Now in 3D:

After reading The Myth Of 3-D Immersion by Alva Noë, I started thinking about 3D movies and how whether they are an effective form of communication. A 3D movie I saw recently was TRON: Legacy.

Now, I'm not going to give a critique of the film itself because Legacy was my introduction to the world of Tron and I don't think I should critique the movie itself without having seen the original. However, I what I am going to talk about is the film's use of 3D.

In Tron: Legacy, 3D was used to help reinforce the digital feel of "the grid". 3D effects were used as in the movie to make the motorcycle ride at the beginning of the movie seem more exciting, and were used once Flynn gets on the grid so that the movie-goer would remember that the grid is a virtual reality(VR). Overall use of 3D made sense in the movie. It was a rather distracting to go from a scene without 3D to one with it, but again... overall it made sense (given that it was VR).

That being said, I was not thrilled with the experience. As Noë put it "3-D is thrilling, surprising, and slightly upsetting" what it does not deliver is what 3D movies promise: immersion into the world of the film. When 3D was used in Tron:Legacy, it was not subtle - You knew you were seeing something in 3D.

Where am I going with this? Here: