Reality, Fantasy, and 3D:

So I reviewed Tron:Legacy. I said I liked the movie, but didn't dig the use of 3D... so what?

Understanding 3D is important to being able to understand why it doesn't work, how it could work, how critics of media should approach 3D, and how producers of media can use 3D effectively.

The basic problem with 3D is that it feels unnatural. This may seem like a weird statement because we experience the world in 3D, and expect that 3D movies should feel more natural and lead to greater immersion than "regular" movies. Our expectation, and the expectation of investors in 3D technology is that 3D will just be better than normal movies. In my own experience, this is not the case. Basically, I have just rehashed what Alva Noë argued in her article The Myth Of 3-D Immersion.

The difference between Noë's article and mine?

I think I might be able to explain the failure of 3D:

The prevailing philosophy behind 3D is that because we actually experience the world in 3D, we will identify more with 3D stories. The astonishing thing about this assumption is that it is so close to being right, but yet misses the mark completely.

We live in a 3D world, this is true. We identify with stories told in 2D (with or without the illusion of depth). I argue that the failure of 3D is that it looks too real. In2D mediums, there is a natural amount of aesthetic distance that comes with knowing that the thing you are watching is not real.

3D technology as it stands is either too real, or very, very... fake. Either of these extremes pretty much spells out death for a storytelling technique. Having it look too fake is distracting, and makes us realize that we are seeing a special effect. Having it look too real turns us off because we lose that comfortable distance that allows us to experience the thrills of a movie without the consequences.

3D is striving for virtual reality, but would we like it if we had it? Wouldn't virtual reality be abhorrent to us? Does a virtual world that you couldn't distinguish from reality sound like fun? Think of any realistic war movie, and picture it in virtual reality. Not so fun.

What movie-goers want is an escape, not a trip down the rabbit hole.