There’s a weird pattern in the history of 3-D cinema in that the craze seems to come back every thirty years. Interest in stereoscopic films began in the 1920s, then fizzled out a bit before the war. The first colour feature film was released in the the early 1950s, shortly after which a number of 3-D releases were successful, including a 3-D version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder.

In the 60s, cinema-goers got their kicks through the use of psychoactive drugs, making 3-D glasses somewhat redundant. The 70s saw advances in technology making 3-D projection cheaper and easier, which lead to the next craze in the early 80s and culminating in the ultimate in three dimensional entertainment, Jaws 3-D, starring Dennis Quaid.

The thing in common with each of these periods of popularity is that they were all short lived; 3-D projection never became the default way to experience cinema. Maybe people realised that what makes a good film isn’t a rather poor illusion of an extra dimension, but a good plot, a good script and the development of characters you care about.

Now James Cameron’s Avatar is the second highest grossing film of all time largely because people are clamouring to see it wearing 3D glasses. Last week I was one of those people and while I found it quite entertaining in places, no amount of film-making technology could mask the fact that this is a film with a weak and mostly silly plot.

On the back of the success of this film, Peter Jackson and George Lucas are said to be re-releasing their films with reworked 3-D visuals (I can only imagine that a 3-D Jar Jar Binks will be a third more annoying) and analysts are saying that 3-D will be the default way to see films in a multiplex cinema. I’m sure that cinema-goers in 1983 would have expected more when they future-gazed into 2010.