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If every ticket to 3D movies has effectively doubled in price in five years and there is one such movie released into theaters every other weekend (24 titles in 52 weekends is roughly that pace), consumers would face hard decisions in any situation. The fact that the economy crashed right at the start of production of many of these titles only magnifies the issue. If people are going to pay a special surcharge in order to watch a movie, they expect the movie to be just that special.

This is how Clash of the Titans and Avatar ruined 3D for everyone else. The latter film’s special effects are so dazzling, so truly revolutionary, that almost everything that followed in its wake seems relatively ordinary in comparison. Sure, there are some exceptions. Movie goers were awed by the flying sequences in How to Train Your Dragon, which is how a $43.7 million opener in this day and age could earn $217.6 million during its domestic run. And even some of the failures on this list at least attempted to make their visuals worthwhile. BOP’s Dan Krovich maintains that the only movie he saw in 2010 that effectively utilized three dimensional visuals was Step Up 3D. I question whether flying sweat needs a third dimension, but he is steadfast on the subject matter. Resident Evil: Afterlife was smart enough to use James Cameron’s Avatar technology, thereby becoming the first and to date only production team to realize that if you cannot beat his 3D, lease it from him.

Clash of the Titans, on the other hand, went an entirely different way. By now, you are probably well aware of its cardinal sin. This movie’s producers wanted 3D money without the time and effort required to make a quality 3D movie. They chose instead to retrofit the camera work after principal photography had been completed. The end result was a nightmare with movie goers walked out of theaters loudly uttering swears about how badly they were ripped off. The worst part is that they were right. There is little difference between doing this and sticking your finger in your pocket and telling somebody you have a gun and then need to hand you another $5. It’s wrong, everyone knows it’s wrong and yet Warner Bros. did it anyway.

The end result of the above is that consumers started 2010 on a 3D high. Avatar had shown them the promise of a better movie tomorrow. They all flocked to Alice in Wonderland in anticipation of similar glory, instead receiving a mediocre movie with some good but not great visual effects, certainly nothing on the level of James Cameron. Disney didn’t care in that 70% of their sales for the movie came from 3D tickets. A couple of months later, Clash of the Titans flat out robbed consumers by pretending to be 3D when it wasn’t. Because of this, would-be movie goers were jaded by the quality of a still unmatched set of movie visuals and the lingering aftertaste of a couple of unsatisfactory 3D movie going experiences. As the year progressed, more and more people carefully considered whether a movie seemed shiny enough to justify the added cost of 3D. For most of the titles listed here, the answer was unfortunately no. And the brutal reality is that a lot of the damage was self-inflicted by decision makers within the industry yet many of the victims of said behavior were not the ones who committed the crimes.

2010 saw a strange phenomenon wherein the producers of the Resident Evil franchise were more protective of the 3D movie-going experience than Warner Bros. was with a $125 million tent-pole production. This predatory business practice has to change before people decide that going to the movies is simply no longer worth the penalty cost for a 3D ticket. In the interim, we will continue to spot the trend of people specifically ignoring a release’s 3D option in favor of the cheaper option, thereby negating the reason the extra money is spent to produce a 3D film in the first place.

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