Steven Spielberg's 3D film The Adventures of Tintin took £25.5m in ticket sales around the world. And 3D is also entering Britain's homes, via expensive TV sets. Proponents of the format claim it is the future of media viewing.
But, according to Owen Weetch, of the University of Warwick, 3D isn't always worth the extra cash or spectacle-wearing and only some genres and films are improved by the format. "I started to investigate 3D cinema about six months before Avatar was released, when there was a great deal of advance publicity keen to tout 3D as the future of cinema, comparable to the introduction of sound or colour," says Weetch. "I was interested in whether this would be the case, or if it would simply be 'the emperor's new clothes'."
Watching films or researching other criticism and analysis of 3D, Weetch noticed a lot of condemnation of the format. "Critics such as Roger Ebert and Mark Kermode are opposed," he says, "and a recent study by L Mark Carrier of California State University suggests that the medium produces headaches, eyestrain and trouble with vision and 'there aren't any benefits in terms of understanding the movie better'."
Weetch disagrees. Some films are well worth the effort of 3D, he says. "In my research I investigate specific genres and how previous alterations to the cinematic image's width and depth – such as deep focus and wider screens – have impacted on those genres' representational strategies. Genres that in some way depend on the space or environment in which their stories take place certainly do benefit – exponentially – from the additional dimension."
Take Avatar, the 3D James Cameron-directed blockbuster that smashed all records to become the fastest movie ever to achieve $1bn in world ticket sales . "It's a science fiction spectacular about humans engaging with a new, alien space," says Weetch, "so a stereoscopic [3D] staging that emphasises deep space guides the audience into the story world. This aligns the viewer more forcefully with the protagonists, who are themselves exploring this space, and so heightens the immersive thrill of the story."
Horror films are another genre where it is worth paying for 3D, Weetch believes. "They have traditionally seized on the dark shadows at the edge of the frame to scare their audiences and 3D can use its extension of screen space to create unprecedented dark spaces, out of which threats might leap. The object of terror might have been hiding right in front of your nose while you've been scanning the distance."
Scary stuff – but not as terrifying as the academic's musings on Jackass 3D. "When a film's focus is on bodies moving through space, as in musicals, dance films and slapstick comedy, the impression of that movement becomes more palpable in 3D," Weetch says. "Jackass 3D and Pina 3D exploited this masterfully. For the person who finds one of the Jackass boys tying a remote-controlled helicopter to their penis amusing, surely that's going to be funnier if the helicopter flies out of the screen."
But not all 3D experiences are worthwhile. "It costs more to go to a 3D film, so you want it to at least try to earn its money," says Weetch. "The worst examples tend to be films converted to 3D in post-production, for example Alice in Wonderland 3D.
Like Avatar, it's about somebody entering a strange new world, but is filled with dull, flat compositions that display no real attempt to engage with the third dimension. "With conversion, you get a very artificial sense of flat objects being layered atop one another like cardboard cut-outs, rather than an honest sense of depth or curvature."
Some film-makers use 3D as an excuse to forego other, potentially more important parts of a viewer's experience, Weetch adds. He flags up the example of Sanctum, this year's 3D underwater adventure. "It made an honest attempt to engage with the aesthetic of depth, but was let down elsewhere, by rote storytelling or ineffectual direction. While 3D is one of many textual strategies that can contribute to thematic and narrative unity, it isn't necessarily effective on its own." Some filmmakers, Weetch adds, exploit viewers: "they think they can make money by foisting depth on to something shallow, and it simply doesn't work that way."
In the context of funding cuts to academia and questions over "Mickey Mouse degrees", Weetch admits he does face accusations that the films he studies are "not exactly serious or particularly highbrow." But that, he says, "presumes that 3D can't contribute to films that are concerned with characters and ideas, which I'd attribute to ignorance and snobbery. Tintin, The Hole in 3D, and Kung-Fu Panda 2 all contain psychoanalytic sequences where characters retreat mentally into their past, and 3D layering expressively portrays the inner workings of their minds."
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