How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the 3D

Audiences enjoying 3D circa 1950's

A lot of cinema lovers I know hate 3D.
"It's a pointless gimmick", they say.
"It's for juveniles and rednecks and idiots", they say.
"It's the studios trying to take away all our money", they say.
In fact, some of these guys would rather have their man-parts bitten off by a hellspawn than put those funky glasses on.
Thing is, these guys are stupid.
You hear that? That's the sound of a thousand angry film fans denouncing me as an idiot and a charlatan, but WAIT! Hear me out for 3D is nevermore a gimmick. 3D is not just sticks and bullets poking out of the screen and right at your face. 3D isn't degrading our beloved art to something vile and horrible.
3D is improving it.

Sure, there are some studios who treat 3D as a gimmick and see it as nothing else but something that'll get cash in their pockets; but there are some filmmakers who take 3D very seriously. A lot of filmmakers (TRUE filmmakers, mind you, not of the Michael Bay or Peter Berg sort) are using 3D to take cinema where it has never been before. They are using it as an artist uses his tools.
Take Peter Jackson for an example. If you have been following his video blogs, you'll know how serious this guy is about when it comes to 3D.

Pete inside Bag End

He's currently shooting the Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings in not only 3D, but also in (groundbreaking) 48 frames per second. Now Lord of the Rings made extensive use of forced perspective (ie making things look little by placing them at appropriate lengths from the camera). Confused about forced perspective? Well, you must have that annoying friend or relative who goes all around the world (all of us have one). Has he/she gone to Paris? Yes? Then you should remember that ludicrous photo of him/her posing so as to appear taller than the Eiffel Tower. That, my friends, is forced perspective. That's why the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings look so small. But with 3D, this becomes a problem.

Pete with the RED EPIC

But the special camera rigs used for shooting the Hobbit (called Red Epic, by the way) enables him to CHANGE the 3D effect. So he can control the amount of depth that we will be able to see. Another problem 3D poses is that it sucks a little bit of the color out of the film. So how does he overcome that? He increases the color on everything he shoots. His sets are over-colorified, the makeup is done in deep colors. All this so that we get the best picture... the best 3D. Sure, it looked a little off in the trailers, but the magicians at Weta can probably fix that.
See, that's how much effort a director puts in to get the best 3D. But does that assure us that 3D will add to the art? No. It doesn't.
So what assures us?
This little film called Hugo. 

Greatest film of 2011? F**k yes. 

Some film fans call it "that Scorsese film without swearing" or "that Scorsese film about that robot-toy-thingy" but what it is is one of ace director Martin Scorsese's finest films ever. And the 3D in that film is not used as a gimmick, or something to draw in people (otherwise it wouldn't have flopped in the USA). The 3D is a part of the film. It completes the film. And how. And that's the film that totally convinced me that 3D is the way to go.

Scorsese with Ben Kingsley

In Hugo, the acting, the editing, the cinematography, everything just is made to work best with 3D. And it works so good. And the best part of the film is that it also shows us snippets of great silent films such as Georges Meiles' Le Voyage De Lans Lune in 3D. And they look beautiful. Throughout the film, the 3D is a part of the craft. If Hugo is a painting, the gilded frame that binds it together and amplifies it's existence is the 3D.
And seeing Hugo and those silent films in 3D got me thinking... what if a film like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly were in 3D? Or what if a film like Metropolis or a romance like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were in 3D?
Sure, there will be awful 3D. For every Hugo or Tintin or Avatar, there's a Clash Of the Titans and a Final Destination. And that's a darn shame. But you can't blame the medium for that. Blame the film maker. Blame the producers. the producers, unfortunately, have skewered 3D just like they've skewered the very art of film making. They see 3D as a gimmick to gain money, and they treat it so.
They are the only reason to hate the medium. And I don't think it's a problem with a solution. It's up to the filmmakers to make something great out of 3D because everyone else doesn't give a darn.
So, there you go.
The medium is not responsible for mediocrity. The makers are. And I have faith in 3D and so should you.