Asklemmy

It's not that I hate 3d effects, but I'll avoid them if I can, for a variety of reasons.

As other people have said - I wear glasses, I having to put the glasses over my own glasses just makes it difficult. They don't stay on and I have to hold them, it makes the image askew, it's uncomfortable on my nose and ears when it does "fit". They really should come up with a more inclusive way to watch these as a good portion of the population wears glasses.

For another, I suffer from migraines and 3d effects not done well tend to trigger them, and I already have enough triggers that I can't avoid.

A strange one needs a little bit of backstory - I was never great a sports as a kid, could never quite catch a pop-up or hit a fast ball, but I was great at throwing or other aspects. People wrote it off as just "unathletic" and I went on to live my life as a weird nerdy kid despite the rest of my family being athletic. Fast forward to my adult life when I was put on a very strong medication and needed a very thorough eye exam and a result to set a baseline to make sure the medication doesn't end up damaging my retinas (thorough to the point that the exam was 5 hours and I had tests done I'd never seen it heard of before).
It turns out my eyes/brain only interpret half the depth perception of the average person. So what I'm seeing during a 3d movie is not what's meant to be seen. And since this is not an eye exam that would be regularly given - who knows if it people that are complaining about the movies have the same issue I do? Cartoon-y 3d (like Disney world/theme Park things) is fine for me, but things like Avatar just give me migraines.

It's definitely the tech getting in the way of the experience. There's comments to be made about the gimmicky nature of content made for 3d but if it really took off you'd eventually see stand out art and ultimately it would become so standard and expected that even for a film not taking particular advantage it'd probably be there, literally, adding another dimension to the experience of the film. The problem is, in all it's history we just haven't figured out a way that isn't clunky and irritating on the viewing side. A pair of plastic glasses may seem a pretty minor inconvenience but people balk at that type of thing and only have the desire and patience for it during brief spikes where it re-emerges as a fad.

It also, from memory suffers from making the films seem darker, the glasses are prone to being lost, or scratched. To make them comfortable you'd really have to make them as good as actual glasses, which are expensive. It's also problematic from a theatrical perspective because a session has to be 3d only, you can't have people in the same session watching it without glasses, the screening is unwatchable without them so you have to tie up 2 screens with a 3d and 2d version. I think I recall hearing about advances the last time this fad was big, where they finally didn't need glasses, but it resulted in narrow viewing angle requirements.

If you're picking up a theme here, it's that all the complaints are about the practicalities of the tech, not necessarily the entertainment value of 3d itself. The trouble comes when that entertainment, while fun, isn't worth it.

Because it's pointless.

• the effect wears off after the first or second scene. So then I'm just watching a regular movie where a handle occasionally comes out of the screen.
• it's gimmicky. It just doesn't add anything of value for me.
• it's a hassle. I don't want to wear (and eventually toss) a cheap pair of plastic glasses.

VR on the other hand. Rules.