Avatar: How much do you have to wear those stupid glasses? (No spoilers)

I’ve been avoiding the Avatar threads so as not to get spoiled, so I don’t know if this has been discussed.

I’m planning on seeing the movie tomorrow, and I have two options at my local gigaplex: Avatar 3D (Real D 3D) or, conversely, Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience. Do both of these options have the same amount of wearing the 3D glasses? How long are you wearing the glasses? All two hours and forty minutes? A couple of scenes here and there?

The reason I ask is that I wear regular glasses and I always find the 3D glasses to be annoying. There’s no way I could put up with hours of glasses wearing. Is there sufficient 3D time that I should drive a half an hour further and find a non-3D showing of the film?

Er… you leave the glasses on the whole time.

The whole movie is 3D. You dont take them off. Id spring for the IMAX.

Just came back from a showing in Real 3d, with digital projection. I think one would still be knocked out by the imagery in 2D, but I’m glad I went for the full monty as the experience was definitely enhanced. I personally didn’t find the extra pair of glasses too bad (they were basically Ray-Bans in form), and I was wearing 'em over my specs.

You still have to wear them the whole time.

You can go see a 2D version if you don’t want to deal with the glasses.

Otherwise the entire film is going to be in double-vision. I watched Up that way because the glasses were annoying me and that was annoying too.

I am glad I asked! Thanks. I’ll probably go a little further out of my way and catch the 2D version. I don’t want to plop down 10 bucks without knowing whether or not I’ll be able to stand watching the movie in 3D.

I think you could, once you get sucked into the 3D this movie presents. Immersive is an insufficient word for what transpires while watching Avatar.

There’s a not-insignificant portion of the population that simply can’t wear 3D glasses without experiencing problems, something like 8-10%.

I remember earlier 3D movie fads lead to lots of people complaining of nausea, eyestrain et cetera, and while it seems the newer stuff doesn’t cause it to the same degree as it did in the early 1980s, there still appears to be a baseline who simply won’t be able to enjoy 3D movie experience. In many ways what it is doing to your eyes if very different then how they are intended to view the world.

I consider it extremely disappointing that 3D appears to be a “fad” again, and I certainly hope it doesn’t catch on. It would essentially mean the end of me going to movies if it became common place (I simply can’t watch for more than ~15 minutes at a time without experiencing nausea and eye strain.)

And 8% of men are color-blind in some way. Better go back to filming in black and white.

Bad analogy. If a color blind guy sees a color picture of a rainbow, it’s going to look the the same to him colorwise as if was looking at an actual rainbow, so there’s no difference.

However, there is a world of difference between watching a 3D movie with glasses vs. without. Without the glasses it’s all double vision and almost unwatchable.

I don’t like the glasses, and mine resembled more those gigantic sunglasses they sell to kids at the fair than they did Raybans.

Who said anything about watching the movie without glasses? :dubious:

Avatar is playing in both 2D and 3D, I hope you realize. And that’s likely to be the case for many films for decades to come.

Martin Hyde did in the post you yourself quoted!

Ugh, I meant within the context of watching a 3D film proper. I’m pretty sure Martin wasn’t advocating that either–I had interpreted his point as being that he would skip seeing a movie instead of watching a 3D film without the glasses.

My point was that the actual alternative is to view the 2D version, an option that exists now and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

I’ll be going to the 2-D version. 3-D is nothing more than a gimmick to me, and a distraction. I saw *Beowulf *in 3-D, and just couldn’t get into it; the gimmick of the 3-D effects overshadowed the story. I saw it again later in 2-D, and loved it…TRM

P.S. - plus, you save a few bucks, and I’m a cheap bastard.

That was what he meant, which is why your colorblind comment is a bad analogy. Colorblind people wouldn’t have to skip the movie because it’s in color. Got it?

Yes, I agree that 2D isn’t going away anytime soon, but colorblindness is a bad analogy.

And don’t :dubious: me.

Just as people who can’t see 3D don’t have to skip it either because it’s available in 2D, and there’s no reason to think that won’t be the case for years to come.

Just out of curiosity, how many 3D movies have you seen, overall?

Fifteen or twenty. Maybe I’m in that 8 to 10% that just can’t deal with it. I finally decided, screw it, I don’t need the distraction. I like story, composition, dialogue, acting. I don’t need multi-dimensionality.

I’ll never be able to use 3-D glasses because my eyes point in different directions; I only use one eye at a time, so I don’t even see the real world in 3-D!