When Baz Luhrmann announced that his next film would be shot in 3D, it made a lot of sense. After all, this was the man behind the whirling, kinetic Moulin Rouge. If anyone was going to be attracted by a technology that could make their films even more eye-poppingly spectacular than they already were, it would be Luhrmann.

Then it turned out Luhrmann's next film would be an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, and the decision made slightly less sense. Gatsby has never exactly screamed 3D. The book is almost entirely defined by its lack of scenes worthy of stereoscopic treatment. At no point, for example, does Nick Carraway hurtle though a phosphorescent alien jungle, or smash up New York with his fists, or put on a bikini and get eaten by a swarm of piranhas. How would Luhrmann put 3D to use in The Great Gatsby?

Finally, we have our answers. Ahead of its Christmas release, the first trailer for the film has appeared online. And it's clear Luhrmann was right all along. This is a story that deserves to be told in all three dimensions.

The director has built an entire CG replica of 1920s Manhattan, complete with spotlights and Model Ts, and the 3D technology allows us to whoosh through its streets in a giddy rush, as we do right at the start of the trailer. F Scott Fitzgerald might not have expressly written that scene into his novel, but it's tremendously evocative.

Also, because this is a Baz Luhrmann film about the jazz age, it goes without saying that The Great Gatsby will feature some spectacular party sequences. These are hinted at in the trailer – all confetti and swimming pools and manically flailing flappers – and 3D is bound to bring them alive. Either that or, if they're as similar to the party scenes in Moulin Rouge as they appear in the trailer, they'll give you such colossal motion sickness that you'll need to retire to a dark room with a flannel over your face for a week.

But, as anyone who's ever taken A-level English knows, there's more to The Great Gatsby than old-timey razzle-dazzle. If the 3D is to really do its job, it needs to do justice to its more contemplative moments, too. Fortunately, it appears to do so. Take the scene where Gatsby impresses Daisy with his superficial opulence: truly, audiences will have never witnessed Leonardo DiCaprio flinging a selection of good-quality pastel shirts at them until they've witnessed him doing it in 3D here. Nor will they have ever felt that Tom Buchanan has put the end of his cigar quite so unusually close to their faces. Nor will they have ever felt like the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleberg have been staring at them quite so intently, even though they're painted on a wall so they don't really work that well in 3D. But you get the idea.

So maybe we were wrong to doubt Luhrmann's choice. Maybe The Great Gatsby will be the film that convinces us of 3D's worth as a medium. Spielberg couldn't do it. Scorsese couldn't do it. But they never had a scene about Leonardo DiCaprio hurling a pink shirt around on a mezzanine, did they?