Those who loathe 3D films - and there are many - will have taken great heart from news last week that the sector was expected to decline this year, for the first time since 2009. ''The initial excitement has dwindled,'' a market analysis from ratings agency Fitch noted. '' Consumers are focused again on the overall quality of the film and are weighing the cost of a premium ticket versus a base 2D ticket.''
The Fitch Ratings analysis predicted overall box office in North America would drop slightly from last year's record $10.8 billion, and 3D would be largely to blame.
But anyone hoping this is the beginning of the end should put the champagne back on ice: there's a lot of life left in this ''fad''.
Here's some good news for the haters, though: at least you're in good company. In a piece titled ''Why I hate 3D (and you should too)'', the recently deceased critic Roger Ebert wrote that 3D ''is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness'' because it ''limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose''. Last month, Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle - who dislikes the glasses-over-glasses effect that makes him feel like ''a double prat'' - voiced his suspicion that the format ''may be a phase'' and added hopefully, ''I don't know if 3D will survive''.
Director Christopher Nolan has repeatedly dissed 3D and eschewed its use (while embracing IMAX) in his Batman films. ''I never meet anybody who actually likes the format,'' he said last year, adding this month that he's ''a little weary'' of it. And then there's actor Stanley Tucci, who confessed in March that ''I can't stand 3D, I really can't'', before remembering he was meant to be promoting the 3D movie Jack the Giant Slayer. ''I'm happy to go watch it,'' he quickly corrected. ''But I don't like shooting in 3D. It's not fun.''
Maybe not. But it is profitable, and that's why it isn't about to go away. Generally speaking, 3D movies open big and at a higher ticket price than their 2D competitors, and that boosts the all-important opening weekend.
In a January 2011 post, the boxofficequant blog analysed the performance of all 3D films released between 2000 and 2010 for which budgets were known. It found ''for each dollar spent on a 3D film, there's an average return of $3.69; and for each dollar on a 2D film, there's an average return of $2.51''. It also found 3D films performed more consistently. ''Where 2D films vary all over the map, 3D films … always give about the same return on investment.''
But, the critics will argue, that was then, and this is now. And with some justification too.
It is now clear that the 2009 release of Avatar was both a game changer and an aberration. Only Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland has come close to equalling its performance, and the latter's over-the-top use of 3D gimmickry in fact provided early fuel for the backlash.
In the early excitement, Americans were paying a premium of around 40 per cent to see a 3D movie, which helped the business increase its revenues despite a fall from a peak of 5.2 cinema visits per person in 2002 to 4.1 in 2012 (in Australia the pattern is similar, down from a peak of 4.7 in 2001 to 3.8 last year).
In 2010, PricewaterhouseCoopers was bullish about the format, claiming ''3D films generate two to three times the revenue per theatre of 2D'', and noting that ''3D has helped the entire industry to increase its revenues despite a declining number of tickets sold''. But in the dual grip of a tight economy and some disappointing 3D movies, American consumers have been vocal about how much they dislike price ''gouging'' at the box office, and exhibitors have responded by narrowing the price gap.
By 2012, PwC had a gloomier outlook, claiming the disappointing results ''added fuel to a debate on 3D sustainability''.
(As an aside, it's worth noting that the average price of a US cinema ticket in 2012 was $7.96. In Australia, it was $13.10. An adult ticket to a 3D screening at IMAX Sydney or Melbourne right now will set you back a whopping $31.)
But while North America is the world's largest market it is by no means the only one. The rest of the world accounted for 69 per cent of the record $34.7 billion box office in 2012, and it is growing. (Hollywood's share of that is, according to an analysis by The Guardian's Phil Hoad this month, just under 63 per cent.) The Chinese box office is now the second biggest in the world, worth $2.7 billion in 2012. By 2020, it is tipped to overtake the US/Canada in value.
Much of that international growth has been driven by 3D. In 2005 there were just 98 3D screens worldwide; in 2008 there were about 2500. By the end of last year, 45,000 screens, more than half the cinema screens in the world, were 3D.
Michael Lewis, the CEO and chairman of RealD, recently claimed ''in China and Russia 3D showings of films routinely contribute between 80 per cent to 90 per cent of their box office take'' (compared with about 50 per cent in North America).
Of course, most of the 3D films being pumped out by Hollywood - there will be 35 this year - are animation or action movies, based on comic books or sequels. They are big on spectacle and relatively low on complexity, a major asset when trying to reach a mass audience.
Like IMAX, 3D promises an immersion in an experience that is hard to replicate at home, and not really available via BitTorrent. There's nothing new about it - the first experiments in the format were conducted around the time film was first being projected, and the first 3D film to attract a paying audience was in 1922 - and there's nothing new about the criticisms it attracts either.
It will almost certainly survive as a format - at least until glasses-free 3D television becomes viable, supposedly still at least a decade away - if only because it will remain inordinately profitable. But it will be up to the likes of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby and James Cameron's pair of Avatar sequels to prove it can have lasting artistic value too.