At the end of last year, IFC.com, like everyone else, made best of the decade lists. Unlike most other outlets, however, their “Naughts Project” created awards for the best single director, actor, and actress over that period of time. They honored the bodies of work of Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon, and Nicole Kidman, respectively, and it’s hard to disagree with the staff’s unique, sound reasoning in each case. I have some other ideas about the best director of the ’00s, but that’s a different column.

No, what the project really did was get me thinking about who the worst director of the decade was. And figuring that out is probably more difficult than choosing a best. For one thing, we’ve most likely never heard of the worst director of the aughts. He probably went so over-budget or delivered such incompetent work that it never made it on screen. Maybe he stole millions of dollars and never shot a thing. At any rate, his work was probably not worthy of an audience, so it’s hard to judge. For argument purposes, this would have to be a director with whom people are familiar but who has, time and time again, wasted talent, time, and money on garbage. That man is Tim Burton.

Alice in Wonderland, currently sitting high atop the box office heap, is the latest offering from this “madcap visionary,” this “quirky imagineer,” or whatever else you want to call his exaggerated persona. When my mother saw the first trailer for the adaptation, she exclaimed, “You know, he is the perfect person to make that movie!” And in that one sentence, she summarized everything that was wrong with the declining trajectory of Burton’s bankrupt creativity and the problems with our current marketing machine. This artist who embodied an authentic, singular voice is now doing exactly what we expect him to do. Here is his filmography since his career took a turn for the worse:

2010- Alice in Wonderland
2007- Sweeney Todd
2005- Corpse Bride
2005- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
2003- Big Fish
2001- Planet of the Apes
1999- Sleepy Hollow
1996- Mars Attacks!

Forget asking yourself which of those films is good. Which one of those films can justify the fact that it exists? For a man who has such a supposedly original vision, only one of those—Corpse Bride—is not based on pre-existing material. Even that one is a duller copy of the macabre-cute milieu he built for The Nightmare Before Christmas, one of the only movies he’s written himself. When his films have worked (Big Fish, Sweeney Todd for some people), it’s because the source material was so strong that he couldn’t get in his own way.

So he doesn’t write his own screenplays, and he usually attaches himself to adaptations. So does Martin Scorsese. Here’s the difference: Martin Scorsese has a movie out right now too. He took his strength—being a repository of seventy years of cinematic heritage, being a master of using the camera to establish tone—and attempted something he’s never done before: an entry in the horror/suspense genre. Even at a much older age (Burton is only 52), Scorsese reinvents himself and explores. His next project is a kid’s movie in 3-D, another challenge. I can’t imagine Burton stretching himself in that way.

This past decade has seen the rise of believable CGI in visual effects, and, while it supposedly opens filmmakers up to infinite possibilities, it has only hamstrung Burton’s surreal visions. Part of what made things like the sandworms in Beetlejuice impressive was the elbow grease required for the execution. Now, with CG effects, anyone can achieve anything visually, and he was never good at telling stories and coaching performances in the first place. He doesn’t seem to bring as much to the table anymore. Johnny Depp is still in his corner, but they seem to be holding each other back in a similar way. The familiarity with Depp and the dependence upon green screen give the illusion of creativity, but neither element seems to push Burton.

Surprisingly—and tellingly—Burton’s movies keep making money. He’s a bankable, name-brand director. And what has he done with that clout? He’s one of maybe twenty directors in the world who has no trouble getting a $100 million budget approved, and he uses that privilege to retell stories that do not need to be retold. Why Alice in Wonderland now? Why Planet of the Apes? What about these projects demands his consideration?

That’s what’s so frustrating. The delicate, heartbreaking, sympathetic work on Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood show just how essential his talent should be. They’re pieces of painstaking, nuanced outsider art, and that’s why it makes no sense for him to have become the mainstream. It used to be that no one else could make a Tim Burton film; now he makes ones that anyone else could.