5) X-Men: The Last Stand(2006)

While they weren’t exactly cheap, the first two X-Men films weren’t incredibly expensive, ending up with budgets of$75 million and$110 million respectively. But for the last film in the original trilogy, director Brett Ratner went all out, and “The Last Stand” cashed out at$210 million. It became the most expensive movie ever at the time of its release. Despite its mixed critical reception, everyone agreed that the money was put to good use, like the great makeup work on Kelsey Grammer’s Beast, and awesome action scenes, including the final battle on Alcatraz. The budgets of the next few “X-Men” films would mellow out until 2014 with the$200 million spent on “Days of Future Past.”

4) Transformers: Age of Extinction(2014)

Michael Bay’s fourth stab at the “Transformers” franchise turned out to be his most expensive at the time, priced at$210 million. This isn’t surprising, as the movie is almost three straight hours of explosions, property damage, mech battles, and Mark Wahlberg stunts. VFX supervisor Scott Farrar even said that the film contains about an hour and a half of visual effects, and that it was the largest project his crew had ever taken on. As per usual, the critics trashed the film, but that didn’t stop it from making over a billion bucks worldwide, earning its budget back several times.

3) Men in Black 3(2012)

The “MIB” franchise had been dormant for a full decade, so Sony made sure to throw a ton of cash at the third movie when it finally came out. Agent J’s journey back to the ‘60s to save Agent K was one of the most expensive films of 2012, coming in at$215 million. Costs went to recreating 1969 New York City and the Apollo 11 launch at Cape Canaveral, as well as the slick, high-tech Men in Black aesthetic, including neuralizers, ray guns, and aliens. The big investments paid off, as “MIB 3” ended up with over$600 Million worldwide.

2) Man of Steel(2013)

This reboot of the Man of Tomorrow had a lot of tasks to pull off. It had to properly reimagine Superman for a new generation and kickstart the DC Extended Universe. While it’s still debated how successful the film was in these areas, nobody can debate that Zack Snyder made a visually incredible film in “Man of Steel.” With a budget of$225 million, Snyder was able radically reinvent Krypton into a fallen utopia, create epic battle scenes between Kal-El and Zod, and shoot some of the best flight sequences in the entire Superman mythos. “Man of Steel” didn’t end up being the monster success Warner Bros. wanted, but still took in$668 million worldwide.

1)Avatar(2009)

We’re surprised that the highest grossing film of all time, made up of almost entirely CGI and motion capture performances, isn’t higher on the list. That doesn’t mean James Cameron’s opus didn’t cost a pretty penny, with a final budget of$237 million. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably can tell what all the money went to. The world of Pandora and the Na’vi were considered photorealistic, and the film pioneered groundbreaking 3D filmmaking techniques that filmmakers are still trying to effectively recreate. It’s good to know that while we wait for “Avatar 2,” “3,” “4,” and “5,” we can always go back and marvel at how incredible the original looks.