My family has a tradition of seeing the holiday season blockbuster on Christmas Eve every year. This year, it was Avatar. When we saw Quantum of Solace last year, it didn’t even occur to me that adding another dimension to the screen might supply a higher entertainment value. But I’d been hearing the hype about Avatar for over a year, and in 2009 it seemed criminal to not see the full experience, 3D glasses included. Somehow in the last year 3D went from a tacky feature reserved for IMAX films about bugs to the newest addition to top of the line action films.

The year 2009 brought 15 blockbuster movies in 3D, as well as announcements from Pixar and DreamWorks that they plan to release all their movies in three dimensions from now on. Compared to the six 3D films that were released in 2008, it is clear that the market for 3D films is increasing. Because movies are becoming more available through on-demand television and illegal downloading, Hollywood execs have to find other ways of captivating audiences in order to keep up movie revenue. And thus a new era of 3D film was born, which many believe will soon be part of every movie, despite the fact that 3D technology hasn’t advanced significantly since the 1950s.

In the late 1890s, just two decades after the first motion picture was released, the idea for a 3D film was thought up by William Friese-Greene, a photographer and inventor who projected two films side by side on a screen. It wasn’t until 1922, however, that the first real 3D movie was played. It was no Avatar or The Jonas Brother: 3D Concert Experience, but it was a huge step forward in two reel projection and it spurred an immediate 3D craze, which died down only a couple of years later.

Since then, the 3D craze reemerged in the late ’30s and early ’40s, the ’50s (known as “The golden era of 3D”), the mid ’60s with the invention of single strip formatting, the ’80s with the IMAX theaters and now; 2009, 3D glasses and all. Each time rising to a peak and then slowly trickling away.

So the question on everyone’s mind is whether or not this is just another spike on the century old 3D graph. Many say that 3D movie technology is now cost efficient enough that the 30 percent increase in ticket price makes up for the additional funding required to make 3D movies. However, it runs with a higher risk. Movies that have the potential to flop in the market have a lot more to lose because of the added costs of 2 reel projection. Perhaps this would limit the number of poorly made movies and restrict Hollywood to only the best of the best, but then again, is it really necessary to watch Michael Jackson’s: This is it in 3D?

Experts are undecided on the issue. One known critic, Roger Ebert, says that “There is a mistaken belief that 3D is ‘realistic.’ Not at all. In real life we perceive in three dimensions, yes, but we do not perceive parts of our vision dislodging themselves from the rest and leaping at us.” While DreamWorks Stereoscopic Supervisor Phil McNally, whose real name (it’s even on his drivers license) is “Captain 3D,” calls the 3D era an eye-opening experience. He says that “3D fundamentally is two cameras, in the same way our eyes are two cameras. If we close one eye, we’re not seeing in 3D, we’re seeing in mono. Opening two eyes literally allows our brains to get the spatial information we work with in real life.”

It costs theaters an average of $20,000 to remodel their facility in order to play the added dimension. This means that corporate theaters which already have the technology are golden, but it poses a problem for the small theaters that still charge $3 a ticket and don’t have a couple $10,000 bills to toss around if 3D becomes the usual. They will disappear, along with drive-ins and outdoor movie nights in the park, because no one is willing to pay for subpar. And with the possible addition of 3D movies to the average household, par will be increasing dramatically.

TV retailers also need “the next big thing” to make a 64 inch flat screen more appealing than a computer monitor. After HDTV flopped with the invention of Blu Ray, major electronic manufacturers decided to replace the “H” and try their luck with a numeral: 3DTV appears to be the next unexplored frontier in home entertainment. And with Samsung, Song, LG and Panasonic already having products lined up, it’s hard to say what will keep people going to theaters.

I, however, take comfort in knowing that there are thousands of marketing geniuses working to solve this mystery in order to keep me paying a somewhat outrageous $13 of my hard-earned babysitting money for an action packed two hours, whichever dimension it may be in. Plus, the glasses look really good on me. That’s a definite bonus.