Why 3D Was Invented

It used to be in 3D movies that things fly off the screen and into your face. 3D was all about "pointy pointy pointy" gimmicks. Now filmmakers, with this illusion of depth and distance, want to make 3D movies an "immersive" experience.

In this new age of 3D movies, every so often, maybe once a year, a film like Journey 2: The Mysterious Island comes along to remind you that 3D is a fun gimmick. Last year it was the Piranha movie. In Journey though, there's plenty of giant insects, reptiles and electric eels to poke you in the eye but one scene involving Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson "poppin his pecks" is utterly absurd.

Josh Hutcherson & The Rock | Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

In the movie, Josh Hutcherson (reprising his role from Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which disposed of Brendan Fraser and replaced him with The Rock, as the boy's stepfather) partners with The Rock on a journey to an island. Along the way, they come across Vanessa Hudgens, who appears in the movie as a love interest for Hutcherson, but she's playing hard to get and rejects him.

Hutcherson turns to The Rock for advice on how to get the attention of a young woman. The secret to gaining, he demonstrates, is to pop one's pecks. What follows is an extended scene of The Rock twitching his man boobs. In a children's movie! The scene is played for laughs obviously, but in our cinema, there was only uncomfortable shifting as we were all forced to watch The Rock's sweaty chest muscles writhe and wriggle under his shirt.

What's worse though, this is where the 3D gimmickery comes in, The Rock asks Hutcherson to grab nearby berries to throw at his twitching chest so that the berries ricochet off. It's all very strange. All the while The Rock is "poppin his pecks" and insisting that this is the only way to impress a girl. With a look of sheer horror, Hutcherson refuses to throw berries at his chest. At which point, Luis Guzman throws the berries, they ricochet, fly off the screen and into our faces.

This is why 3D was invented.