News Reporter: Act Four: IMAX is finally recognizing that viewers prefer 2D movies. Thank goodness.

Friday 28 July 2017

Act Four: IMAX is finally recognizing that viewers prefer 2D movies. Thank goodness.

Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics

The Natural History Museum hosted a free viewing of an IMAX 3-D film in the Johnson Theater. (Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution)

A quick programming note: Posting on Act Four is probably going to be a little slow for the next few weeks as I finish up the reporting and writing on a major project. But I’m not going to disappear entirely; “Game of Thrones” coverage will continue even when I’m on vacation, and I’ll certainly be reviewing “Detroit” next week, to name just a few things.

One of the first items in the Hollywood Reporter’s daily roundup of entertainment news brought this struggling critic a much-needed note of relief in this summer of insanity. Imax has declared that because viewers would rather see movies in 2-D than in 3-D, that’s where its focus is going to lie. And while there is a lot more going on in the announcement than just that detail, I am offering a beleaguered sigh of gratitude.

I have my own particular reasons for hating 3-D movies: I wear glasses but not contacts, and so every time I attend a 3-D screening, I have to plonk those glasses over the pair I’m already wearing. That means the 3-D glasses aren’t positioned correctly on my nose and relative to my eyes, so 3-D movies always look a little bit off to me, and when I write reviews of them, I tend to find myself correcting for nausea or headache in delivering my verdict.

Beyond that, I tend to think there are very few directors who have found way to use 3-D as a truly effective filmmaking technique. Far too many 3-D conversions are about giving audience the feeling that objects and people and sometimes laser bolts are being lobbed out at them from the screen, rather than creating the feeling that the viewer is tumbling through the screen and into a compelling spectacle. The result often feels like a party trick that exists to get people to pay higher prices for movie tickets, even if the experience they’re paying for isn’t radically different or more pleasurable than just seeing the darn thing in two dimensions. Audiences may not always share my tastes, but movie theaters should give folks credit for being able to spot an upcharge when they see one.

There are exceptions. “Gravity,” for example, made me feel like I was falling into space. The queasiness of that experience was intentional, and it was very effective. But until filmmakers find ways to make a third dimension an essential part of the viewing experience, audiences are probably going to reject it. My eyeballs will welcome the break.

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