3D Is Bad For Your Brain Because Roger Ebert Says So

Tuesday, January 25 by

Actually, this post’s title oversimplifies the story. It should read, “3D Is Bad For Your Brain Because Roger Ebert And The Guy Who Edited Captain EO Say So.” I keed, I keed — both film critic Ebert and uber-respected editor Walter Murch make a strong argument about why it’s stupid to pay top dollar for movies basically designed to give you a splitting headache.

In a recent column for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert describes all 3D movies as “inferior and inherently brain-confusing,” then lets Murch do the heavy lifting. According to Murch, “600 million years of human evolution” have not prepared our brains to look at 3D, which is why you paid $35 to see Tron: Legacy in IMAX MEGA COOL 3D and all you left with was a server farm-sized headache:



After illustrating his point with weird pictures of blurry and not-so-blurry salt shakers, Murch makes the inevitable your-brain-is-like-a-computer analogy:


Like most of the problems we face today, the solution is ultimately “holograms.”

Is this definitive proof that 3D “doesn’t work and never will,” as Ebert claims? I would argue that as Americans, we watch things that are bad for our brains all the time. Also, as long as studios can keep inflating their prices so an aggressively terrible movie like The Last Airbender is ultimately considered a hit, get ready to take a lot more Advil, movie fans.

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  1. January 25, 2011 7:48 pm

    Matt Brislin

    I hate 3D and want it to go away.

  2. January 25, 2011 7:48 pm

    Matt Brislin

    I hate 3D and want it to go away.
