Surprise: Survey By 3D Industry Group Says Moviegoers Prefer 3D Movies

"Does 3D suck, or is 3D awesome?" continues to be a topic of debate amongst movie fans, with many participants answering with the entirely rational response "well, the 3D in Hugo was awesome, but the 3D in Clash of the Titans kinda sucked."

Now the results of one survey suggest that more moviegoers like 3D than do not. But we might take the source into consideration, as the survey was conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, which was hired by The International 3D Society. That's a group "founded to advance the art and technologies of stereoscopic 3D content and its professional innovators." Can we really expect that group to release the results of a survey that say no one likes 3D?

Variety posts a press release from the Society, saying that the survey, which spoke to "1,011 Americans, age 18 years and older, between April 5 and 8," found that 52% saw at least one 3D film in the past three years. In that 52%, 71% said they prefer 3D to 2D films, and 31% said that seeing 3D films is "incredible."

Variety's article is titled "Moviegoers surveyed say 3D pics are better," which leads to the interpretation that more people prefer 3D than do not.

But the numbers say that out of 1011 people, only 373 said they'd rather see 3D over 2D. (52% of 1011 who saw 3D films = 526, and 71% of that is 373.) That's not most. That's barely more than a third. Which is still a bit more than I'd expect — based only on non-scientific anecdotal evidence, I'd expect to hear at most that about 25% of people prefer 3D to 2D.

So this is nice number-spinning on the part of the International 3D Society, but it does open the topic for discussion once more. As filmmakers have found better ways to use 3D, has your opinion of the format changed in the past couple years?