Pixar's 'Cars 2' uses 3D for depth behind the screen

By Sarah Sluis

At a Manhattan screening of Cars 2 last night, security distributed adult and child-sized glasses for the 3D presentation. With my glasses on, I was greeted with the familiar Pixar brand of 3D. Like Toy Story 3 and Up in the two preceding summers, the movie was very conservative in popping out the image. I think the furthest the image went out into the audience was during the opening credits. At a few points in the movie I removed my 3D glasses, and discovered just how conservative Pixar was in creating their 3D images. None of the split images popped the visuals out into the audience. They were only splitting the image to create depth behind the screen.

The main characters taking up most of the screen looked exactly the same with glasses on and glasses off. The scenery behind them was rendered in duplicate, creating depth that only felt slightly more convincing than 2D depth. I respect Pixar's decision not to create a gimmicky 3D experience by breaking the fourth wall and attacking the audience with the image, but it doesn't speak much for the future of 3D. Seeing an image come at me, even slightly, is why I see a 3D movie. If Pixar, widely regarded as the most technologically innovative animation studio, won't play around with 3D, who will? So far, only James Cameron has provided effects that came out at the audience without taking them out of the story, but immersing them further in the movie world.

The depth behind objects created by stereoscopic 3D isn't that impressive. In real life, we understand distance through monocular depth cues anyway. Seeing a road get smaller as it fades into the background is just as effective as splitting the image to make it fall back. Then there's the oh-so-mild eye strain that I now experience when watching 3D films. If I were paying for my ticket, I don't think I'd pay extra for the 3D. Pixar's spending their money on making better animation, like their stunning landscapes of an Italian town perched on a cliff above a beach and a neon, vertical Tokyo. 3D adds a little, but not enough to justify the extra cost. My judgment on Cars 2: See it in 2D.