So I went to see Iron Man 3 3D last night. Aside from my thoughts about the fact that Hollywood never seems to fail at ruining a great comic series with a horribly sappy and propaganda ridden third installment (with freaking fire breathing zombies, no less… come-on!), my thoughts are more about the 3D revolution. When it came out, I laughed about our lack of innovation by regurgitating 1950 technology and calling it new. Then I saw Avatar at IMAX 3D and became a secret advocate. It was an amazing experience that instantly made me “get” the buzz of the 3D craze.  I began periodically checking out different 3D movies here and there over the next few years and trying to think about what it was that I liked and what I didn’t. Last night I figured it out:

I like how ANIMATED flicks seem more realistic and downright AMAZING in 3D.
I don’t like the tendency of 3D to take away from the reality of live character films.

I suppose it’s a basic idea… the fully animated movies are already fake, so they are only enhanced by 3D… like a puppet show is enhanced by a crappy background painting on cardboard. Live character flicks, though, are flesh and blood. When you look at the screen, you are transported into the story and immersed in it as if you were one of the players. 3D takes away from that experience by creating layers and falsifying a world that our minds had previously made into reality. It’s almost like all of the people are still 2D and they cut them out and put them on top of the back drop… something Walt Disney figured out well before foam rubber monsters were crawling out of the screen and into your head via blue and red paper glasses… but I digress… what is my point? It is this:

Technology will never correctly reproduce reality, but will forever attempt to.

Unfortunately, the further we move forward in wowing our visual sense via the magical talking box, the further we walk away from the beautiful world that our minds helped us create though imagination (books, oral stories, and WWF)… plus it seems the more that is spent on CGI, and 3D everything, the less left over for “little things” like proper screenwriting and character development… It appears, then, that live character 3D cinema and television is a step in the direction toward the fruitless endeavor of alternate reality. The next logical step is the hologram… or at least an array of focused beams of light that can be all around us creating an image… Maybe that would have helped me make it through Iron Man 3 without disappointment, but I doubt it… and who wants to be that close to blatant advertising?