3. Avatar (2009)
Oh Avatar. Remember at the start of 2010 when it was everyones favourite movie? On the Internet people were even saying they wanted to die because they could never actually go to Pandora. While it got annoying having every smart alec joking how it was Pocahontas in space, Dances with Smurfs or something in that general area (had anyone ever actually heard of Fern Gully before the Avatar backlash), they did have a point; the plot was predictable and the characters flimsy. The reason for its success was all down to the 3D. The majority of the public were yet to see a 3D movie and with all the talk of newly developed technology people assumed that the 3D was more special than it was. The real tragedy of Avatar is not that it led to 3D's astronomical rise, but that the big achievement of the film the huge step forward in motion capture was ignored by the general public. Avatar was a true one off. 3D was completely new to the masses and drove it from what would have been an impressive billion dollar gross to almost treble that.