Singer's Superman Asks: 3D Or Not 3D?

When the new Superman rolls out into IMAX cinemas this summer, not only will it be a bit bigger than most moviegoers are used to, a section of the film will be in 3D.

Yep, just a section - around half an hour of the apparently two-hours-thirty-plus running time, so less than a fifth of the whole film. There's no news on whether or not this will be a continuous half an hour, or material peppered throughout, but it will, apparently, contain both live action and computer generated effects work.

What a dreadful idea. Just moving between black and white and colour in the same film is a conceit that really needs to be housed in a sensible context to work; mixed media collages that jam in every film gauge and a few video formats tend towards even more extreme dislocation for the viewer; asking people to put on and remove a pair of glasses simply can't fail to render the whole film illusory, more of a fairground ride than an engaging drama, utterly absorbing and connected to a real world, something like ours, in which we can forget about the mechanics of our senses and start to trust them.

There's nothing wrong with fairground rides - Spy Kids 3 was a fine fairground ride, for the most part - but Superman Returns is not just supposed to be a thrill machine.

I honestly believe that before long, many studio films will be released entirely, and only in 3D. Chicken Little was rendered stereo through something they called the Real-D process, and, for the most part, it really worked. There's one piece of film grammar that desperately needs to be addressed by 3D filmmakers (and as such I intend to make a 3D short to prove how it works, and, hey earn my place on the Stereo-optic Walk of Fame) but, that aside, we're ready for 3D.

One day, making a film in 2D will be an act as conceited as making a film in black and white, or entirely on standard 8 stock, is today. And though they're not cardinal sins of cinema, per se, conceits do need to be handled with care.