Cinema needs 3D like a fish needs an avatar

The fashion, once again, is for 3D films.  Three dimensional imagery on the big silver screen.  People sitting in cinemas with ridiculous-looking plastic or cardboard glasses to be able view the impression of three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional projection.

Why?

When cinema began, as everyone knows, it was short films of black-and-white imagery, with no sound.  Music was provided to accompany the images later on.  And then they discovered 'talkies' - where the audience could actually hear the dialogues and not have to judge the miming qualities of the actors.  This was clearly an obvious and essential improvement to the cinematic experience.

The next stage, of course, was colour.  Was it necessary? No - not for story telling... some of the best films were black and white (Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Third Man, Les Enfants du Paradis), but it did give the audience a greater experience in being able to see colour - to appreciate if it was a sunny or cloudy day other than by shadows, to see the colour of the ball-gowns worn by the actresses.

It's a shame that so many audiences today refuse to watch black and white films and the old masterpieces are now being corrupted with false colour to meet modern tastes.

But why have 3D?  In what way does that improve the cinematic experience?

It doesn't make you feel like you're there.

It doesn't improve the story-telling.

It doesn't help one identify with the characters.

It doesn't allow new environments to be painted for the audience - false or fantasy worlds have been made on screen for decades... all it gives one is the impression that one character is in front of another character.

Furthermore, am I alone in finding it hard to focus with the 3D specs?  The eye easily adapts to a shallow depth of field on a normal film, accepting the blurry bits were blurry for a reason. But my eyes kept trying to refocus the blurry bits of the bum-numbing Avatar... and I know I'm not the only one who left with a headache.  3D films on a 2D screen are a waste of time.

This is shouting into the void, but directors and producers of Hollywood, please desist from wasting your time and money on 3D.

Wait until we have 3D surround-vision virtual reality goggles.  Then everything we see (not just the screen on one wall) will be 3D and I can accept that then the viewer will feel like they're in the film. They will feel part of the action.  They may even feel like they're a character.

When those goggles are ready...roll on.  That will add to the cinematic experience.  But until then, spend more time on script development. Spend more time on the cinematography. Spend more time on editing (no film needs to be 3 hours long). Spend more time getting the story right.

The rest, after all, is secondary.

The same, it should be said, must be said for education in virtual worlds.  It's never going to completely take-off until the user is able to feel that they are in the world, rather than sitting at their desk looking at a screen... and hopping between one application and another, answering the phone and so on.

Immersive reality is what is required. Until computers and entertainment providers can, um, provide that, we should just let stop wasting time thinking this is going to change our lives.