Why is 3D endlessly trashed in the mainstream press?

I am a fan of 3D. I wish it was more widely adopted and had more content. I am excited to see what the future is for 3D. Any word about holographic displays and when we might possibly see something on the commercial or consumer side? Wonder if that will advance enough and fast enough to take over 3D as it is todya.

I love 3D and collect everything I can that is 3D. This may be to my love for 3D in the movies in the 1950s and that I owned a Mitsubishi 3D Ready TV for two years before any 3D material was available. I think 3D will not die as there are enough of us to keep supporting it. Also 3D seems more popular abroad at least at the movies. I just saw Ice Age 4 in Latvia a country of 2 million people where the audio was in Latvian. To my surprise they used active Xpand 101 glasses instead of polarized passive.

Go to any one anti-3D article and the comments section will be littered with 90% negative comments. I don't know why.

Unfortunately sometimes crappy filmmaking and/or dim projections do occur, and people don't want to put forth the effort to inform that particular theater- they'd rather go complain on the internet til the end of time. After too many negative experiences, some people seem to have sworn off 3D unconditionally, rather than try to pursue better theaters and research the background of a particular film before paying the premium.

And the people on the internet have a very specific taste: let's see superheros beat up aliens. Unfortunately most of them have been conversions done in haste, and a lot of them were origin films with tons of dialog and not enough 3D planning aside from "Let's have a pop out moment here."

Nobody's seen Hugo or Tintin. Nobody wants to watch "kiddie" movies. It's really depressing.

But I'm looking up. It's way too early to call it quits on 3D, we're still in the Model T phase as Cameron says. As popularity wanes, my excitement skyrockets as I feel that the 3D output is dramatically improving, with upcoming movies like The Hobbit, Great Gatsby, Gravity, Life of Pi, Pacific Rim, and many others. Plus I'm sure that the next generation of game consoles will significantly increase both the image quality and the number of games that support 3D. And movie theaters will get laser projectors, doing away with brightness issues. Maybe even 48fps will catch on?
Edited by cakefoo - 7/18/12 at 8:10pm

There are 3 3D movies playing at my theater right now........

Ebert just can't let it go as he slams 3D even when reviewing a movie that is not in 3D (Dark Knight Rises). He's so bitter and consumued with 3D that I'll bet when he's eating dinner he gets lost in anger and over chews his food and bites off a piece of his water glass. His wife then says "Rog honey, ya gotta let it go. 3D is killin ya" These 3D hater, jokers are the most bitter lot I've come across lately. They should all seek counsel. "My name is Roger Ebert and I'm a 3D hater."

Ebert can no longer chew or bite anything. His lower jaw was removed due to cancer.

It's always the haters that make the most noise. They have their own reasons for disliking 3D, mostly related to headaches or eye sight issues but with these issues come a massive amount of insecurity too and they only way they can deal with their 3D failing is to try and spoil it for everybody else too. Human nature at its worst.

I detest lots of things but don't feel any particular need to spoil it for people who have the opposite opinion.

I think the right movie in 3D attracts audiences like Nectar attracts Bees and nothing the luddites and naysayers say and do will change that. Wait until the Hobit comes out in 3D! I bet audience numbers for the 3D showing will be significantly high both in the US and globally.

And many will be complaining . . . "it doesn't look like film!"

Just another subject to get the haters excited about - 48 fps. We have already seen the tip of the iceberg on that.

Oh well . . . the world is full of Luddites.

Sure, but from a ten minute clip of film that was a long way from finished its a bit early to judge how well 48 frame will go down in an actual full length feature. I hope people will accept the 48 frame rate within half an hour of the film starting and most may not give it a second thought after that. I hope so anyway.

In a previous thread . . . a long time ago . . . in a Forum far far away () I posted some negative comments with links that were made by some media types about the coming of High Definition Television.

Some people just do not like change - no matter what the change is. Well I feel sorry for them. . . . OK - that's not being honest. I really don't care about them at all. Change will come whether they like it or not.

I too am a fan of 3D! I just wish it were cheaper to get 3D titles at home. The base price of $34 is way too high, but thankfully, there's Ebay and Craigslist. Now and again Best Buy or Fry's will have some $19 movies, which does help. But overall, if more movies were shot correctly with 3D in mind like Avatar, Hugo, etc. people may have a better understanding of them. Now that I think about it, usually when you have your mind thinking one way, it's hard to get it out of that mindset, so they'll probably have something bad to say just because. Oh well. Let's just hope they keep making 3D movies, and get better and better at it, as well as making it more affordable for those of us who want to watch at the leisure of our homes.

I think 3D done well is fantastic, and 3D Blu-Ray was a major motivation for me purchasing a new TV this year. Honestly, I even enjoy the subtle depth and dimension present in post-conversions. I can see why people wouldn't like 3D, but the3D hatred is blown out of proportion amongst moviegoers and consumers.

I sell TVs, and to be truthful, a lot of the time I avoid telling a prospective buyer that the TV they're looking at is 3D unless they ask. TV buyers seem to be under the impression that 3D adds to the cost of a display, and that other than that, a 3D set and 2D-only set from the same manufacturer will offer the same 2D performance. Correcting this line of thought gets really (really) tiring after a while. Even better, I find that most consumers who seem vehemently opposed to 3D have never actually seen any 3D. I offer to demo it to them, and a good portion of the time, they -gasp- actually find that they like it! I just think that too often, people either hear from a friend how horrible 3D is, and negative popular opinion does nothing to help people develop their own opinion.

It don't help when numerous stores demo'ing 3D tv's are set up wrong, glasses broke and the TV's not even working at times. I have seen so many times they are playing a 2D movie with 3D glasses near by to view, customers walk up and look and then walk off thinking "well hell 3D sucks"

I don'y know why 3D Blu-Ray costs so much in your part of the world. I have never paid more than about £20.00 for a 3D title here in the uk. On a standard of living comparison basis rather than the financial exchange rate, that about 20 bucks which is much more reasonable. Some titles are less than 10 bucks here now.

I am here in the US and when 3D blu-ray movies first come out for purchase, their price is around $34, but there is usually always a promotion where it becomes $24.99 or $19.99 either on the week it comes out or a few weeks or months later. I will never buy them at full price, so I usually wait for a sale or promotion so that I get them for no more than $24.99. If it's an ok movie, I'll only buy it for $19.99 and if it's something I really like, then $24.99. I was lucky and picked up a few from Craigslist locally when Hugo, TinTin, Tron, etc came out for $20 a piece, so that was nice.

I'm now waiting for Sammy's Tale, Prometheus and a whole bunch others to come out now. It seems like the only way I can 3D at home is to rent from Vudu for about $8 a movie, but I always rather own it, so I would rather buy them instead. Before 3D, I would always just rent blu-ray movies from Blockbuster, but with 3D, I'm having to buy them to watch. I guess I should just rent movies but get too torn between buying and renting. Oh well, that's problem