I love the cinema.

The front doors sound like a space ship landing gear, and as I walk in from the cold, a fabulous excess of sights, smells and sounds wash over me: the heavily salted popcorn, the larger-than-life Batman straddling the ceiling, the arcade games that ravenously ingest my money, the bathrooms that always run out of toilet paper. All of this is mine before the lights dim in the theatre.

A night at the movies is the pinnacle of awesome-first-date-spots/casual-night-out-locations. To maximize the experience, one must always purchase popcorn, a fizzy beverage and an outrageously overpriced bag of candy. If you’ve managed to procure a date for the evening, this adds up to a $40 night out — minimum.

Because of my special feelings for the cinema, I am more than willing to pay for this. The problem is, a lot of people are not as financially irresponsible. Netflix, illegal downloading, tighter-than-usual budgets and an increasingly lazy culture are all real reasons for people to just stay home. Why pay $40 when you can plug in your popcorn maker and download your choice of film for free?

This feels like a rhetorical question — at least for me personally. My answer to this apparent problem lies in all of the amazing features and experiences of the cinema listed above. The big budget filmmakers, however, have a different answer to this compelling question. It is the worst abbreviation to enter the collective social vocabulary since “lmfao”: 3D.

I can picture the conversation, a round table of suit-clad executives, touting the idea that a three-dimensional cinematic experience will keep bottoms warming the seats of the movie theater.

I want to make it clear that I do not have a problem with 3D technology. When a film is made with 3D in mind, when it is used throughout to enhance my viewing experience, I do believe that it can be another form of artistic expression. I do not mind when the screen suddenly leaps out at me and enters my visual space. People scoffed at colour film when it first came out too, right?

One recent, positive example was the 3D in the new Transformers movie; it was phenomenal! In a film where the special effects are the only selling feature, having really cool 3D scenes made the movie that much better. Avatar also managed to deftly weave 3D into a simple, but also compelling, story line. This type of 3D, however, is not the norm.

Nine out of 10 times, 3D is just an irritating gimmick.

3D is added to films to coerce the general public into visiting them at the cinema. Why else would Disney re-release Lion King in 3D? This is movie came out in the early ’90s. Seeing Simba and Nala on the big screen would be wonderful, but I do not want to watch Mufasa plunge to his death in three-dimensions.

As if there weren’t enough devices in play to enhance the theatre going experience, the new Spy Kids movie plans to provide audience members with scratch and sniff cards.

Dabbling in all these world-bending dimensions should be done selectively, and not as incentive to get people up off the couch and into the cinema. There’s a reason that thinkgeek.com sells glasses that counteract the 3D effect.

For the time being, while we work this new 3D craze out of our systems, I will continue to frequent the cinema, along with thousands of other devout and loyal customers, not for the 3D but instead for the overpriced confectionaries, the previews, the big, beautiful screens and the irreplaceable feeling of losing yourself in the cushion of your uncomfortable seat, with dozens of other people, all staring up at the same silver screen.