Emotional impact

Thanks for the comment, Scott.

The 3D scenes in Avatar that jumped out at me were things like the briefing room, or one-on-one conversations between "un-avatar'd" people. The 3D seemed natural, and pointed the way to what I believe is cinema's inevitable fate: the movies will be in 3D because the WORLD is in 3D.

What jumped out at me most in Dragon is the strong use of close-ups. They were certainly there in Avatar too, but there, to lend weight to the epic tale. Here, the close-ups are were explicitly to create a sense of intimacy in relationships that WAS the story -- a boy and his dragon, a boy and his father, a community's identity.

As sound and color in cinema ushered in a wave of epics, then gave way to a much wider range of styles, we'll see the same with 3D. Dragons contained steps in that direction.