Digital 3D has become ingrained in the modern cinematic landscape, but still we don’t know how to talk about it.

It’s been almost nine years since The Polar Express was released in IMAX 3D and signalled a change in the industry. That film’s 3D release, only on IMAX and only on actual 15/70mm film prints, was a huge success relative to its 2D version. Only a year later, Walt Disney released Chicken Little, the first feature film to be released in digital 3D. This was followed by a 3D conversion of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 2006, another success. By 2009 we’d already had a number of films, both animated and live-action, released in digital 3D.

Then came Avatar, and the deal was sealed.

Audiences saw something bold and new from an effects film, and 3D was marketed as a crucial element of that experience. Meanwhile, studios saw the dollar signs. By releasing a film in 3D, the studios (and exhibitors) could collect an extra $3 surcharge on tickets. How could they possibly resist.

We’re now at a point in the life-cycle of digital 3D where I think it’s safe to acknowledge that it’s here to stay, at least for the medium term. As a technology it’s still highly problematic, but for the most part it works well enough, and while North American audiences are largely indifferent and slightly annoyed by the higher prices, international audiences can’t seem to get enough of the spectacle.

All this is a sideshow, though. What’s more vexing is that we haven’t moved past discussions of whether 3D should exist, and to the more important critical issue, how 3D is implemented in artistic terms.

Read the majority of reviews of 3D films, and when the 3D is mentioned it’s usually on a relatively binary scale. Either the 3D is “good” or “bad.” “Effective” or “ineffective.” “Distracting” or “unnoticeable.” Not that 3D and color photography are necessarily equivalent artistic tools, but could you imagine if critics reserved a sentence or two in every review to simply say, “the color in this film was pretty good and thankfully not very distracting.”

Of course, the studios don’t help in this regard by forcing so many films to be in 3D, usually through ugly post-conversion. No wonder we can’t get past deciding whether 3D is simply good or bad when you can go see Star Trek Into Darkness and have a genuinely bad experience because the 3D is so shoddily slathered on and even more sloppily projected.

It seems the only films that get the benefit of deeper analysis into their 3D are those directed by respected auteurs. The prime example of this was Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a film which for the most part is a competent implementation of 3D technology, often to gimmicky ends. When it was released, though, many critics did note the use of 3D as not only being exemplary on a purely technical level, but also bringing out the film’s thematic exploration of cinema itself as gimmick and illusion.

I’d go even further and say that the one sequence where the 3D is entirely effective thematically is when we get to see the making of Méliès’ films. The 3D here accentuates our perception of depth in Méliès’ film sets, helping to break down his crude illusions and showing us the simple joy of creating magic on-screen.

This respect for auteurist use of 3D has also been extended to the likes of Werner Herzog for his documentary, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and Wim Wenders for Pina. Both films were rightly lauded for their creative use of 3D, though in both cases there was still relatively little actual analysis of how the 3D achieves artistic ends beyond merely commenting on the clear visceral effects.

Perhaps the most disappointing critical non-discussion of 3D occurred upon the release of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. First of all, Luhrmann doesn’t garner nearly the respect of a Scorsese or a Wenders. Furthermore, the film itself was so burdened by its relationship with its source novel that most discussion amounted to the equally facile “was it a good adaptation?” This generally easy dismissal of the film as a whole also led many critics to acknowledge the 3D as being technically very good, and definitely a part of Luhrmann’s attempt at visualizing excess. Of course, that’s all true, but the conversation usually stopped there. No further reflection or inspection.

Why had Luhrmann shot his film in 3D? Excess and gimmickry. Did this match the story? Sure, I guess. Did it look good? Yeah, sure, can we move on now?

This may have been the correct response to the film in general. I would argue with that, but it’s an impulse I understand. What’s too bad, though, is that Luhrmann’s film is the first in quite a while to feature a use of 3D that was thought through carefully and purposefully to achieve a genuine artistic effect beyond simplistic thrills and a $3 premium on every ticket.

What Lurhmann finds in his 3D photography is depth. Literal depth. That’s obvious, of course. 3D is all about creating the illusion of real-life depth in the screen. But Luhrmann leverages this depth constantly. His is a film in which compositions are not defined simply by objects in an x and y-axis on the frame, but also by objects in the z-axis and their relation to each other.

The party sequences, for example, use the 3D for spectacle, but they also create a greater sense of the material excess in Gatsby’s world by filling the z-axis with stuff, so much stuff. This wouldn’t work to artistic ends on its own, though, which is why it’s actually used to contrast with the emptiness of Gatbsy’s world when he’s not at one of these parties. There are so many shots inside Gatsby’s mansion where we feel the vastness of the space, and the physical distance between the characters. It’s a hollow world populated by people who cannot connect by any means other than the material, and the 3D brings this out visually in a way that the 2D version of the film simply doesn’t.

Take the argument in the hotel, as another example. A scene that’s really very well shot and acted, even in a 2D visual sense. Add the 3D, though, and Luhrmann is allowed to accentuate the contrasting closeness and distance between the various characters at various stages of the conversation.

In a much more obvious and simplistic use of the same concept, Luhrmann visualizes the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock as being so far off in the distance within the 3D frame that even the audience is tempted to reach out for it. It’s a sense of longing, literalized through visual metaphor and enhanced through 3D composition.

That’s just one film, though. No doubt other 3D films are deserving of deeper and better analysis, but it strikes me that discussing it is difficult right from the get-go. What’s the real problem? I suspect it’s because modern 3D is still too new, and it’s still too shoddy in many instances, and so the critical community hasn’t yet developed the proper vocabulary to tackle it in a more meaningful way. Hopefully that changes soon. Until then, avoid The Wolverine in 3D. I hear the 3D in that one is pretty bad.