The alleged benefits to the entertainment industry of 3D's latest incarnation are many, if they pan out: 3D supposedly justifies higher ticket prices, 3D projection foils pirates, 3D supposedly turns moviegoing at movie houses into an "event" again. On paper, it's a veritable Manhattan Project solution to all of showbiz's woes. The only people who stand to lose are audiences, who will be forced to dig even deeper into their wallets to shell out more for the up-to-this-point dubious advantage of seeing things float around just in front of the screen.

And there is no guarantee all this will work out. After all the hype, audiences might just decide that the cost of moviegoing has hit a tipping point and they are better off staying home or taking their kids to get messed up on malt liquor in a convenience store parking lot for a fraction the pricetag. If things go that way, a lot of people in Hollywood are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

But this isn't the first time we've been through this. From the dawn of cinema, audiences have had cockamamie inventions foisted on them that were supposed to keep their dollars in the theaters. Some have been wildly successful, most have been disasters. Here's a look back at some of the greats:

Invention: Narrative Film
First Introduced In: 1890's
Alleged Advantage: Instead of just showing pictures of horses running down a track, for instance, films sought to tell a story.
Biggest Drawback: Film pioneers failed to anticipate that by the 1980's, narrative would become obsolete, and viewed as a tactic of artistic imperialism, to be replaced by oblique forms which allow viewers to create their own meanings and rely on indirect referencing to achieve a mise en scene rather than actually telling a story.
Outcome: Had its moment but ultimately doomed by the forces of hipster cinema and post-modern criticism.

Invention: Sound
Introduced In: The Jazz Singer, 1927
Alleged Advantage: Audiences got to hear Jolson singing "Swanee" while they watched him gesticulating in blackface.
Biggest Drawback: Once we let actors start talking, Lindsay Lohan twittering was only a few steps away.
Outcome: Pray as you might for someone to tell them to put a cork in it, talkies are here to stay.

Invention: 3D 1.0
Introduced In: Made its first breakthrough in the 1950's with films such as Vincent Price's House of Wax.
Alleged Advantage: Extra scary to think the monsters were actually in the room with you.
Biggest Drawback: Once audiences realized, ten movies later, that the monsters weren't actually in the room, the massive headaches brought on by 3D glasses no longer seemed worth the price.
Outcome: The fire died out but a tiny ember remained smoldering and waiting...

Invention: The Tingler
First Introduced In: 1950's for the film The Tingler
Alleged Advantage: Devices placed in seats made audiences fell they were actually being felt up by the onscreen villain.
Biggest Drawback: Being felt up by a screen villain isn't necessarily what one wants in their moviegoing experience.
Outcome: Like most of the gimmicks brought to the movie house by schlock producer William Castle, The Tingler's moment was not to last.

Invention: Sensurround
First Introduced In: 1970's disaster films such as Earthquake.
Alleged Advantage: Massive sound effect would make seats and your bones shake with onscreen rumbling.
Biggest Drawback: No one really likes having their bones shake when they are not at a rock concert.
Outcome: Sensurround didn't make it but it's memory lives on in the vision of Michael Bay and the decades of annoyingly loud movies that have followed.

Invention: 3D 2.0
First Introduced In: The Stewardesses in 1970.
Alleged Advantage: A new processing innovation reinvigorated 3D for the zany 1970's. The number "3" was especially advantageous to filmmakers in underscoring the specialness of the third installments of franchises as it was thus used in Jaws 3D, Amityville 3D and Friday the 13th, Part 3D.
Biggest Drawback: Despite the "D" audiences were still stuck watching a third Amityville Horror film.
Outcome: Again the flame died, but the fire was never extinguished.

Invention: Web Driven Production
First Introduced In: Snakes on a Plane, 2006
Alleged Advantage: Popular netsroots outcry spurred filmmakers to tailor the film, then in progress to the needs of their audiences, inserting extra nudity and swearing.
Biggest Drawback: Once fanboys on the internet are given any actual power, the collapse of modern civilization can not be far behind.
Outcome: After all their noise, the fanboys tired of their plaything before it made it to market. Snakes grossed a mere $34 million giving it the most off-kilter hype to grosses ratio in film history.

• The dream has ended for Shrek: The Musical. The stage adaptation of the cartoon which attempted to change the Great White Way forever with this revolutionary classy dramatic rendition of a farting contest (we're not kidding, watch the clip), finally accepted the call of gravity just under a year after its debut. [Variety]

• The immediate fate of Roman Polanski is unclear today. After reports earlier this week that he would not fight extradition to the US, today the picture is muddier, with his legal team apparently hotly debating the question. [Hollywood Reporter]

• This Is It, the documentary based on what would have been Michael Jackson's concert series, is headed for a big opening, with 1600 of its showings already sold out. [NY Times]

• David Fincher has signed on to produce a TV series based on the British political thriller House of Cards. The novels which were adopted into a classic trilogy of mini-series by the BBC a decade ago portray the rise and fall of a ruthless British Prime Minister. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Signaling to the world's geek community that it is time to hurry up and say their last goodbyes, Fox has announced it is pulling Joss Whedon's Dollhouse from its November sweeps schedule. [Hitfix]

• Technicolor has finally taken its place on the bandwagon to shove 3D - and its accompanying higher ticket prices - down the world's throat, announcing it has found a solution that will allow non-digital equipped movie houses a conventional means of projecting 3D. [Variety]

Of course, filmmaking tools don't kill people; out-of-control directors kill people. Or at least they kill audiences. 3D in the right hands can and has been used for good as well as evil. American's delighted to soar through the air with Mr. Fredricksen in Up and see tumbling race cars fly off of the screen and chop their heads off in Final Destination 3D.

But once a couple of kids in the class start playing with their Pokemon cards, its only a matter of time before the whole class is flinging them at each other, stuffing the cardboard down each others' throats and burning the school to a ground in a bonfire of trading card rubble. So it has been with 3D; suddenly little Jimmie Cameron shows up with his immersive trailer and everyone's gotta have one.

The madness started yesterday when director Paul W.S. Anderson (the Resident Evil one, not the Boogie Nights one) announced that he was remaking swashbuckling classic The Three Musketeers. Anderson said he is looking to give the period epic a contemporary feel, and what says contemporary like Digital 3D.

Then Steven Soderbergh jumped in on the act, announcing that he will film a musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta Jones. In 3D of course, because how else would you want to see a musical about Cleopatra?
"Cleo is going to be a total party," he promised.

And with all this going on, who could expect Jon Favreau to stay in his seat and just make a little 'ol Iron Man sequel in pathetic little 2D. So suddenly out of nowhere, Iron Man 2 will be, it seems, in digital three dimensions.

Lost in this pile-on is the question whether 3D actually makes the movie going experience any better or does it just provide pointy things coming out of the screen to distract viewers from the Mariana Trench-wide potholes and the matching holes in their wallets where a hundred dollar bill used to be before they showed up with their families at the multiplex

This thing looks faker than that stripper's third tit in Total Recall. Even the real humans look fake! Why would you do that to Zoe Saldana? Why?!

Anyway the movie is about a paralyzed American soldier who takes a job mining on a far away planet that is home to an alien race. The thing is, human's can't live on the planet, so they have to use avatars, clones of the blue-toons that are inhabited by the consciousness of the humans. Of course, our human eventually falls in love with a blue-toon and joins her people's fight to get humans to stop destroying her planet and leave. Colonialism! Environmentalism! See, District 9 isn't the only message movie.

Cameron should have learned his lesson from the Star Wars prequels: if you don't step away from the cinematic easel, you're going to end up with a canvas that is full of pretty doodles and no life. Or in this case, horny blue-toons that like to fight then make out. Well, we're glad our expectations have been lowered, so that the 3-D version might still blow us away. Don't let us down, Cameron. You probably won't have a chance to make it up to us until your next movie in 2025.

Slated to open Dec. 18, 2009, the production already has been in the works for 2 1/2 years. When completed, Cameron expects "Avatar" to be about 60% CG animation, based on characters created using a newly developed performance capture-based process, and 40% live action, with a lot of VFX in the imagery.

"The way we developed the performance capture workflow on 'Avatar" is we have our virtual camera, which allows me to, in real time, hold a camera — it's really a monitor — in my hands and point it at the actors and see them as their CG chartacters," Cameron said.

The actors wear leotards and a "head rig" with a tiny standard-definition camera that takes an image of an actor's face. "That is going though facial algorithms and going back into the camera as a real-time CG face of the character," the helmer said. "You see it talk; you see the eyes move. It is pretty phenomenal.

"It's this amazing ability to quickly conjure scenes and images and great fantasyscapes that is very visual. We call it 'director centric' because I can use the camera to block the actors," Cameron related."

While it's hard to really picture what these advancements mean for us—the People Who Want to See Shit Explode In Space—without getting a look at some actual footage, we hear what he's captured so far is pretty mind-boggling. (Then again, this is a James Cameron film, and we have yet to hear of any real-time, in-camera dialogue-improvement technologies coming down the pipeline.) We'll just assume we'll see Cameron at the 60% CG/40% live action 2009 Oscars, proudly accepting his trophy as a crowd of virtuastars from the past 80 years, both deceased and living, cheer on his extraordinary achievement.

• James Cameron's 'Avatar' creating tech buzz [THR]