Back in the early 1950s, 3D movies became popular for a while. Titles like Creature from the Black Lagoon and Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder turned up and I'm sure some pundits began to see it as the way of the future. And people were really excited for a while, until too many of them started complaining of headaches and the fad fizzled out. But before that could happen, a one-eyed director named Andre de Toth made a little horror movie called House of Wax (1953), starring Vincent Price. It was the one movie that really used the three dimensions to interesting effect (ironic, given that de Toth could only see in two dimensions). Some called it the greatest 3D movie ever made.

The trend came back for a while in the early 1980s, with titles like Comin' at Ya!, Jaws 3-D, Friday the 13th Part 3, Amityville 3-D, and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. Nobody called any of these movies the greatest anything of anything, and the trend disappeared again. Moreover, viewers found they could watch Creature from the Black Lagoon and Dial M for Murder and other former 3D movies on home video, and still enjoy them quite well, thank you very much.

(More after the jump.)

Last year, Henry Selick's Coraline came out. A blurb from Leonard Maltin appeared on the ad, claiming it was the greatest 3D movie ever made. I'd agree with him. Not only did it also use the 3D in a thematically fascinating way, but it was also a better movie than House of Wax. The terrific Monsters vs. Aliens also used its 3D for some very funny jokes. Since then, I've seen about a dozen more 3D movies, and while some of them were good and some of them were not, hardly any of them really needed to be in 3D.

But many of them made tons of money, and Hollywood -- in its infinite wisdom -- is now scrambling not only to make more 3D movies, but also to convert 2D movies into 3D. (Hence the crappy 3D look of Clash of the Titans.) For example, was anyone in a big rush to see Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D? I already owned both of them at home, and I didn't think the 3D was really going to add that much more to the experience. Frankly, they could re-do Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather and Star Wars in 3D, and it wouldn't excite me much. (OK, maybe I'd go see Star Wars in 3D.)

I guess some people are getting really excited about 3D TVs for homes, but until then, how many of these movies will hold up in 2D and on the small screen? How many of them will do just fine without the 3D? I received a review DVD of The Final Destination a few months ago, complete with 3D glasses, and it looked atrocious. And the movie wasn't good enough to see again, anyway. But I'd watch Up again, in 2D, any old time.

So here's the question: How badly do you viewers really want all this stuff? I'd bet that, like me, most of you are getting sick of it. I'd bet that most of you actually wanted to see Clash of the Titans, the movie, and didn't care whether it was in 3D. So, how about it? Is 3D the wave of the future, or will it eventually fizzle out again? Will it become an essential part of the cinema experience, or is it just a neat gimmick?