TO 3D or not to 3D, that is the question.

My wife and I wanted to see mountaineering disaster movie Everest at the cinema. Both children were away (one at a Scout camp, the other on a sleepover) so the rare chance to go out as a couple presented itself.

I Googled where it was on and found it was playing in Altrincham at a convenient time. We discovered, however, when we arrived that they were showing only the 3D version.

We usually watch 2D when we go as a family because of the prohibitive cost involved. So we glanced at the other films on offer but in the end decided to give 3D a chance.

I wish we’d saved our money. The cost of tickets plus 3D glasses equalled what we’d pay for the whole family to go to a 2D screening.

And our verdict on 3D? Well, Everest was really good but there was no advantage in watching it in 3D, surprising given its Himalayan setting.

I don’t think the film-makers felt the need to exploit the 3D technology and perhaps making it available in that medium was an afterthought prompted by commercial pressures.

I’ve nothing against 3D, by the way. Watching those leviathan-like 3D screens in TV showrooms displaying sweeping aerial shots of Scandinavian seaport cities is breathtaking, I agree.

I just feel that unless film-makers use the medium with the intent to maximise 3D’s impact while at the same time remaining unobtrusively in the background and not impeding the story, then it’s like watching somebody with an expensive box of fireworks saying, ‘look how much money I’ve spent on these’.

The film industry has long experimented with 3D, never quite perfecting it until now. The first attempt back in the 1950s, where you sported cardboard spectacles with one green lens the other red, never took hold.

This put me in mind of the argument over which is better, simplicity or complexity.

Nature seeks to simplify things by natural selection until it finds the most efficient way of doing things. It’s called evolution.

Man, on the other hand, I would argue, takes the tortuous route of complexity before seeing the error of his ways and simplifying matters in the end anyway.

I’ll sign off with a story you may already have heard, but is worth repeating. It may well be apocryphal, but for our purposes it doesn’t matter.

The tale goes that NASA spent millions of dollars developing an anti-gravity pen that allowed astronauts to write upside down while in space.

Meanwhile, the Russians saved a bob or two by issuing their space crews with pencils.