eyes can't make.

Well-done 3D actually does exactly what you're saying our eyes do for us. It creates depth where there is none. A believable effect can't be sustained when you're popping things out, due to the screen edges. The only way to make it realistic is to shrink your video and create a faux-border on which you can overlay 3D pop-outs. That's lame because it lowers your screen real estate. Indeed, the only way to create a good 3D effect is to make it less obvious. This is what certain films like Avatar or video games like Killzone 3 got right.

3D How to Train Your Dragon was, indeed, awesome, as was Toy Story 3.

I actually preferred Avatar in 2D.

They do kind of suck. They haven't made a great movie since Hurt Locker and Avatar, but they keep whining that it's piracy that's killing their sales.

Maybe when Hollywood realizes that Hollywood sucks, we'll be in business.

Probably not a new video to most of you, but it warrants embedding at this point in the conversation!

Wow, with 42 critic reviews, X-Men: First Class is at 98% on rottentomatoes. Hrmmmmmm....

Then there's the matter of the glasses. I have yet to use a pair of 3-D glasses that didn't suck. It's especially problematic if you wear glasses normally. Until such time that one is able to either no need glasses or have comfortable glasses options that work 3-D will only be a niche market.