By Drew Scoggins, Staff Writer

There are movies that cause audience members leave a theater feeling exhilarated after a great film, such as “The Dark Knight.” There are times when one leaves with their brain bulging after movies such as “Inception” or even a little bit depressed after seeing “Avatar” because it just looks so gosh darned pretty. And then there are the times when one leaves the theater $10 or $12 poorer, confused and beginning to question faith in humanity.  This year had its fair share of the horrendous, the misguided and the downright terrible movies.

Following the astronomical success of last year’s “Avatar,” it was only a matter of time before Hollywood decided to make some really awful 3-D movies. “Clash of the Titans” should have been a smash. It had epic battle scenes, a hunky hero and giant monsters who fought each other in a huge explosion of awesome. All it lacked was a cohesive storyline, actors who could act and special effects that looked like they belonged in the 21st century.

“The Last Airbender” was Director M. Night Shyamalan’s first attempt with 3-D, and hopefully his last. Although it looked very good visually, everything else about the movie was horribly flawed, from the clunky acting to the very way the story was told.

This year was also a big year for old action stars who were good in old action movies to fail at being good action stars in new action movies. Mel Gibson starred in the box office flop “Edge of Darkness,” Russell Crowe became a Gladiator for the English in “Robin Hood,” Tom Cruise proved he’s still crazy with “Knight and Day” and John Travolta proved yet again he cannot play a cool bad guy after being in both “Saturday Night Fever” and “Hairspray” when his cheesy flick “From Paris with Love” failed to impress at the box office.

At least toward the end of the year, Hollywood made up for its transgressions by putting out “MacGruber,” a movie so terribly, awesomely bad that there seems to be nowhere to go but up for the movie industry.

Here’s to crossing fingers for next year.