Saturday, February 19, 2011

IMAX 3D Still Isn't Worth It

We saw Tron Legacy last weekend and I've concluded that IMAX 3D still isn't worth it.  I had actually already decided not to see any more IMAX 3D movies but, because I heard a recommendation that Tron was particularly worth it, I tried it again.

It wasn't.  The movie was okay, as most reviews said, but the 3D was terrible and just in the way.  Maybe something was wrong with my glasses, but I tried another pair with no improvement.  There were multiple reflections of high contrast images, bright white on black, off axis.  I suspect this might have been a result of 3D glasses over my regular glasses, but I never noticed it before.   There is a lot of high-contrast coloring in Tron.

Still the biggest problem is that 3D makes a giant, five-story-tall IMAX screen look like a small screen in front of you.  This is necessarily true since it's a property of 3D photography.  I still love the IMAX experience of the giant screen and the incredible sound.  3D simply destroys the giant screen experience.

I'll grant that Avatar was really amazing in IMAX 3D, but I don't intend to see another IMAX 3D movie regardless of what people say.  From now on when I make the rare trip into a movie theatre, I'll seek out the digital, e.g., DLP, high-resolution projections and will avoid 3D altogether for the most part.