I’m a big proponent of seeing a movie the way it was shot. So, when it’s a movie that was actually shot in 3D, I’ll always see it in 3D.

I’ve made exceptions to that rule, of course. Pacific Rim was probably the first time I intentionally got a 3D ticket knowing full well the movie wasn’t shot that way. I ended up seeing Gravity in 3D about a month after it opened and was somewhat disappointed with the luminance of the image. More often than not, I’ve found that to be the case with 3D movies. Unless you see it in IMAX 3D, where there’s a certain amount of quality control, it’s a total roll of the dice as to what kind of 3D experience you’re gonna get. I just saw The Martian in 3D last month in AMC’s own “premium large format” and still found the light levels to be seriously lacking.

TFA, like Star Trek Into Darkness before it, is an interesting beast. Abrams shot some of the movie in IMAX even knowing it would be post-converted into 3D. Disney is at the very least striking several 15/70 2D prints and listing their locations, which is more than Paramount could say for itself with STID.

I will say this. When I saw the opening scene of STID in digital IMAX 3D (in front of The Hobbit), I was very impressed with what I saw. The anamorphic 35mm and IMAX 65mm footage all looked very nice converted into 3D and shown in digital IMAX 3D. Several months later, I saw a press screening of Man of Steel in 3D. I’m guessing they optimized the projector luminance just for that screening simply so we’d come out raving to our friends about how good the 3D looked. But I can’t lie, they actually did a pretty good job with the post-conversion. They managed to make the anamorphic 35mm footage look like natural 3D. I’m starting to think that might be the ideal source format for 3D if you’re not going to actually shoot in stereo.