alt Hacker NewsI had a similar complaint with the few 3D things I watched when that has been hyped in the past (e.g., when Avatar came out in cinemas, and when 3D home TVs seemed to briefly become a thing 15 years ago). It felt like Hollywood was giving me the freedom to immerse myself, but then simultaneously trying to constrain that freedom and force me to look at specific things in specific ways. I don't know what the specific solution is, but it struck me that we needed to be adopting lessons from live stage productions more than cinema if you really want people to think what they're seeing is real.
Stereo film has its own limitations. Sadly, shooting for stereo was expensive and often corners were cut just to get it to show up in a theater where they can charge a premium for a stereo screening. Home video was always a nightmare--nobody wants to wear glasses (glassesless stereo TVs had a very narrow viewing angle).
It may not be obvious, but film has a visual language. If you look at early film, it wasn't obvious if you cut to something that the audience would understand what was going on. Panning from one object to another implies a connection. It's built on the visual language of still photography (things like rule of thirds, using contrast or color to direct your eye, etc). All directing your eye.
Stereo film has its own limitations that were still being explored. In a regular film, you would do a rack focus to connect something in the foreground to the background. In stereo, when there's a rack focus people don't follow the camera the same way. In regular film, you could show someone's back in the foreground of a shot and cut them off at the waist. In stereo, that looks weird.
When you're presenting something you're always directing where someone is looking--whether its a play, movie, or stereo show. The tools are just adapted for the medium.
I do think it worked way better for movies like Avatar or How to Train Your Dragon and was less impressive for things like rom coms.