JB: As a general rule, yeah. Still, there's danger in looking at 3D as an inherently flawed approach by comparing it to 2D, somewhat akin to considering silent films as inherently flawed compared to "talkies" (do we still call them that?), or black-and-white to color, simply because in one obvious area they are "less than." It seems unfair to demand that 3D be everything that 2D is "and more." Sure, that's the way that Hollywood is marketing these pictures, but Hollywood also markets the idea of Adam Sandler playing two roles in the same film as double the fun; that's marketing. Why can't 3D be "more" of one thing and less of something else, with those strengths and limitations understood and expected, rather than constantly praised and ridiculed? No one would take seriously a complaint from a 3D fan that the chariot race in Ben-Hur sucks because the horses don't seem to break the plane of the screen, so why should we be so quick to repeatedly slam 3D for being what it isn't and never tried to be? There's a kind of artistic bigotry in that, is there not?
To be clear, I say that as a means of trying to reframe the discussion that so often happens in relation to 3D, not to discourage debate (especially this one). Nor do I mean to imply that criticisms of 3D are invalid. Indeed, the "cardboard cutout" effect is the perfect example of how 3D creates dimension and removes it simultaneously (kind of like the kid who puts one foot back in the bathtub in order to dry the other one), which raises legitimate questions about whether 3D achieves its supposed aims. But to complain that images in the periphery of a composition's focal point are out of focus strikes me as akin to complaining that there's no sound in a silent picture—those complaints look for things that the filmmaker isn't (necessarily) attempting to provide.
Then again, if 3D's critics accept it for what it is, its fans should do the same, because ultimately praising the depth of a 3D picture is akin to praising the absence of color in a black-and-white movie. True, some 3D films will achieve that depth better than others, just like some black-and-white imagery is better than others. And, true, in this regenerated infancy of 3D movies, it's to be expected that there will be routine noticeable improvements in the craft that merit mentioning. Still, as much as I don't think 3D needs to be approached by traditionalist cinephiles with the revolted disgust usually reserved for sex offenders, and as much as movies like Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Hugo have made me curious, and maybe even a tiny bit hopeful, about the potential for 3D, I do wonder if 3D's worst enemy is in fact the 3D movement itself.
While only time will tell if this latest 3D craze is nothing more than a passing fad, I think it's fair to say that up to this point 3D films have, as a whole, thrived at the box office in large part due to their element of deviation, and even if 3D is here to stay, the newness and unusualness of 3D absolutely has an expiration date. Thus, while the parade of commercials for 3D TVs this past holiday season could signal the ingraining of 3D as an artistic norm (which is theoretically good for the 3D movement), it might also signal the demystification of 3D. And if that sounds like it's simply a concern for marketers trying to coax people to the multiplex, I don't think it is. Avatar, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Hugo each, in its own way, thrives on the delivery of an "alternate-world" experience that is diminished the closer that 3D gets to the norm. It stands to reason then that the more prevalent that 3D becomes, the less apparent its effect will be. And at that point the limitations of 3D might be what truly stands out.
EH: I agree that there's a certain novelty factor to 3D, which is why the technology has gone through such dramatic cycles of hype and disinterest. Maybe that cycle will be different this time, maybe 3D will be here to stay, but history makes me doubt it. Part of the cyclic appeal of 3D comes from the idea, instilled largely by marketing and hype, that 3D is somehow more "immersive" than plain old 2D film. This is patently false—we've already mentioned some of the ways in which 3D is actually less immersive—but it's nevertheless an appealing concept to a lot of filmmakers and viewers. Particularly with mainstream blockbusters and action movies, the idea of greater immersion has often been touted as a feature of both 3D and IMAX, sometimes even in combination with one another for some kind of mind-blowing ultimate immersion experience.
This obsession with immersion can be connected to the sci-fi promise of virtual reality, which would be the ultimate form of immersive entertainment. Some prophets of 3D would have us believe that the recent incarnation of the technology is a step forward, a baby step on the path towards the eventual realization of truly virtual reality media, but I just don't buy it. Even if we assume that total immersion is a desirable goal, which I'm not at all sure it is, 3D can provide only an approximation of such immersion, and a rather unconvincing one at that. 3D never makes me think, "Wow, Tintin is actually in the theater with me," because the effect is so artificial, relying on a quirk of human vision to create an illusion of depth. 2D movies have varying levels of immersion, too, in part because certain directors want viewers to forget they're watching a movie and focus on the story and characters, while more formalist and self-conscious directors deliberately break immersion with stylistic maneuvers. But that's a deliberate stylistic choice, and directors working in 2D have the freedom to make those choices, while whenever 3D does anything more than provide the kind of subtle depth cues that Spielberg mostly sticks to in Tintin, the audience is unavoidably going to be aware of the device.
That's why I still think that 3D is a fairly limited stylistic tool. It's not especially versatile: either things are flying out of the screen for sensationalist rollercoaster-like thrills, or the effect is barely noticeable. And often, when it is noticeable, it's for all the wrong reasons. One shot in Tintin that stuck out for me was an image of Bianca Castafiore (Kim Stengel) singing, in which she's at the center of the frame, while off to the left the blurry arm of an audience member juts out of the screen in the foreground. The shot should be directing all attention towards Bianca as she performs, but instead there's this ugly, out-of-focus appendage that's being jammed into my peripheral vision and distracting me. The composition is perfectly balanced in 2D, giving the impression that the shot is taken from the vantage point of an audience member listening to the concert, while the 3D is ridiculous.
JB: I'm glad you brought up Tintin, although it's probably telling that we haven't discussed it much to this point: it's an action-packed movie that's unbelievably unexciting. But that's no fault of the visuals. Although I have no doubt that scattered throughout the movie there are several moments like the one you just identified in which objects are distractingly out of focus, for the most part the 3D compositions are rich with color and texture, dramatically lit, thoughtfully arranged and cleverly staged. The hitch in the movie's giddy-up is that these incredible visual spectacles aren't rooted in any sort of emotional investment or dramatic consequence, which is a sin I didn't think the oh-so-sentimental Spielberg was capable of committing.
Part of the problem is probably the screenplay by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, which seems to assume an emotional investment in the main character per the comic book series that most members of the audience are unlikely to have. But the biggest snag is the motion-capture/digital animation format, which on the one hand frees Spielberg to stage wildly elaborate action sequences without "cuts" but on the other hand neuters the power of some of Spielberg's signature shots, among them "The Spielberg Face," a term explored by Kevin B. Lee in his recent (and terrific) video essay. Tintin seems to be evidence that Spielberg needs real eyes to gaze into to find emotion. Or maybe the movie just doesn't slow down long enough to be "about" anything other than the frenetic action sequence of the moment, leaving Tintin to play out like some digital tribute mashup to all the action sequences Spielberg has shot to this point or ever hoped to do. Either one.
To echo something you said near the start of this discussion, what's interesting to me about Tintin is that while I was constantly delighted by the movie's compositions, in particular its use of color, I was almost never consciously aware of its 3D. To some degree, I'm sure that's a product of my slow but steady acclimation to that visual format; Tintin was my fourth 3D experience in about a one-month span. But even if the subtlety of the 3D can be considered a filmmaking triumph, a sign that the effect can be applied inoffensively, accentuating but not dominating our experience, the inherent drawback is this: in memory, nothing about Tintin is "in 3D," not more so than any 2D movie, at least, and that's damning. When I reflect on Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the first image I recall is a shot in which the cave floor, littered with bone fragments and other debris, extends up and "away" from us, creating perhaps the most "authentic" 3D effect I've yet to encounter. And when I think of Hugo, I picture the aforementioned diorama effect of Méliès toy shop, or the way the dust particles in the train station twinkle in the foreground of several shots. But Tintin? I remember the fun shootout on the boat at night, which recalls a similar scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or the shots of Tintin flying a biplane into an enormous storm, but in my memory those scenes play out like standard 2D movie sequences. And while that isn't necessarily a "bad" thing, the fleeting impact of the 3D effects does invite the question of whether the 3D had any significant immediate impact whatsoever. Maybe the 3D in Tintin is just "there."
EH: That's my feeling as well. And while I can't really disagree with anything you say about Tintin, I think I do have somewhat warmer feelings towards the movie on the whole. The motion capture animation that the film uses is another technology, like 3D, that has made tremendous advances and improvements without quite overcoming its fundamental flaws, so all the human characters fall into the "uncanny valley" of being too realistic to register as a cartoon and too unreal to register as fully human. Motion capture has gotten better, and Tintin is probably the best I've ever seen the style look, but it's still distracting, as well as being an especially poor substitute for the elegant, artful linework of Hergé, the master cartoonist whose work Spielberg is adapting here. Even so, as an adaptation of this great source material, Spielberg does a fine job of capturing the gentle humor and boyish glee of the intrepid boy reporter as he careens around the world on his adventures, and a somewhat lesser job of capturing the subtle, elusive emotional subtexts that often glide through the comics.
That might be okay, though. Spielberg's Tintin is unrelentingly kinetic and intense, barreling through one grand set piece after another. This approach reaches overkill levels towards the end of the picture with an epic duel between dock cranes, which is too much, too soon after the adrenaline rush pleasures of the seemingly unending chase sequence through Bagghar. Before the crane duel, though, the film is unceasingly thrilling and fun, whether Spielberg's cramming in character humor—Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's Thomson and Thompson are note-perfect, as is the cameo by Bianca Castafiore—or unleashing one great action scene after another. I can see why some would complain that the film is emotionally empty, but for my part I appreciate that Spielberg made such a well-paced, exhilarating action flick without sentimentalizing the source material.
As you say, though, whatever else Tintin is, it plays in memory—and often even while it's on—as a 2D movie. That's certainly not the case with Hugo, a much more complex and emotionally compelling movie that's also far more aggressive in its application of 3D. If 3D is to have a future, it's not going to be with movies like Tintin, which use the effect mostly unobtrusively but also unimpressively. Although I'm still ambivalent about 3D, and on the whole I won't mind if the fad once more dies out (as unlikely as that seems at the moment), I will say that movies like Hugo or Cave of Forgotten Dreams alternately impress and annoy me with their 3D effects, but at least they really embrace the technology wholeheartedly and do something bold with it.
JB: My guess is you'll see more of that, because I don't think 3D is going away anytime soon. There were reports over the summer that the allure of 3D at the box office had waned, but I doubt that means much. First of all, the modern 3D craze can be drawn back to Cameron's Avatar, which was a record-setting hit, so of course interest was going to fall from there. More importantly, I haven't seen any reports that convince me the failing movies in question would have done better in plain old 2D. (Readers: If I'm wrong about this, please provide links.) Regardless, there's just too much money to be made in 3D right now, which is why Beauty and the Beast just came back in 3D, following in the paw prints of The Lion King over the summer, and the Star Wars movies will come back to the big screen in 3D later this year, and so will Titanic. I suspect that these enormously popular 2D films could be return-engagement hits in their original formats if they were marketed just as aggressively, but so long as a 3D ticket costs more, 3D creates the greater chance for big profits while giving marketers an excuse to pass off old as new.
Then there's this: since Cameron's Terminator 2 and Spielberg's Jurassic Park in the early 1990s, the highest grossing movies of any year have predominantly been adventure-based CGI spectacles. I don't want to imply that all of those movies were empty cash grabs, but Hollywood was already deeply entrenched in the practice of equating scale with awesomeness, and 3D fits into that business model much too neatly to be discarded. Thus, I fear the only way that 3D would really, truly go away would be if audiences completely gave up on the format, making a statement with their wallets, which is difficult to do when many multiplexes don't offer a 2D equivalent or make those screenings so limited that they are difficult to attend. Of course, it wouldn't hurt if the big-name directors refused to work in the format, because otherwise Hollywood has even the 3D-averse cinephiles by the balls. (Why did I see Hugo and Tintin in 3D? Two reasons: Scoresese and Spielberg.)
No doubt, many of us will keep bitching about 3D for as long as it hangs around, while others shrug and accept it. At the moment, I feel somewhere between those two poles. The only thing that would make me "want" to see a 3D movie would be curiosity about how a great filmmaker would use it, and yet I find the witch-hunt against 3D to be mostly silly and hypocritical. It was by embracing the new that motion pictures came along in the first place and then added sound and color, which no one seems to be protesting these days. Make no mistake, I don't view 3D as some natural evolutionary state of cinema by any means. But I predict it will remain in our future, even if I don't think it's the future. All of which means that 3D flicks like Hugo and The Adventures of Tintin will start to feel as ubiquitous as superhero movies. Now there's a genre of filmmaking that needs to go away!
Jason Bellamy ruminates on cinema at The Cooler. Follow his updates on Twitter.
Interesting discussion, though I would have hoped you'd have something to saw about Wim Wenders' Pina as well.
Not only do I remember 50′s era 3-D my favorite film of that era was Sangaree directed by Edward Ludwig (a great fave of Jean-Luc Godard's) It stars Fernando Lamas and takes place largely in a swamp.
Are there any 3-D prints of it still in existence?
Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder is a great film in 3-D and merely a good one, flat. It explores a single room with an intensity in excess of both Rope and Michael Snow's Wavelength (its only peers.)
David: Yeah, unfortunately we wrapped this conversation a few weeks before Pina became available, otherwise it would be been perfect to include.
I've never experienced Dial M for Murder in 3D, but as you watch it in 2D you can tell that Hitch was thinking 3D-first.
Hokahey says -
Thanks for all your great Conversations! You two are amazing.
I do not need 3D. If a movie presents its story vividly and absorbs me with its story, it's all 3D in my mind. I don't even need it if the result is "significant" because I am made too aware of the artifice because of the glasses. I saw the releases of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast in 3D and I noticed the added depth of field. Fine. Then the enchanting stories took over and I didn't care about the added depth. Interestingly, seeing the latter I learned how 3D can go wrong. I thought my glasses weren't working. Objects were blurry and had double lines. I got up, told the manager, and then the projectionist focused the 3D – which looked like a wipe cut falling over the frame twice, and then suddenly it was 3D. Interestingly, I think everybody else in the theater noticed the blurriness but was willing the endure the whole film unfocused.
I must say I am irritated by all these re-releases. I want new movies. However, I am very excited about one re-release: Titanic. I have seen the preview multiple times and it has gotten me as excited as I was when I saw the movie 6 times on the big screen in 97-98. I will definitely race to see this movie in April. (Ha! Sank in April, clever.) But I won't care if Jack and Rose and the bow of the ship strike me right between the eyes. I will just take delight in what is going on in the movie, as it has been going on since 1997.
David, I've never seen Dial M for Murder in 3D either, but I will say that I've always thought it was decidedly minor Hitch, charming but slight. Not sure if the extra dimension would change that for me.
Hokahey: what you say about an audience that would have been willing to sit there watching a blurry movie hints at something bigger, that audiences are pretty disinterested in aesthetics in general, which may explain why 3D, which often makes the images dim and blurry and disorienting, hasn't been able to succeed anyway.
Today's 3-D is nowhere near as blurry as it was in the past.
I'm not in favor of converting flat films to 3-D. It's aform that should be utilized from the first and worked all the way through. Hugo is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It's not a bag of tricks. It's 3-D gives us access to the world it creates that a falt film woudl not.
Pina,?i> recreates excerpts from a number of Bausch's dance theater peices. And as she tuilized the stage in a very full and complete way — with different actiosn going on simultaneously, 3-D truly enhances her work.
I enjoyed 3D in Pina and Herzog. The rest of the movies, not so much. It's bothersome to pay extra and wear those glasses and sit in a correct position just to… get the movie that's neither better or worse.
Pina and Herzog are about space. Ideal movies for 3D. It's like you are in theather in Wupperthal, it's like you are in the cave, you get to know the space you didn't know. You have to see it in 3D to truly understand what it's about.
I have yet to see a fiction movie that would have something like that. Even great directors, they say "now I thought in 3D" but you can see they didn't – they didn't envision the space, only the image.
Perhaps what's holding them back is that every movie has to be watchable in 2D. That's not a thing with other technologies: you don't have "talkies" that were made to be perfectly understandable without sound, etc. There are some special "3D-only" movies but as far as I know, they're all just some "let's explore Safari/the space/the ocean" mini-documentaries. No big 3D movie. I'm going to see Hugo in 3D just to check it out when I can, but I'm starting to think it will stay a gimmick not worth attention for some more time.
Hey guys, this is a really good piece. It reminds me: when I first heard that Scorsese and Spielberg were both releasing films in 3D at the tail-end of 2011, it made me think something along the lines of, "Well, if they can't convince me that 3D is actually worth a damn, nobody will."
In fact, I thought Hugo and The Adventures of Tintin were both, on their own terms, amazing, outstanding films; they both made my Top 5 of the year. I did, however, have mixed feelings about the ways in which they each utilized 3D. For me, Hugo had plenty of charms that *included* its striking usage of 3D, whereas Tintin turned out to be a great film *in spite of* its rather superfluous use of the medium. This passage by Ed sums up my feelings rather well:
With Hugo, I had two extreme reactions to the 3D imagery: I thought it was inventive and powerful at times (especially in the recreations of Georges Méliès' films) and distracting and gimmicky at others, as in all the shots where something juts out of the frame just because it can. While watching Tintin, on the other hand, there were long stretches where I barely noticed the 3D. Some of the frenzied action sequences were perhaps a little more disorienting than they would have been in 2D, and occasionally I felt that familiar and uncomfortable 3D sensation of having my gaze ripped from one focus to another. For the most part, though, I felt like Tintin did very little with 3D, for good or ill, but maybe that's just because it's such a different movie than Hugo.
Here's something else I might add to that. Hugo was, without a doubt, the best experience I've ever had with 3D in a theater, and the sheer act of admitting this brings a goofy smile to my face; I mean, after all the senseless garbage that's come out of 3D in the last 3 or 4 years or so, it finally took the director of Taxi Driver to master the process? The irony of that just makes chuckle.
But then I look at some of those magical 3D shots in Hugo, like the train popping out of the screen (a brilliant way of giving modern-day audiences an inkling of how audiences back in the pre-motion picture days might have reacted to such a shot), and I'm not laughing anymore. Hugo really IS a splendid demonstration of how to do 3D the right way, and I say that as one who has witnessed some of the more excessive uses of it at those theme parks in Orlando, Florida (namely Terminator 3D). Although I can't really argue with Ed's suggestion that Hugo has its "gimmicky" 3D moments, I don't have much of a problem with them. When the director is Scorsese, I'm usually open to just about anything gimmicky (as long as it ain't boring).
Now, with Tintin, I can't say for sure whether the 3D was all that necessary. Unlike with Hugo, where the 3D factors into the storyline (innovations in the movie industry), the 3D in Tintin is just kind of… there. I think the movie itself is great, but as far as the 3D goes, I don't remember much that made it any more exciting than it would have been had I seen it in 2D.
The one distinct 3D shot in all of Tintin that I remember enjoying the hell out of is the golden treasure coins flying straight out of the screen after Francis Haddock has blown up Red Rackham's ship. But aside from that one, uber-cool shot, I don't remember much about the 3D. Maybe there were some 3D enhancements in that long-take chase sequence in Bagghar at the end, but if there were any, I couldn't tell you; my attention was focused too much on the brilliant economy of the sequence in general. You don't need 3D for that.
The discussion you guys have been having on the merits of Tintin itself is interesting. I'm a fan of the Herge comics, but I will concede that Jason's criticism about how Wright, Moffat and Cornish probably assume too much emotional involvement, from the audience, in Tintin himself — as a character — is a valid one. Then again, however, Hugo in Hugo wasn't all that well-developed, either. In fact, I'd argue that Hugo and Tintin are both intended to be juvenile windows into the lives of older, broken adult characters in the two stories. Hugo is not meant to be Hugo's story, but Georges Melies'. Similarly, The Adventures of Tintin is not meant to be Tintin's story, but Captain Haddock's. Here is a man who is a drunk, a loser and a pauper — an embarrassment to his family legacy. Tintin and Snowy, however, are instrumental in restoring Haddock his dignity, and that's what makes the film more emotionally-involving than its detractors suggest.
There are, after all, going to be Tintin sequels (isn't Peter Jackson going to direct the next one?), so we have an entire trilogy to learn more about Tintin as a protagonist. What we learn about him in The Secret of the Unicorn is quite enough: he's intelligent, he's punctual, he's observant, and he tries to prevent distractions in his missions whenever he can (notice that witty scene where he insists Haddock stop drinking, so that he can finish his story about Red Rackham's treasure). There's also Snowy, who is quite possibly the smartest movie dog to come along in quite awhile. Most dogs in Hollywood movies these days tend to be dumb and reckless, but Snowy is actually a SMART dog, capable of solving crimes and getting to the bottom of mysteries (just like his master). Only Uggie in The Artist makes for stiff competition.
But back to 3D. I was so floored by Scorsese and Spielberg both trying their hand at the process last year that I was disappointed Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt didn't see the light of 2011, too. Coppola has, apparently, been struggling with the process; he's been known to badmouth 3D before, and I suspect the only reason he's been trying to use it on Twixt is because his producers advised him to. Incidentally, I have no idea when Twixt is actually going to be released. Anyone know?
Ogqozo makes a great point: "Perhaps what's holding them back is that every movie has to be watchable in 2D. That's not a thing with other technologies: you don't have 'talkies' that were made to be perfectly understandable without sound, etc."
I think that's pretty much right on, and may just be the #1 reason why 3D is so inconsistent. Directors essentially have to hedge their bets a little because a movie that ONLY works in 3D would be a big problem for distribution and DVDs and TV viewing.
Adam, I agree with you about Tintin. Jason probably is right that the film assumes too much emotional involvement from the audience, but like you, it wasn't much of a problem for me because I love the comics. The script smartly draws a lot of good stuff from Secret of the Unicorn (the drinking/story scene you mention is right out of Herge, and Herge's staging of it is arguably better) along with selected bits and pieces from other albums. Making the film Haddock's story of redemption, though, is an invention of the script, and as you say, a very good one: it's a surprisingly moving story, and he's the film's real character, while Tintin is pretty much a pleasant cipher, which works just fine IMO.
Cosign on Ogqozo's observation.
Adam: Hugo is not meant to be Hugo's story, but Georges Melies'. Similarly, The Adventures of Tintin is not meant to be Tintin's story, but Captain Haddock's.
Agree on TINTIN. The thing with HUGO, though, is that it's very much about childlike wonderment, which makes it very much Hugo's story, even when it's Hugo and Isabelle's story, and, to some degree, even when it's OUR story, as Scorsese attempts to make us remember what it is to fall in love with movies for the first time. Tintin is much more of a cipher. I didn't dislike him. But somehow I found his adventures lacking, mainly because the movie never stops long enough to take a breath between them.
Great conversation guys! This actually might be the first in the series where I find myself more in agreement with Jason (haha, please don't take any offense, either of you! The argumentative dichotomy is always a pleasure). I find this traditionalist denial of 3D to be really aggravating and pretty regressive, because one of the fundamental ways in which art forms advance is through technological experimentation. Ed, I consider the perception of 3D as "limiting" to be, well, a limited perspective. If we look at 3D only in terms of how the form is being used at this moment – that is, with greedy, cynical blockbuster spectacles at worst and accessible stylistic exercises from powerhouse filmmakers like Scorsese and Spielberg at best – then yes, the third dimension seems pretty dismal and uninspiring. But I am skeptical of any outright dismissal of a technique in itself, especially when that dismissal rests on criticisms that judge the technique through some other yardstick (2D). Jason's point is particularly well put: "the problem with that argument is that it falsely implies that 2D films aren't full of the same: moments in which filmmakers "force" our eyes to points on the screen, either by what they choose to leave in focus or by what they choose to leave outside of the frame altogether." While the norm in 3D films at the moment is that they do encourage passive viewership, that's not to say that some artist will come along and singlehandedly try to reverse that trend. Not to mention that it's hard to argue that most contemporary 2D Hollywood blockbusters – marketed right alongside 3D features – don't create a passivity in the audience.
I'm definitely not celebrating 3D, especially not when it has so many hurdles to overcome at the moment. But if it can sidestep some of the logistical pitfalls (the cumbersome glasses, the blurriness) – and there's no reason that it cannot considering the rapid rate of technological progress in the world today – I believe that something truly unique and inspirational can emerge from 3D. For the sake of argument, what if the second-coming of Stan Brakhage came along and made a 3D experiment? What if someone used double or triple projection with the added depth of 3D? Essentially, what if a director acknowledged and took glorious advantage of 3D's unusual ability to problematize human vision and perception? When that happens, it certainly won't be marketed towards the multiplexes, but I'd be the first in line wherever it screens.
Carson: Truly, no offense taken. (I can only imagine your exasperation as you read this. "Wait. What? I'm agreeing with fucking Bellamy again? This can't be right!")
Your last paragraph hits on something that Ed and I danced around but never completely engaged with: I think it's safe to assume that 3D's reputation among "serious" cinephiles is being tarnished in part because the technique is being used to not-so-serious ends, creating an association between 3D and gimmickry that I'm not sure is intrinsic. In saying that I don't mean to imply that the criticisms against 3D are baseless — in general or when applied to the films we discussed. However, I'm sure 3D would be seen differently if a filmmaker like Brakhage was the one leading the 3D movement and not someone like Cameron.