Cole Mayer

One of the few things I truly loathe is when people tell me they have just seen a 3-D movie. They simply gush about it. They tell me something along the lines of “Dude, I felt like I was totally in the movie.”

That does not match up too well with my personal experiences. The 3-D movies right now are highly flawed and are little more than cash cows.

Tianjun Cao, junior civil engineering major, thinks it is a step forward in terms of innovation, at the least.

“It shows how far we have come in terms of entertainment. It’s too pricey right now, but 3-D will catch on in a year,” Cao said.

But wait, you say, “Avatar” was totally awesome and a pinnacle in movie making! The 3-D was incredible and provided a ton of depth perception!

Yes, to all accounts. “Avatar” used two video cameras side by side, specially developed by director James Cameron, and it was an incredible movie. It provided depth and it was amazing. But I did not feel as if I was actually on Pandora, the planet where most of the movie takes place.

What about “The Last Airbender,” directed by M. Night Shyamalan? Remember how horrible that was? The 3-D effects were thrown in at the last second to get some cash with higher ticket prices.

Fine, movies are meant to be enjoyed in a theater full of people, so fully immersing the audience feels as if they were in a Star Trek holodeck or the X-Men Danger Room. The movies themselves can be good, but the actual 3-D element isn’t yet sophisticated enough to justify spending the extra money.

You have two options in order to bring 3-D into your own living room: Purchase an overly priced 3-D TV, or get an expensive special graphics card for your computer.

Those 3-D TVs do not yet have the technology to be completely effective. Really, Sony is out to make money.

I, for one, am not hip to the idea of wearing extra glasses all the time to see 3-D. I already wear glasses to be able to see in front of me.

“The market just isn’t ready for it yet,” said Miguel Razo, junior journalism major. “Right now it’s more a novelty than anything else.”

While 3-D at the movies is great, and computers and TVs are making great strides with 3-D graphics, oversaturating all types of media with 3-D is simply overkill.

Call me back when you’ve got a holodeck. For now I will be enjoying my plain ol’ 2-D media.

Cole Mayer can be reached at [email protected].