A few weeks ago I went to watch The Avengers: Age of Ultron, the sequel to the highly successful (it made a ton of money) and critically acclaimed (by Marvel Fans, the most impartial of judges) Avengers. After several months of publicity stunts, interviews, trailers and general propaganda, the general public was brainwashed into believing a movie of such caliber only comes once every thousand years, when the planets align and the gates to Tartarus open. Naturally such a movie had to be viewed by the best possible standards available in the modern age.
Alas, I seemed to have missed the memo.
When the question “So those will be the 3D tickets for Avengers: Age of Ultron?” was answered by me with the singular syllable word: “No”, followed by a mumbled explanation about how a 3D experience of Transformers: Age of Extinction nearly robbed me off my eyesight and left me catatonic, the rejection was met with raised eyebrows shortly followed by a shrug from the ticket salesman which, in the eyes of everyone of your vicinity, publicly bequeathed me with the title of “scrub”.
Apparently in the Age of Immersion people who view media using only their eyes, without the aid of uncomfortable 3D glasses, are frowned upon. Such people are packed into the hall furthest from the entrance to the cinema, away from prying eyes. Perhaps they’re afraid our old-fashionedness is contagious and they wish to mitigate our contact with those people who embrace the future.
And the future is 3D, or so sales personnel will have you believe (The notion of virtual reality is nothing more than science fiction to these learned scholars). They profess that the technology was recently found in the depths of the jungle, buried deep inside the bowels of an ancient temple, even though 3D films have existed for nearly a century. Such technology, they say, should not be ignored. It would be far more convincing if they weren’t trying to sell you a Samsung 3D Television in the process. And 3D isn’t just restricted to sight, the Neoh Headphones on Kickstarter is promising to recreate 3D sound just for you.
Don’t get me wrong, 3D products are great whether they’re in the form of glasses, monitors, phones, printers, tablets, movies or even headsets. Such products help drive innovation. The ability to view the Moon as a 3D object in a cinema without suffering from asphyxiation is not an opportunity to be missed! Or you could go outside at night and look up, but that puts a strain on the neck and is seemingly old fashioned. The new “new” is rather to watch an already 3D world that was captured using a camera and (in most cases) post-processed into 3D.
After all, what’s more immersive than viewing a 3D Burj Khalifa on a TV screen in Dubai Mall?
